Secret Thoughts of a Sensitive Child

Mom wants us to stay home but we can’t make a sound. That leaves plenty of time to write poems about how I’m wasting my life being quiet and bored. We have to keep our doors open so Mom can listen for the noise she says we’re not supposed to make. Her ears are always tuned and ready for any vibration, whisper, or whistle that might fire up a fit of fury. Desperate for comforting harmonious melodies, I sometimes put my radio directly up to my ear at volume level one. It’s often when my music isn’t on that Mom yells from the kitchen that I’d better turn it off.

Thank goodness we found out my Grandma was putting dirty dishes in her apartment cupboard. It made Mom ask her to move in with us. Her social security checks are helping to pay the mortgage. With Grandma in the room between me and Toni, I think I’ll be less bored. Maybe I’ll even write a poem about Grandma and her dishes.

My Grandma’s thin body and black horn-rimmed glasses make her look simultaneously delicate and thorny, like I often feel. My Mom’s mom is the widow of a grandfather who left the world way before I joined it. I can’t imagine somebody living on the Earth at a different time than me any more than I can envision Grandma ever having been a wife to somebody. Both are just too weird to fathom.

Mom said Grandpa died of a heart attack back when she was still in grade school. The shock of it made something go haywire in Grandma’s head.

“It can’t be cured,” Mom said, which gave me a powerful flash of déjà vu.

You only ever see Grandma in patterned polyester dresses, with the unfinished look of her knee high hose rolled halfway up both calves. Cut short and completely silver, her hairstyle is all curls because they need no styling after a shampoo.

Grandma does quite a bit of sitting in her bedroom staring at the wall, with the exception of going to the bathroom and heating up her own soup for lunch. Since all I’m really competing with for Grandma’s attention is her wall, I know she’ll be thrilled to listen to me talk about my deep thoughts and grand ideas.