Secret Thoughts of a Sensitive Child

I offer as much fervor as I can muster, guessing that Grandma must be interested in pigeons if she’s going to look at one on her wall for a whole month.

“Hundreds of them are running around the city, but you never see a dead one, you know? I wonder where they go when they die, don’t you? Maybe they only die every hundred years or something. What do you think?”

The central heat switches off, making the room seem extra silent and awkward.
Grandma keeps quiet, her eyes focused on her lap. Now I know what it’s like when I clam up when Mom is trying to talk to me. It’s just weird. Stretching the blue wad of gum back out of my mouth makes it snap in two. I force the rubbery mass back together by rolling it into a thin wormy log.

“Praise Jesus!”

They’re the last two words I would expect Grandma to say. The words explode from her lips like something forced her to say it. She makes eye contact with me for a split second. Then she relaxes, exhaling with this low toned hmmmmmm that is less like breathing and more like she’s trying to spook me. It’s working. After an even longer spell of dead silence, I twist the gum into a pretend jewel for my ring finger and get up to leave.

On the way past my Grandma, she uncrosses her legs with so much gusto she accidentally kicks my shin with all her might.

“Ouch!”

“Praise Jesus,” Grandma blurts a second time, looking straight at me with an untrusting look.

“Where you goin’?”

Grandma wonders why I’m headed outdoors during the peak of a flash rainstorm. There’s no way to explain how warm downpours delight me.

“Don’t go far. Your mummy’s soon home.”

Grandma calls my Mom mummy, and every time she does, I picture my Mother wrapped head to toe in white gauze.

“I’ll just be outside, Grandma.”

My Grandma must have a passion for predicting and derailing the peak of my excitement. Her pressed lips and clenched jowls make it clear that she disapproves of my forthcoming street gutter bliss. In fact, every time I finally get ready to do something fun, whether it’s opening up my Easter Basket, reading a Mad Magazine, or beating my sister at arm wrestling, Grandma appears with a sneer, forecasting that trouble is brewing if I don’t stop enjoying myself.