Grandma and the Bennie

When your Grandma's capacity for booze outweighs all the fairy tales about being a Grandma who do you become?

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“Go get your grandmother,” the words fall from somewhere near my mother’s back, turned to me, bent over one of the infinite household tasks with which she erases herself.

“She’s,” mom’s face appears from under her shoulders, rising up, her eyebrows joining over her liquid black/brown eyes, her mouth a thin slash of red, “at the Bennie.”

I wheel through the house eager to comply. This promises to be a story I can tell later to amuse others, the time I had to fetch my grandmother from the local. I open the door of our tiny, immaculate, detached brick house and take a breath of electric air, the smell rising from the streetcar tracks on this busy trucking route.

The Ben-la-Mond as it is known to patrons, east end lower working class losers, their clothes worn thin from too many washings, if at all, sits on the North East corner of Main and Kingston Road, a block and a half from our house.

My grandmother is easy to find. She sits by herself, her back to the door in the middle of the room at one of the formica topped, metal legged tables, her large brown felt hat with the big feather still on her head. I walk around the table and pulling the chair back sling my long legs across it. I am beside her.

Well, I gueszzz you’rrre here to bring me home… her tongue slides.

Yeah.

Your mother se-sent you, she states as she flicks the tip of ash off her cigarette, her eyes focused on this as though it were an event, a first-time thing. The ash lands precisely in the small chunky glass square intended for it.

Yup.

Can I finish my cigarette? Gram’s indignation, her sense of herself as hard done by, makes me smile.

Only if I can have one.

She glances quickly up at me, her hazel brown eyes rheumy with alcohol, her nostrils opening slightly at the challenge.

I relish the corner she is in. She cannot refuse because I will walk out. She will have to abandon her already tottering dignity at a tawdry table in this run-down bar. Leaving with me in charge would remind her she is an alcoholic, saved only by her daughter’s charity, rescued from her need to resolve herself in sodden gutters by her daughter.

My jaw clenches slightly, teeth coming rightly together to prevent the sneer I feel edging along my lips, which pucker slightly despite my efforts.

With her mouth turned down, her head nods imperceptibly toward the blue and white package of Rothman’s.

I take the pack in one hand and shake it against my other hand lightly, until a thin stick emits from the open top. I light it and drag. Hard.

My eyes fall around the room, my ears open to the music, some lame gush of sound, some slush about love and love and love, all music is about love but this vapid apology slides around like jello. The music I prefer in these places hits my body below the waist, bass, drums, driving rock and roll and will not let go even when I respond by sweaty dancing all night long. It is this, the music, that beckons me like a lover back again and again to bars, this and the buzz of booze along my veins. Or so I tell myself.

Is she angry? Gram already knows the answer. I look at her, wondering for the umpteenth time why my father insisted she come and live with us, why he, over my mother’s objections, brought her into our tiny crowded house.

Well, might as wellllllgo… I hear her slur.

Can you walk?

She grabs her arm away from mine, places her hands on and leans across the table as she stands up, tries to pull herself upright, weaves and almost falls but I am under her side before she topples. I am careful not to grab her waist under the long-pleated summer coat.

We waltz this way, knotted together by limbs, her weight shifting into, then away from my strong lean frame. It is not physically difficult.

Always be la dddyyy, her chin wags this towards me, her tongue skids and slides with its alcohol laden cells.

Her comment jiggles loose a story my father told me. He offered to bring her home from a party, my mother having already left with burning red cheeks. He walked Gram along to the front our house. When she defiantly argued no, she would not go inside, he took his arm away and left her, sprawled in all directions across the large snow pile on our front lawn.

To hell with you, he announced waving his hands in the air as he strode into his home.

Al..aysh…she begins again now, the booze shifting itself inside toward her brain, the place she drinks to rearrange. Enough booze and her mind provides a signal to let go, to feel good. I wonder for a split second how I know this, then quickly another memory surfaces, as though ready to shuffle the painful insight to the bottom of the pack, away from where it might confront me.

I remember my father’s comments about how when she younger she was known as the biggest whore in the East End of Toronto, a real party girl, a flapper. She had told me a story about being downtown in a party one night, when the cops came in the front door. She and her friends hustled out the back door, taking their illegal stash of weed and booze with them.

I steer her now toward the front door.

Isssh all right…can do myself…she weaves with the bravado of all drunks, pushing my arms away. She pulls her coat toward her, begins to careen crazily to one side when my mother, her small frame suddenly filling the doorway appears.

Get up upstairs, mom orders. I cannot believe she’s done this again, mom’s face turns away as her words fade in air.

I believe I’ll steal another cigarette.

By Charlene Jones

From: Canada

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