Granddad got focused on fixing dinner. I had bought my meal, Grandma had enough pre-packaged meals for herself and him, but I knew that busyness was relaxing for him so I didn’t suggest anything else – until I realized her was very tired. He had cooked two pots of greens – one seasoned for today’s dinner, the other unseasoned for freezing. He also pulled three yams from the pantry and asked me what kind of meat I wanted.
“No thank you. I’m having chicken for lunch in a little while,” I said.
“That’s no problem! If you don’t want to eat chicken again I got steak, fish, burgers, whatever you want!”
“No thank you. I don’t eat meat more than once a day because it takes a long time to process – in my system,” I said.
Granddad ridicules my uncle for eating all these new-fangled-fancy-schmansy foods, and he’s always scoffed at my mother’s beliefs about food – that nutrition, not taste or any other reason – is the primary reason for eating.
“I’ll have your greens and a potato though,” I added.
“Suit yourself,” he said.
He carefully sat on the stair climber to go into the basement and retrieve meat from one of the three freezers they keep full down there. He also planned to pull cornbread mix from the basement pantry, which has been as full as a community general store ever since I could remember. When I saw Granddad struggling to walk back up the stairs, I realized he was probably trying to get exercise. But he looked extremely tired and I figured he had to be tired after Grandma’s alleged beat down. I still had only heard about these beatings and could not really imagine this frail woman taking him down.
“Granddad, why don’t you get a nap in while I keep an eye on Grandma,” I said. “You’re going to need your strength later. You can finish dinner later.”
“I’m ok,” he insisted. “I’m going to make some cornbread. This is some good cornbread.”
Grandma was at the kitchen sink washing and re-washing a couple of bowls and a few pieces of flatware. She’d dry them off then put them into the dishwasher, take them out of the dishwasher.
“Baby what you doing!” Granddad yelled.
“Granddad, leave her alone. I can’t pull her off you,” I reminded him. He’d told me that she’s thrown him across the room, that she’d pinned him down to the floor, that their son had had to pull her off of him. But I couldn’t imagine it. I’d seen him fuss and yell at her so much over the years, that the first time he told me she knocked a plate of food out of his hand at church, “showing out”, I jokingly dismissed the episode, saying, “Grandma’s on get-back time.” When he asked what I meant, I’d clammed up. If I’d said, “Granddad you’ve been fussing at her and embarrassing her ever since I can remember. She’s getting you back!” He would have fiercely denied it. He would’ve claimed as he always had, “ya’ll don’t know your grandma like I know her. Ya’ll don’t see what she does.” Then we would have had to address domestic violence, verbal abuse. He would have sworn, as he had before, “I might raise my voice, but I never hit her.” I never said, “you intimidate her with your yelling!” In fact, I had accepted their justification, that this was just the way they communicated, as if they’d developed their personal own language. I’d accepted that many people in their generation were hard on each other, hard with each other. My paternal grandmother was not that way, but I also realized my maternal grandparents had been the way they were since before I was born and who was I to change it?
It was only earlier this year that Grandma finally confessed to me, “When he yells like that he makes me nervous, and I can’t think straight.” A couple months ago, I saw her yell at him for the first time and I was more tickled than anything. She’d told him to sit down somewhere and shut up. I went home laughing.
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