Sophie Littlefield - Banished

“You git my cigarettes?” Gram wheezed from her chair. She asked me that every time I came home from the grocery, as though I’d ever forget. She went through a pack and a half a day. I handed her the four packs of Marlboro 100’s along with the receipt and a few coins. The cigarettes cost almost half what I’d spent at the grocery, but I knew better than to suggest Gram cut back. The one and only time I’d tried, she’d slapped my face so fast and hard it took my breath away.

Gram was mean, but she was also weak and sick most of the time, so I could stay out of her way if I tried. She woke in the morning coughing up nasty stuff and spitting into the sink, and she fell asleep drunk in her chair most nights. She ordered me around like a servant. I didn’t mind the housework so much-I had kind of a thing about keeping the house clean, and I would have done it even if she didn’t tell me to. And she paid me, even if it was a fraction of minimum wage.

I unpacked the rest of the groceries and got to work making sloppy joes. Sautéing the frozen peppers and onions, the ground beef, stirring in the tomato sauce-I’d done it a hundred times before, but it still brought me a sense of calm, especially with Chub playing at my feet and Rascal dozing in the corner of the kitchen where I kept a stack of old blankets for him to sleep on.

Gram, laughing at something Tyra Banks said on her show, farted loudly, and I thought for the thousandth time how glad I would be when Chub and I left this house for good. I knew you weren’t supposed to feel that way about your grandmother. Grandparents were supposed to be over-protective and hopelessly out of touch, but you were still supposed to love them. They were supposed to listen to your troubles and offer you advice from all their years of experience.

“Something weird happened at school today,” I said as I stirred the ketchup and onion soup mix into the skillet. Gram had never given me a single piece of advice worth remembering, and as I started to speak I already knew it was a mistake, but I had to talk to someone about Milla. “Milla Swanson got hurt in gym.”

“Uh-huh,” Gram said without taking her eyes off the television.

“I mean, like hurt pretty bad. I think she was unconscious for a while. A head injury.”

“Mmm.”

“But I… well, I think I might have… um. The thing is, I just wanted to help, you know? Because Ms. Turnbull went to call and-”

“What did you say?”

Gram’s voice, sharp and shrill, startled me. I set the spatula into the pan and looked at her. To my surprise she was struggling to push herself out of her chair, grunting with the effort.

“Just that Milla fell off the vault and hit her head.” I went to help Gram. She seized my hands and pulled herself up, her back cracking.

“Was there blood? Skin cut? Bone showing? What did you do?”

Gram’s questions had an edge to them, an urgency I had never heard from her, and I wondered what she knew that I didn’t.

“It wasn’t really any big deal. Just a bump.”

“You said she was unconscious.” There was excitement and accusation in her voice, and her eyes were bright and intent.

“Well, maybe for a minute.”

“And you touched her?”

“Um… yeah.”

“On her head?”

“Well, yes, I mean, first her hands and then, I guess, mostly on her hair.”

“What did you say?”

“What did I say ?”

“It’s not a hard question, Hailey. What did you say when you were touching her?”

“I didn’t-I don’t know. I mean, I might have said her name, and something like, ‘Don’t worry,’ or, ‘It’s going to be okay.’ I really don’t remember.”

But as I answered Gram something stirred in my mind. There had been… something. A strange sound track, whispered nonsense syllables, barely audible over the rushing of my blood.

“That’s all? You didn’t say anything else?”

“No. Nothing else.” I was a little frightened by Gram’s intensity, especially when she closed one of her clawlike hands around my forearm, her long fingernails digging into my flesh.

“Have you done this before, Hailey?” she asked, leaning close enough to me that I could smell her breath, a foul combination of cigarettes and rot. I had to resist the urge to pull my arm away.

“Done what ?”

Her burning eyes searched mine, and I felt like she was looking for signs that I was telling the truth-and for something else as well, something I couldn’t understand. We stood that way for what seemed like a long time, and I felt fear unwind inside my gut, fear that fed on my confusion and the high emotions of the day.

“I think you know,” Gram finally hissed, squeezing my arm with a strength that surprised me. “You know what you done. All this time I been waitin’ on you, I finally gave up, and now you gone and done it.”

I yanked away from her, my heart pounding hard. “Dinner’s going to burn,” I mumbled. I picked up the spatula and stirred the mixture in the pan, my face hot in the rising steam.

I could sense Gram standing behind me, watching. She was scariest when she was thinking. I’d rather have her hit me or yell at me any day than stare at me like that, when I didn’t have a clue what she was thinking about.

“It don’t change nothin’,” she muttered, so softly I almost didn’t hear her.

By the time I dared to turn and look, she had shuffled back to her chair, and her eyes were half closed as she watched a lawn-care commercial. I made three plates of food and got Chub set up at the table with a paper napkin and a glass of chocolate milk. I took Gram her plate and a fresh beer and set it on her TV tray. She barely grunted a response, but I kept an eye on her as Chub and I ate dinner. She ate carelessly, bits of ground beef falling to the tray or the floor, where Rascal would find them later. After a while she rubbed her napkin across her mouth and tossed it on top of her half-eaten dinner, and I breathed easier, hoping she’d forgotten the confusing conversation.

She was expecting customers that night. While I did the dishes she muttered to herself, now and then raising her voice as though she was having a conversation with someone. I was passing by her chair on my way to put Chub down, when she shot out her gnarled, yellow-nailed hand and grabbed my wrist.

“You know you’re the future, Hailey,” she said, lips twisted in a grin that revealed the gaps where she’d lost teeth. Gram wouldn’t see a dentist, so her teeth were gray in places and several were missing. “You’re the one who’s gonna carry on the legacy.”

I tugged my wrist back, but Gram held on tight. She’d said things like that before; it was nothing new. Years ago I’d asked what she meant, and Gram had got all coy and winked and said I’d know soon enough. It gave me the creeps, the way she stared at me with her milky eyes bright, almost hungry-looking.

“You got titties now, girl, don’t you,” Gram said.

Instinctively I covered my chest with my hand. It was barely even true. I was still skinny through the hips and it was clear I’d never be curvy the way Jill Kirsch and Stephanie Lee were, the way that caught the boys’ attention as they walked down the school halls.

But it was horrifying to think that Gram had noticed, that she had been looking at me… that way.

“And your monthlies,” she continued, wheezing and coughing into her sleeve.

I hadn’t made an effort to keep it a secret. When I got my period a few years earlier, I knew what to do from eavesdropping on other girls at school, and I stored my box of tampons in the bathroom medicine cabinet. But hearing her say the words made my stomach roil, and I jerked my hand so hard that her fingers bounced off the arm of her chair as I backed away.