Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

It couldn’t’ve been much fun living at Grandma’s anyhow. It was a crummy old building full of old people on social security and derelicts and drunks and her whole apartment was smaller than a standard-sized bedroom jammed with all kinds of furniture she couldn’t let go of. Plus I knew when it came to food, TV, housecleaning and so forth it was bound to be Grandma who ran the show, not Mom even if Mom was contributing money for rent and food and all Grandma had to live on was her social security check. Grandma was totally self-centered and strong but my mom who was equally self-centered was weak. I kind of preferred my grandmother’s version though because you could see it coming from last Tuesday and it didn’t make you feel sorry for her all the time. Even when I was so pissed at my mom I could hardly look at her like now I was still feeling sorry for her and guilty. Which is why I probably acted the way I did that day at Grandma’s.

I flopped down on her couch and didn’t move when she started wringing her hands and complaining about how I was getting it all wet. She was like a bird whose nest’d been taken over by a bird of a different breed, fluttering and squawking around while I sat there and ignored her. I picked up the remote and started surfing the TV in a dazed way and put my feet on her coffee table which wasn’t cool I know but I was incredibly pissed off way down deep inside and scared too but I couldn’t say to myself or to anyone else what it was exactly that I was upset about. Except of course that it obviously was about my stepfather and my mother, and me not being able to live a regular life with them.

All that’d been true for a long time but somehow it hadn’t upset me before as much as it did now. All at once it felt like everything was way too complicated for me to control and nobody else was in control either so I didn’t have anyone to turn to for help. Except Grandma and with her the second I walked through the door and she didn’t recognize me I realized she wasn’t going to be any help either. It was like I really was invisible or something and no one could see me. No, actually it was more like I was this human mirror walking down the road and all people could see when they looked in my direction was some reflection of themselves looking back because the main effect was nobody saw me myself, the kid, Chappie, Bone even, no one saw me except as a way to satisfy their desires or meet their needs, the nature of which sometimes they didn’t even know about until I showed up on the scene, like my stepdad’s needs for instance.

I guess I shouldn’t’ve been so pissed off at my grandmother for being unable to deal straight with me though. She was old and poor and uptight and probably scared of things I hadn’t even imagined yet, monsters and demons that only visit old people whose lives are completely behind them now and from that angle look wasted and stupid and unhappy and there’s no chance left of them ever changing things for the better. It’s like the party’s over and it was a bummer of a party and there ain’t gonna be any more. No wonder so many old people act like animals that were mistreated in their youth. I should’ve been helping Grandma to mellow out in these last years of her dumb life and maybe help her see how it hadn’t been all that bad after all but instead I was only making it worse by reminding her of what a poor imitation of a regular family we were, her and my mom and me. It was like she was the seed and my mom was the plant and I was the rotten fruit and what I should’ve done if I couldn’t be the good grandson to her was just leave her alone, stay hidden and let the old lady go around telling people that she’s the grandmother of the poor boy who was burned beyond recognition in the Video Den fire last spring. Then they’d feel sorry for her and make a fuss and she’d be happy as a clam.

She had cable so I watched MTV for a while but she kept trying to butt in and get me talking to her by asking me if I’d seen my mom yet or Ken and I’d just nod or say yeah and go on watching TV, flicking up and down the channels when the ads came on and back to MTV for the music videos which didn’t seem any different from the last time I watched about a year ago before I got kicked out of my mom’s. Mostly music videos’re visual headtrips with a sound track and a good one is a quick low-grade contact high requiring no effort on the part of the user to get high which is cool and if you’re already bummed it’s actually enough.

Beck this singer with only one name like me and I-Man was standing in this orange and purple haze with the silhouettes of the leafless trees of death against a pink sky and singing about how nobody understood him either when Grandma finally lost it and she goes, Chappie, please at least have the decency to turn that down! And pay attention to me when I talk to you, young man! You’re not in your own home, you know, you’re in mine!

I flicked off the TV and stood up and said, Yeah, I’m not in my own home. You sure got that one right. I went over to the fridge and opened it and poked through like I was looking for something in particular but I wasn’t even curious, I just didn’t know what else to do at that moment. I think I was only trying not to cause any more damage than necessary but it probably didn’t look that way to Grandma.

You got anything good in here? I said but I wasn’t hungry, I was just filling the air between us with words.

Do you like egg salad? You used to love my egg salad, she said.

Yeah. I was wondering, I said and closed the refrigerator door pretty hard I guess because she jumped. I was wondering if you could loan me fifty bucks.

Me? Her eyes started darting from side to side like she expected me to rob her and was looking for an escape route. I… I don’t have any money, Chappie. I can’t… you’ll have to ask your mother, she said. Or Ken. Ask your stepfather. What do you want it for?

I don’t want it, Grandma. I need it. There’s a difference.

Oh.

Forget it, Grandma. Forget the fifty bucks. I was only kidding.

She was silent for a minute, we both were, then she said, Are you in some kind of trouble, Chappie? You can tell me, honey. You can trust me, you really can. She was like trying to think her way onto a TV show, one of her afternoon soaps because that’s where her lines were coming from now. I’m your grandmother, honey, and if you can’t trust me who can you trust?

I grinned into her face up close and that snapped her back and I said, Yumsters! Yumsters, Grandma! Me want yumsters! Can Grandma give Chappie some yumsters? ‘Cause if she can he’ll be one happy Chappie, all his problems over at last.

Stop that! You… you’re just like your father! She goes, You do the same things to me that he did!

What d’you mean, man! I’m nothin’ like him! That’s why my mom and him tossed me out, isn’t it? Get a clue, Grandma.

I don’t mean Ken. I know you’re nothing like him. Although if you really want to know, it might help if you were a little more like him. Except for the drinking maybe. She puffed herself up a little and after a few seconds remembered what she’d been saying. No, I mean your real father. Paul. He used to talk to me exactly the way you’re doing now. He used to make me feel afraid that he was going to get all crazy on me, although he never actually did. But still that man could make me very very nervous. He wasn’t normal.

My real father used to make you nervous? How’d he do that? Why?

Oh, you know, just by talking in a funny way, real fast and about things that didn’t make sense like you were doing just now, and he didn’t seem to care one way or the other. I used to think he was on drugs or something, the way he talked, and your mother told me after the divorce that she thought he took cocaine and was possibly an addict because of how he went through so much money. He made very good money.