I have a clear memory of my Grandmother Vinnie sitting at the dressing table in our guest bedroom, brushing her exceptionally long gray hair. It was fascinating to watch this process, and I did it almost every day when she visited. After the brushing, she would go through the process of winding it up into a bun that set demurely on the top of her head. I was always astounded that hair that came all the way down to her waist could be tucked up into such a small package.
I no longer have a clear memory of how our game got started. It is simply there full grown in my mind. I would know it was coming, because instead of winding her hair up, she would rat it into a startling sight. Her hair became a huge bush that had suddenly been stuck into a light socket and the switch thrown. She would rise from her dressing table and slowly creep about with both hands out as if she were flying in slow motion. She would stoop over and look up from under her bush of hair.
She would make this low noise, “Oooooooooooh” but it was not a long ‘o,’ it was more of a ‘u’ sound, like “youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.” Then she would start to move slowly around as if she was coming to get me. I would shriek and flee, only to sneak back shortly, peering around a door frame or down the hall, waiting to see if she was going to find me. Having affirmed the chase was afoot, I would giggle, scream, and run again. All of this would go on until I was exhausted. She would call the game to a halt, return to her dressing stool and transform from the Old Witch back in to my Grandmother.
One morning, the game had worked us around into the kitchen. I grabbed a broom by the bristles and poked playfully at the Old Witch. I wasn’t trying to hurt her at all. I knew we were playing. But then, in the process of making a poke, I slipped, lurched forward, and (happily, I suppose) missed my Grandmother.
KA-THUNK!
This brought us both up short. The broom handle had popped a right clean hole in the drywall. My grandmother and I stared at it for a moment.
“Well,” Grandmother said quietly, almost under her breath. She calculated. She looked at me. “You go get on with cleaning up your room and leave this to me.”
I slunk to my bedroom on trembling knees. I knew my Father was not going to see the hole in the wall as an event. My recent activity around the homestead had produced a dark view regarding my cavorting around in him. He was going to see the hole in the wall as a continuation of a spree of marginal juvenile delinquency that needed to be ended. I knew the end of days were descending on me. Grandmother cleaned up the crime scene and went about the activities of her day, but I stayed in my room, wrote my will, and reflected on my short life.
My Mother got home from work around five o’clock and my Father just moments afterwards.
Sure enough, the hole in the wall drew him like a tractor beam. He did not take time to read the paper, smoke a cigarette, or drink a cup of coffee. He came to my room and said, “The bathroom. Now.” I marched to the execution chamber mechanically, feeling like seven years of age was too young to receive the death penalty.
When we turned into the bathroom, we pulled up short. Grandmother was right there in the little room, standing quietly. We were both surprised and a little embarrassed. We were afraid we had caught her in the middle of something bathroom-ish.
“Come on in,” she said pleasantly. “I was just waiting on you two.”
My Father seemed confused. He stumbled over his words, trying to explain. I remember the big words, like “culprit,” “deserve” and “punishment.” He stepped aside and seemed to think she would walk on out so he could close the door and throttle the suds out of me.
She stood utterly still.
She looked at my Father and said, as best I can recall, “Bill, Little Bit poked that hole in the wall in the kitchen and surely some kind of response is due. But that means I need to stay, because whatever punishment is determined needs to be administered to me as well. I was playing with him. We created that hole in the wall together.”
My father was flummoxed, hooked on the horns of dilemma. He would not spank Grandmother Vinnie. That wasn’t even close to being on the table. But the notion of letting me off the hook wasn’t something he could embrace. I watched intently. I could feel him thinking.
When he finally looked at her again, she offered, “Perhaps if we fixed the wall and took efforts to make sure this doesn’t happen again?”
“Oh, I could fix the wall without any trouble at all,” Dad said with a touch of pride in his voice.
“I know you could,” she said, and patted his arm. “But that’s not the point. We did the damage,” she said with a nod in my direction, “and we need to fix it.”
He relented. And that quickly, she moved us past the issue of whether or how some kind of corporal punishment was going to take place. The angels sang! I almost did a jig. Of course, I was giving no thought to how tough it would be to fix that wall. I was too busy watching the execution chamber fading away.
Carlos Declan Pharis 