Feelings
A ghosting promise
By Emmanuelle
The young can sometimes lay it on thicker than thick. To them, old is ancient. If so, how ancient can ancient be? Antique! They squeal! How antique? Prehistoric! Primordial! They squeak out, laughter in between.
I ask the question idly while the niece and nieces on summer vacation are sprawled about in different languid poses in Grandma’s room. It is the biggest in the old family house, but that is not what attracts the kids like bees to the honeycomb. Grandma has the widest telly screen!
Unfortunately, the kids forget Grandma sprawls languidly along with the rest of them. Down goes her book, off goes her glasses. We could almost hear the sounds, as sizzle goes the fat idle about her veins, and crackle goes her outraged osteoporotic bones. Dear Grandma, always so queenly calm, now sputters angrily out how dare you bunch the old among the forest primeval of this earth?
Speedily, I shoo the kids out. I bar the door against another youthful invasion, no matter how closely blood-related. To calm her down, I hum the intro to the Sound of Music. That always did the trick before.
She is quickly calmed. Actually, she can calm down by herself. She is as strong as a female ox. Or nearly. She may look frail, but she walks around without a cane. She even goes on walks without a tag-along. And she is near ninety.
She plumps up throw pillows, she fluffs the frilly sheets. She huffs and puffs. She grunts and sighs. She is in possession of all sorts of noises for extreme situations. She outs them now in full display.
She prowls the length of the free space left about. She pats the furniture. She pats my head. I am reassured. I am still in her good will and testament, along with her children, her church, her dogs, and her cats.
She looks out the window, and takes in the hugeness of the two acacia trees in the yard. So old, so ancient. Shhhh. I cover my lips with my hands. Don’t blow on the embers of her recent wrath.
Her thoughts wandered. She talks of long ago. Three nights in a row. She was in her teens. She woke up just after midnight. There was no wind, yet the hammock tied between the trees was creaking to and fro, slowly at first, then faster, farther up.
She sat up straight on her bed, sheet wrapped around her. She turned her eyes to this same window. I tell you, this really is an old, ancient, antique house.
It was moonless. There were no cheap fluorescent lights yet to watch overnight. Who would be swinging in joyful abandon, fiercely so, in the darkness and in the middle of the night?
Then the creaky swinging stopped. Whoever or whatever it was shuffled along the cemented path. It paused at the foot of the stairs, perhaps contemplating its two levels, the stout main door in-between. It shuffled up the stairs. It did not stop to contemplate the stout main door. It went through the stout main door. The stout main door was two-inches thick. It shuffled up the second level of stairs.
By that time, she was cowering, shivering beneath the sheet. By this time, I am cowering, shivering beneath my shirt, head back inside though the neck.
Grandma sounded like she has turned to me. And that is how I am going to come back when I’m gone. To haunt those heretic grandchildren of mine. Them with their old, ancient, antique, prehistoric vocabularies. Primordial, primeval even.
Me, too, Grandma? I puffed out in quivers through the neck of my shirt.
Oh, no, little one. You are good, you hum good. You even look good without your head. By the way, who are you, are you a relative of mine?
My body popped out of there quick, head still inside my shirt.
This too is a true story from a reader who had waited five weeks too long to be heard. Mmm. Read pala.
(Readers may reach columnist at jingmil@yahoo.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/feelings/
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