MATHEUS 18+

Burn baby burn

5.

Tiana's grandmother was a spitfire, she was this crude old woman that said everything she wanted to say regardless of who might have been listening. Tiana's mother was moved into a luxurious retirement community in Florida and she hated every second she spent there and she made sure we knew.
"That heifer is raising chickens and at the same time every morning I gotta wake up and hear all that bullshit. You have got to tell that idiotic father of yours to get my ass out of here. Or I swear to the good lord I'll fry those things."

My grandmother on the other hand was an Egyptian woman who lived most of her life in the shadow of her  husband.
She was quiet and clean. despite the fact that I had known her since my birth, those were the only words I could truly use to describe her.

Spending time at their house had been hellish for Jay and I. Although Jay and I adapted to her cleanliness and her desire for a quiet house, We hated grandpa. we hated the way he barked orders at her in a language we couldn't understand but could tell all the same, that they were orders. we hated how his presence would overtake the house. how everything was done in the way he liked when he was around and above all we hated his huge boots that travelled dirt over Grandma's clean floor. We hated the way grandma almost couldn't breathe until she found something to wipe it off with.

Jay used to tell me he didn't think grandma could speak English.
He said that's why we only ever hear her talking to our mom because she could speak her language. He suggested we learn the language
But I knew better.

One time I'd snuck into her room looking for the delicious butterscotch candy she gave Jay and I when we did our chores as diligently as she did.

I found an old leather bond diary at the bottom of the vanity drawer, hidden amongst folded bras.

In the diary, my grandmother wrote in perfect English, every single thought she never voiced.
Every preference she had, every compulsion and all emotions she never dared expressed.

I snuck back into her room any chance I could to read from my grandmother.
I thought she was so clever, so funny and so pure.
I loved getting to know her and I tried getting her to open up.
Asking her questions about her past

I asked her who her best friend was, she answered our mother, I asked what season she likes best and she said all is fine and how she met grandpa. Instead of devolving into this elaborate story like my mother did when asked the same, she simply replied 'I've always known him.'

She didn't want to share anything with me or even Jay who joined me in the questioning.

I wondered why she kept herself hidden in a book, when we were so eager to know her as I watched her bend to her knees and scrub the floor wet with muck from my grandfather's boot.

Her whole body rack with sobs, I never heard and eyes water with tears I never saw fall.

And I wondered if this life, here with us visiting whenever our parents wanted to go on vacation was a prison for her, and the only escape she had was that Journal.
Were we like her husband who was acting oblivious to her suffering, creating chaos that she had no choice but to control.

I never thought about my grandma more than I did during my performance at a company showcase of the 'dying swan.' As I danced in the dark on pointe, with a somber cello and piano arrangement in my ears. I think of my grandmother in her cage. Her ever clean cage that my dancing amongst other career choices had gotten her.
I think of the parts of her she had to hide away and the pain she carried. The tears she held back.
I danced, letting myself express the pain that she kept so tightly hidden.
I drew from her, all her aches and presented it to the world.
I bowed as an announcer walks towards me with a bright bouquet in his hands, I scan the audience for my grandmother, I see my mother, my father and I even see jay who claps enthusiastically, my grandfather as well. But she wasn't there.