Educational Experience

Part III--Chapter 23

This is a long one. But fight your way through and you'll be rewarded with one of the creepiest conversations, ever. I have to admit, I kind of enjoyed going so far over to The Dark Side. I just wouldn't want to live there. I think you'll be glad to get back once you've been there, too. But it's fun to walk on the wild side from time to time. You ready for this?

That crazy song is pretty appropriate, too, by the way. Way over the top, but then...so is this chapter!

The Fun House was surprisingly calm, on those last few days before the hearing I'd been waiting for, and also sort of dreading, since the day the babies were born. The girls flew back and forth a lot. Sometimes just Aisha because she wanted to be there almost every day, as soon as she had a couple of hours open, but usually all three.

Big Man went back to his new job out of respect for our decision, more than anything else. I could tell he didn't feel comfortable about it, though. He kept calling Bonnie all the time, to see if I was obeying the doctor's orders and also because he was still upset that he wasn't able to predict the shooting or at least protect me from it. He was never going to forgive himself for that, no matter how many times I told him there was nothing to forgive.

They didn't need to worry, any of them. I had Bonnie and Kelli and two nurses hovering over me 24/7 and like one of the hospital nurses said one time, we could damned near build ourselves a hospital if we needed to. But since the babies were still with a foster family, Bonnie and Kelli were both looking for someone to fuss over. And I kind of enjoyed it, I'm not gonna lie. Having a grandmother hugging and kissing and feeding me all the time.

The only blood kin grandmother I knew anything about was this big, bug eyed monster of a woman who looked like Grace, if Grace had been blown up like one of those Christmas Parade balloons 'til her eyes almost popped out of her head. It was a thyroid thing, they told me, about those eyes. Didn't matter how they explained it, the women scared the piss out of me when I first saw her-lemme tell you her story, the part I know. It's a slice of my life worth examining before I wrap this thing up once and for all.

I thought her name was Mother when I was living at her house for a while one time, because that's all Grace ever called her. But later I found out her name was Dolly. Or Dolly Mae to be exact. Yeah, perfect name, right? And she ruled over a massive family of inbred idiots who lived in a bunch of rickety looking trailers on the same sad scrap of land.

It was the kind of place that gave Old Marana that "Dogpatch" image I told you about a long time ago. Looked like a scrap yard. All kinds of rusty car carcasses and old appliances all over the place. No lawn or river rock or anything. Just weeds growing between and even in the rusty things that the kids were always cutting themselves on when they were out there playing "ring around the Frigidaire" or something. It's a wonder we didn't all die of tetanus, honest to God.

I only remember Dolly doing two things. First, frying something in lard she'd been recycling since they bought the damned trailer that came with the stove she hadn't cleaned the crud off since they bought it. And second, sitting on the "porch," which was just a few long planks nailed together like a little platform just outside the front door, with a big bowl of popcorn or cheese curls or whatever, glaring out at the world like she was mad at it, and chewing like she had a piece of that world in her mouth and was taking out all that anger on it.

She'd birthed something like 13 kids, but of course a few of them died young. Real young. And more than one was "slow" like Grace, which is also no surprise. Their father, whose name sounded something like Hedrick-she'd only had one husband, which was rare for our family--had died of cancer, I think. I say "I think" because when you talked to them, it was like they didn't know for sure and didn't care because dying's what people did in their world. "I don't know! 'e died," they'd say, if you tried to get an explanation. Like you were stupid to even ask.