A Steady State Model
by Mary Grimm
Our grandmother was the first dead person we knew, although we hadn’t known her very well. She was old, and she often spoke in another language. The oldest cousin claimed that she understood her when she spoke in Slovak, but the rest of us didn’t believe her, except for her sister because they always stuck together.
The two of them had spent time at their grandmother’s house during her long illness. Their mother went over to help out, and the oldest cousin and her sister had to go there for lunch instead of home for a long while. They ate their sandwiches on TV trays in front of the lunchtime shows – Captain Penny, Pooch Parade, Who’s the Funny Man? – while their grandmother lay on a bed in the dining room with her legs wrapped in bandages.
After the funeral, where we all had to kneel by the coffin and look at our dead grandmother’s face, pale as the white crayon, there was a party at the house with our uncles drinking shots in the kitchen. No one noticed if we went into the garage, which used to be forbidden. The boy cousin claimed he saw a rat, which made the youngest cousin scream. We crouched behind the rose arbour with the red rose petals raining down on us. This was the beginning of it all, the curly-haired cousin realised, the time when we started to live our own lives, but she didn’t say it out loud for fear we’d all make fun of her.
WENSUM 