Grandma's House

When my alarm went off, the first thing I did was go to the bathroom to wash my face with a facewash that advertises clear skin in 10 days. The ten days had come and gone for me, but my acne had still stood present on my cheeks. As I looked for a paper towel to dry my face, a bright reflection that sparkled in the hot July sun outside the bathroom’s window caught my attention. The big black van stood parked on the curb parallel to our house. The bumper stickers on the back with colorful designs try to convince the purchasers of the stickers and other drivers that the car’s driver was an “adventurer” and a lover of road trips. I remember when Dad bought the car, he was babbling like a child that finally learned how to speak about all the different types of soil the car’s tires would go over. “The Fertile plains of Yoestimite and the arid sand of the Mojave desert will mix in the indents of the wheel,” dad said as I inhaled a sweet leathery smell the first time I sat in the car. My face had already dried when Mom yelled at me to start packing from the kitchen. Indifferent to the numerous spontaneous trips that had occurred throughout the summer, I didn’t care where we were going, but what the location was so I could pack accordingly. Just before I was going to call back to her, I heard the quick steps of Brother running back to his room which was opposite mine. “Where are we going?” I said. “Grandma’s house” was the reply I received. Grandma’s house was a mere two hours away from the place where I had spent my childhood. She lived in a handmade historical adobe house with luxuries features like a giant fireplace that the adults would sit around talking and drinking every major holiday. One New Year’s Eve party, when I just turned the age when a child’s mind could start to comprehend subtle but meaningful actions, I remembered when Mom had drunkenly exclaimed that she wanted the house. The house had been passed down to the favorite family members for centuries ever since my great grandfather built it to serve as his artistic retreat after he had sold a majority of his portfolio to a wealthy New York art patron. Grandma, who had always had a poised and dignified manner, favored Auntie over Mom, for she felt like Auntie was less sporadic than Mom. 

I gathered all the belongings that I thought I would need for the stay there. The high altitude of the mountain that Grandma’s pueblo sits on always gives me headaches, which are easily alleviated with the great pill of ibuprofen. I looked in the little gold-colored box that usually holds the medication, and I was surprised that when I grabbed the bottle, the intense rattle sound of the pills colliding with the plastic had been reduced to a mere click click like the sound of a sick rattlesnake. Once I had finished packing, I lugged my suitcase, three sizes bigger than the big black van. Brother who saw me struggling joked that I would have a much harder time getting the suitcase up to the three flights of stairs in Grandma’s house to the guest room, where the family usually occupied our visits. Then, just before boarded the car, the great big suitcase slipped out of my hands and fell in the sandy driveway next to the van’s wheels and let off a dust cloud that clouded my vision. As I reached down to the floor to grab the suitcase, I noticed in the corner of my eye that a few grains of red sand had infiltrated the usual different shades of grey and brown dirt in the grooves of the car’s tires. The car ride over to the house was unpleasant. The usual air of excitement and the chatter about all the things we would update Grandma was replaced with anxiety and silence. Dad, who would always stop at every roadside attraction, from a haunted house to giant statues of various animals, didn’t even move his gaze from the windshield. Mom, usually the one to start singing the classic road-trip songs and games, kept her lips tight shut. I knew that we were nearing the house once the sandy soil went from brown to red, and the Yuccas were replaced with Mulberry. 

When the car finally entered the long driveway in which its ending would lead to the double-doored entrance of grandma’s house, Mom and Dad made me wait in the car while they discussed something in icicle-cold words outside. Even though the walls of the van were thick, the curious child I was found my ear hoping that a slice of the cake of conversation would make it through to my hungry ear. “Why did we even bring them here?” Mom said with the maternal care of a worried mother. “Because we are visiting your mom, and why would we visit the kid’s grandmother without them,” Dad said with the annoyance of a roped-in accomplice. Even though I could not see their faces, I knew that mom must have given Dad an icy glance. The van’s door opened, Mom and Dad called to have me and Brother join them in walking to the front door. What was normally the indifferent and slightly carefree walk of Mom and Dad turned into something as disgustedly confident as an English monarchic walking down to the dungeons to see the remains of their imprisoned. Dad rang the doorbell as he always did but restored to knocking as the door went unanswered after three cycles of the melioidosis tune. After the door went unanswered, Brother and I started to get as worried as young children can get, for Grandma barely left the house, even less often in the heat. The only time that Grandma used her 1987 BMW was to and from doctors’ appointments in which she was getting treated for hemophilia. Unfazed, Mom and Dad used the spare key to open the door with an ease that could only have been caused by practice. I went running in, anxious to see whether Grandma was alright. Up the three flights of stairs, I ran, two at a time. Finally, I reached the end of the hallway on the third floor and entered the largest room of the whole house. I dropped my suitcase again, not with the clumsiness as before, but with a mix of shock, fear, and grief.