Memaw's delusion

One of my most terrifying tasks as a boy was “picking off a switch” for my grandmother. This is the situation in which a rambunctious and nerve-grinding eight-year-old boy, as was I, pushes his caretaker, his “memaw,” past her emotional limits to a point at which she demands to inflict corporal damage upon the child’s backside. I recall scanning both the large and small trees lining the yard, looking for perhaps the flimsiest and least harmful branch that I could pull from the trunk. Notably, memaw would watch my efforts and warn me that if I were to pick a tiny one, she’d come out and pick one herself. I learned to make a dutiful production of the matter, but nothing diluted her temper as much as goofball humor. Eventually, I’d get her riled just so I could make a fool of myself out by the trees. Looking back, I’m convinced that she played along. Once, feigning exasperation, she stomped out and picked up my wooden baseball bat from the grass and announced, “C’mere! I found the right kind of switch!” As she watched the beige color in my shocked face rapidly turned pale, she burst out laughing. I was mad at first, but then I laughed with her.

Funny how crying and laughing look the same. Only the sound lets you know.

Once in a while, my mom would remind me that memaw didn’t always live alone. She used to be married. My mom was single, so I never really put much mind to the situation. I was an only child, so being alone was something I had assumed was universal. So, part of “the deal,” as she put it, was that memaw and I could keep each other company once in a while. I asked, “but what about you, mom? If I'm at memaws then you'll be alone.” Mom answered, “Yes. Sometimes, I need MY alone time.” It neither saddened nor pleased me.

Somewhere around age 13, I found that I could no longer make my memaw laugh, but neither did she didn't send me out for switches any more. There was one visit in particular that had ended a six-month-long period of not visiting. School had gotten pretty busy for me by then. When I arrived at memaw's house, I didn’t notice anything different at first. However, after a few hours, I realized that something was indeed strange about memaw's behavior. Over the next couple of days, she would sometimes seem not to notice me, even if I was sitting in the floor right in front of her. She hadn’t really been a TV watcher before, but suddenly she would leave it on all day long. Occasionally, I’d hear her in another room talking to someone. But when I went to see who it was, she was by herself. She’d be surprised to see me, “Tony! When did you get here?”

I brought it up with my mom later, and she was surprised. She decided to spend a day with memaw herself, after which, she took her to the doctor as I stayed behind at memaw’s house. Upon their return, mom took me aside to explain to me that memaw was "getting too old to keep her mind all in one place." She said that the doctor wanted to put memaw in a “home.” I said, “Isn’t this her home?” I guess mom was already a little upset, because she accused me of being a smartass.

When school was out, mom told me that I needed to stay with memaw full time until she could figure out what to do, because memaw didn’t have the right insurance for a nursing home, and we were broke. We were nearly always broke, and I never knew life any other way. However, as memaw left the TV on all day, I couldn't help but absorb many of the soap opera story lines, which explicated overly dramatic tales of rich people and their implausible spate of problems. I recall feeling grateful for having no money, because I didn’t need to deal with the ass-pain that those soap opera characters faced on a daily basis, with lawyers, murderers, and cheaters.

Apparently, memaw had randomly paid attention when a made-for-TV documentary conflated the dangers being presented by futuristic technology and modernization. This was the ‘80s, so there were legitimate reasons to be worried about the future. However, memaw became overwrought with paranoia. One morning, she told me that people in a van had been parking out by the street late at night, and she was convinced that they were watching her with binoculars. She said that "one of her shows" had warned of malicious brain waves being projected by the CIA. One day, I walked into her bedroom and noticed that her floor lamp had been disassembled. Somehow, she had taken it apart by hand overnight, including removing the 120-volt wire from the bottom of the light socket while the cord was still plugged into the wall! Thankfully, she hadn’t been electrocuted. Notably, she had failed to find the bugging device that she was convinced was hidden somewhere in her room.

Later, she awoke me from my sleeping spot on the living-room couch in a panic. “Did you hide my medicine?” I hadn’t, but I had a difficult time convincing her of my innocence. Later, the topic of “robots” caught me completely off guard.

During a visit home, I explained to my mom that memaw believed that robots were sneaking into her house at night to steal her medications. Apparently, "one of her shows" had featured an array of sinister robots that targeted the elderly for wildly specific types of bizarre, unreasonable crimes. I mentioned that I had seen memaw hiding pill bottles in strange places because of this, such as under her mattress and under the dirt of a flowerpot. This was done so that the robots would not find them. Mom was suitably alarmed, but she told me that memaw was probably simply forgetting where she hid the medicines. Hence, she was reinforcing her own delusion. I replied, “you mean like how squirrels forget where they hide their nuts.” By then, I had already gotten used to mom looking at with disdain and impatience.

Eventually, mom was able to find an opening at a care center in a town just a few miles away. She told me I had one week to help memaw get packed. During that week, I sadly had to remind memaw three or four times of why I was packing her stuff into suitcases and bags. She would then come behind me and unpack. I reminded her of how she needed to go a care center. She put her hands on her hips and said with incredulity at my daftness, "the robots live in those places, Tony."

The night before the folks from the care center came by to collect memaw in their hospital van, I was sleeping on the couch for what I imagined would be the last time. I didn’t do much sleeping, thinking about the weirdness and sadness of the situation. When I did fall asleep, I’d awaken at the slightest noise. Strangely, memaw seemed to sleep very well that night. I recalled that we had found several bottles of drugs that week, including some sleeping pills. I thought about taking one. But nope, I never wanted to be rightfully accused of stealing pills.

Around dawn, I awoke to a plasticky clunking sound coming from the hall bathroom. I jumped up, groggily realizing that soft daylight was filtering in. Everything in the living room took on pastel shades of grey, a scene that I'll never forget. As I stumbled around the corner toward the bathroom, I noticed that the soft light creeping under the door held glimmering tones of light red and pink. The only color I could perceive. I clearly sensed movement. I think that if I had been more lucid, I would not have pulled the door open. But I did. There, sitting on the edge of the sink was a shiny black and gray spider-looking mechanical contraption about the size of a shoe. It was elongated like one, and it had a miniaturized camera pointing down into the sink examining an empty pill bottle was held by its lower flanges. The red and pink glimmering light was emitting from that camera. In my hazy pre-shocked state, I only felt curiosity and confusion. However, I somehow noticed very keenly that the robot’s “hands” looked remarkably flexible. The looked interestingly like shortened pipe cleaners, even with the short bristles. However, the bristles moved with a dexterity that makes me think of a millipede in hindsight. There must have been a dozen of the little pipe-cleaner fingers per appendage. Oddly, I can't remember how many appendages there were. After about one second in real time, the spider-robot thing turned its camera to look at me. As the scanner lights glared against the back of my retinas, I was quite immediately very, very awake... and terrified. With a sudden head-and-gut-filled urgency, I found that my voice didn’t work. Neither did my feet. The spider robot whirred and clicked along the edge of the porcelain sink toward me, and another emerged from inside the medicine cabinet and leaped onto the sink beside its companion.

That “clunk” sound again.

From speakers hidden somewhere inside the mechanical creatures, a monotone computer voice asked, “WHERE ARE THE MEDICATIONS?” The other robot followed with “WE NEED YOUR PILLS," as it crawled to the edge of the sink and prepared to jump in my direction.

I'm not sure how I recovered the ability to move, but I slammed the door, which awakened my memaw. I heard scurrying noises on the other side of the bathroom door as I launched myself into my memaw’s bedroom, yelling “We've gotta get outta here memaw! There's spider robots in the bathroom! I saw the robots!” I must have run my mouth frantically for about two minutes, because memaw just sat on the edge of the bed staring at me as if she were trying to figure out who I was. However, she was as clear headed as ever, and she calmed me down. I forget what she said, but it sounded very skeptical.

She walked with me out to the hallway and opened the bathroom door, and of course, nothing was there. The medicine cabinet was shut, and nothing was in the sink. She walked over and opened the cabinet. It was empty.

She shook her head and said, “I think you don’t have your mind all in one place." I expected her to send me out for a switch. But she just walked into the living room and turned on the TV.