It Never Made A Difference

Elisha sat on the porch eating vanilla ice cream with her little sisters. She liked to take her time and savor the taste of the smooth, silky cream sliding down her throat. But her favorite part was when the ice cream settled in the bottom of the cone. When she bit into it, that vanilla goodness shot all through her mouth, and the cone remained crunchy to the end. That was one of the many treats they had in the summertime. It was a nice, warm, sunny day, and they were sure to enjoy it. 

The girls lived in a nice house with their grandparents in a middle-class neighborhood. It had a huge swimming pool in the backyard. Elisha’s grandfather maintained the property, especially the pool. At the end of the summer, around September, he would drain the pool, and a small puddle would always remain at the bottom. Around the end of spring, he would prepare the pool for the summer. 

The whole process was very time-consuming. It would take him about two to three weeks, maybe four, to complete it, but he took his time and did the job alone every year. The first thing he would do was clean it very well. Then, he would sand down and smooth the rough areas. After that, he would begin the painting process, which took up a lot of his time because he gave it at least three good coats before he thought it was to his standard. After the paint dried, he would put the water hose in the pool and begin to fill it with water. She remembered it took a few days to fill the pool because she would go and check every so often. 

The last process was getting the pool ready for swimming by adding chlorine. After a few hours, they were ready to swim. Her grandmother prepared them a poolside lunch while they put on their swimwear. By the time they got to the backyard, their grandfather was already in the pool. He was a good swimmer and an even better grandfather. 

He cherished his granddaughters, but he was rough with them; he treated them like boys most of the time. Pulling their long ponytails was not an option because he did that all the time. He would pinch them, wrestle with them, and even stick out his foot and trip them as they walked by. He would chase them up and down the street while they ran screaming and hollering like he was killing them. It didn’t take the neighbors long to see that he wasn’t hurting them; he was just playing with them. As much as he tussled around with them, he also taught them the basics of life.

Saturday mornings were spent cleaning and maintaining the yard. The girls cleaned the inside of the house with their grandmother. Elisha was the oldest, so she was taught to clean the china cabinet with care. Once outside, they were taught how to properly use shears to trim the bushes. He showed them how to mow the lawn with a manual lawn mower, which was the hardest thing to do. You had to really put some muscle into it. They raked the lawn to remove any loose grass and filled up the trash bags. Once the house was done and the yard was neat, they could start their day. 

A typical day for Elisha involved interacting with her sisters and running errands for her grandmother with her grandfather. He was her personal chaperone, taking her wherever she needed to go. I guess he was at that age where he didn’t have anything else to do, and it felt good to get away from the house so he wouldn’t have to listen to his wife all day. If the grandmother needed something from the store, he would take one of the girls to get it for her. 

He enjoyed taking the girls where they needed to go. He could also relax and smoke his cigarettes in peace without his wife nagging him about it. Although he wasn’t much of a conversationalist, he was a good listener and gave great advice. When he did speak, you listened and paid attention to what he said. 

That also applied to Sunday Bible School. Everyone listened as he taught the stories of the Bible, bringing to life the characters of the Word themselves. Elisha and her sisters sat in the front pew and were expected to get more from the sermons than anyone else. But Elisha was stubborn and rebellious and didn’t always follow the rules. Therefore, they were never quizzed about what they learned in church. If they showed an interest in the Bible, their grandparents would happily engage themselves, especially their grandmother, who was a minister as well. She naturally made reference to the bible whenever she saw the opportunity, especially when she was contemplating whooping your azz.

“Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; But the rod of correction shall drive it far from him” Proverbs 22:15. In their grandmother’s terms, that meant if you couldn’t straighten yourself out, she would help you. And that meant that she would beat your living azz if you didn’t straighten the fuck out. As you can see, Elisha’s grandparents were not strangers to discipline in the home, but her grandfather wasn’t as strict as the grandmother. It took a lot for him to whoop their butts, but when he did, it was unforgettable because it was hard to walk afterward. Elisha received a whooping from him only once in her lifetime, and the next day, he taught her how to drive.

She will never forget that day. Her grandmother needed some items from the supermarket, so her grandfather took her to the store. When they were ready to leave, he pulled around the backside of the store, where the lot was empty and parked. She remembered thinking, “I know he’s not going to let me drive,” as she watched him walk around to her side of the car. Her heart jumped as he opened the car door and asked her to get out. Her knees were shaky as she walked around to the driver’s side of the car. She got in and adjusted her mirrors and seat without him having to tell her. After all, she was only about twelve years old and had been dreaming of this moment in her life. 

She practiced driving in her head over and over again so she knew she could do it. She drove around the parking lot a few times and parked correctly in certain parking spaces. After that, he took over and drove them home. Elisha was elated. She thought that if she stopped smiling, her face might break. That wasn’t the first or the last time he performed an act of kindness. He did that naturally and very often. 

Elisha’s grandmother went out of town once a year for two weeks and while she was gone, she and her sister’s stayed with their father and his mean-azz wife. Her father was physically abusive, and his wife was mentally and verbally abusive. He would beat Elisha terribly for the lies his wife told about her. Whenever he left the house, his wife would torment Elisha. She would say some of the stupidest things to her. 

One day, when Elisha was about 15 years old, her father’s wife caught her on a bad day. She picked on her so much that Elisha started staying in the room with hopes that she wouldn’t bother on her, but it didn’t matter, she still did it anyway. That day, she came to the door and said, “It doesn’t matter if you stay in the house or not, I’m still going to tell him whatever I want, and he will still beat your azz. That’s why I can’t stand your fat, ugly azz.”

That was it! Elisha was finally fed the fuck up! “And that’s why I can’t stand your fat, ugly azz either!” And with that, her father’s wife slapped her so hard that she knocked her pretty glasses off. Elisha thought of how badly this woman treated her for no apparent reason, the times she said the ugliest things to her down through the years. She picked up her travel case, wrapped the straps around her hand, which she balled into a fist, and knocked the holy hell out of her. She stumbled back, and Elisha pushed her out of the way and headed to the back door. She walked for about a mile before she stopped at a phone booth and called her friend, who lived right down the street from her grandparents. She laughed at Elisha when she first jumped in the bed of the truck they were in, but it was a sympathetic laugh, a laugh that said, “I understand what you’re going through,” a defense mechanism. 

The whole ride home, she thought about that evening's festivities. She wasn’t exactly happy that she whooped her father’s wife’s azz; she was more relieved that she didn’t have to ever deal with her again in life because she never went back over to her father’s house after that. The next day, her grandfather took her to Norm’s Cafe for lunch because he knew how her father’s wife treated her, so he was glad she finally whooped her azz. 

When her grandmother returned home from her trip a few days later, she told her to look in the newspaper for a car because her grandfather was going to buy her one. He ended up taking her to the corner to the car dealer and buying her a Mazda RX7 that backfired every time she turned it off. But she was grateful for her grandfather because he was the only one who really believed her about how cruel her father’s wife was to her and he disliked her for that and didn’t think too much of her. 

One day, Elisha’s grandmother called her and her sisters into the living room to talk to them. They had just gotten out of school. Elisha was about twelve or thirteen years old. Their grandmother said, “I’ve got to tell y’all something. Now you know your grandfather has always been a good father to y’all and he will always be your grandfather, but he’s not your real grandfather, he’s your step-grandfather.” She might as well have told them that he had died. They screamed and hollered, “No! He’s our Daddy, don’t say that!” Their grandmother sat back and laughed a little, thinking that they were so silly. She calmed them down and told them, “Yes, that is your Daddy, and he always will be, so that doesn’t change a thing, ever!” But Elisha wondered about that because her father’s wife was her stepmother, and she was very mean to Elisha. Did that mean he would be mean to them, too? 

Over the years, their grandfather proved to be the best grandfather and Daddy three girls could have ever had. He did everything a father would do and some. As Elisha got older, she realized just how special her grandfather was because her grandmother told her a story that she would cherish for the rest of her life. 

The grandmother met her beau at a church tent where she was preaching one weekend. For the three nights she was there, he sat and watched her as she preached the gospel. She said she was very intriguing to him. He took her to dinner a couple of times, and after that, she told him that he would have to change his lifestyle if he wanted to be with her.

Although he was a gospel quartet singer, he owned a couple of speakeasy’s (In the 50s’, you could go to these places in the basement and gamble and drink all night, which wasn’t spoken about much, hence the name). He went back to Texas, sold his clubs, and moved to California, where they got married. He bought her a big house with hard wooden floors and a swimming pool in a tropical setting and let her decorate and furnish it just the way she wanted. She and her husband enjoyed their space for a few years until Elisha’s mother died from an overdose. Elisha had just turned three, her middle sister was two, and her baby sister was just six weeks old.

The grandmother took them in with promises from her son that he would come back and get his kids after he got settled. That day never came. He got with the pregnant woman he was messing with when he was with his wife, and they started their own family. Elisha knew he wasn’t coming back because she heard her grandfather tell her grandmother to just tell them that he wasn’t coming back, to tell them that they were already at home and that they were their mother and father from then on. Elisha remembered shedding tears about her father. After all, she was a Daddy’s girl, and she loved her father dearly, but that was the first time he broke her heart. The only man she trusted was her grandfather.

You had to be awfully special to do what he did. Most men wouldn’t have changed their lifestyle for three hollering-azz babies, but he did, and he never complained. He had carpet laid over his beautiful wood floors, had electric drapes installed in the living room and the den, and child-proofed the whole house. He worked three jobs just to support them. And he never complained, and it never made a difference.