Grandma smiled and shook Fanny’s hand. “You must be Sue’s sister, huh?” Grandma said. “My Brian told me about you.”
“Yeah,” Fanny frowned. “That’s what they tell me, but I don’t know if she is really my sister.”
Grandma seemed confused. “You don’t know your own sister?”
Fanny just smiled, and I put my arm around her, thanking her for being nice to Grandma.
That night, I got Grandma ready for bed. It had been decided that I would stay in the trailer with her at night and take care of her since there was no room for her to stay in the small house. Brian was planning on getting Grandma to sign her savings and everything she owned over to him, so at least for the moment she was treated with respect and given what few comforts were available on the mountain.
After I dressed Grandma in her nightgown, Brian sat on the bed to talk to her. I could not believe it—he seemed so normal and charming. I had never seen him like this. Grandma laughed and called him her baby boy as she stroked his cheek. I could have been happy with this scene, had I not known it was all a charade to get Grandma to sign everything over to Brian.
That night, I got up several times to help Grandma go on the pot next to her bed. I was happy to do so and I pretended that I was working in a hospital—that I was the nurse and she was my patient. When you are in a hopeless situation, you have to find ways to mentally cope. I still had to get up at 5:00 a.m., and I jumped when the alarm went off. I looked at Grandma, who was sound asleep, and I pulled on my dark blue dress and black apron, then twisted my long brownish-red hair into a bun and slid on my white head covering. All of this took less than two minutes, and then I was off and running. I met Samantha in the house where she was standing in front of the wood-burning stove with Fanny.
“How was it?” Samantha whispered as I put an arm around Fanny’s shoulders.
“It was okay,” I mumbled as I tried to stifle a yawn. “I had to get up four times to help her on the pot, which is not easy when you are half-asleep and she is too.” I yawned again and rubbed my eyes, trying to wake up.
I did my chores outside and kept checking in on Grandma who was sleeping soundly. At eight o’clock, Brian called me into the trailer to dress her. I was not used to any clothes other than the things we wore, so when I opened the closet at the back of the trailer I looked with interest at the clothes Brian would call “worldly.” There were bright pant suits with elastic waists, colorful dresses, and pretty shoes. After rummaging about for a few minutes, I helped Grandma into a flowered T-shirt and pink pants that she had picked from what I held up. Dressing her was difficult because her left side was stiff from the stroke and the broken hip. After she was dressed, Grandma had me help her with her makeup. I could not remember ever seeing someone put makeup on before, and I watched her frail, shaking hands as she applied her lipstick.
“Do you want to borrow anything, dear?” she asked me.
I shook my head.
She smiled at me. “You should put some mascara on those lashes; it would make your bright, green eyes really stand out.”
Brian could be listening at the window, so I just smiled and closed the makeup kit. When I opened the door to call for Samantha’s help, I was not surprised to see him sitting in a folding chair under the window with a Bible in hand. He looked at me with steely eyes from under his black Amish hat, and I stared back at him with raised eyebrows.
A few days after Grandma’s arrival, construction started on the new addition to our house. To my horror, Mamma announced that she and Brian were going to try to get foster children when construction was done. Samantha and I were dumbfounded at the news, and prayed that would never happen.
Brian then created a new rule that the inside girl would care for Grandma and the outside girl would care for Fanny.
During this time, Brian and Mamma were constantly taking Grandma to lawyers and to the bank so she could sign over her late husband’s post office check, her bank account and the trailer. Brian was so sweet to her it made me sick. He’d had a lifetime of practice manipulating people. He even convinced his mother to give him power of attorney and told her he would manage things for her. She agreed with little protest, only too happy to have her baby boy doting over her. Grandma was bored much of the time, and spent a lot of time sleeping in her wheelchair. The stroke had left her the ability to speak, but she frequently struggled for words and became tired easily.
When the house was done, it was nice. The living room and two downstairs bedrooms had been painted and sheet rocked. The kitchen and upstairs were just walls with insulation stapled in them, but the fact that there was insulation at all was a comforting thought. The October wind was already howling and the temperature was dipping below thirty degrees; Grandma was constantly cold. Brian had installed a large barrel heater in the corner of the living room, and this is where we parked Grandma’s wheelchair every morning.
During this time, Samantha and I noticed that Grandma was starting to sleep all the time instead of taking frequent naps and she only woke up when we shook her. Every day we checked her blood pressure, and it was always higher than it was supposed to be.
It was an exciting day when Aunty Laura arrived. It seemed like we had not seen her in a lifetime, but she looked the same. Although she was now in her late fifties, she still had soft, curly blonde hair, porcelain skin and kind, sparkling, blue eyes that seemed brighter when paired with her usual red lipstick. She was always dressed sharply, even for an excursion to our farm which was in the middle of nowhere.
Her black pencil skirt and button-up pink blouse seemed out of place to us, but that was Aunty Laura. Her husband, although quiet, always smiled from ear to ear. Although Uncle Bill lived in the city, he fancied himself an outdoorsman and had dressed in camouflage pants and a bright orange hunting sweater.
“They look funny together,” I laughed.
Samantha just shook her head and rolled her eyes in amusement.
As Aunty Laura got out of the car, she removed her sunglasses and walked toward us with a smile, but there was a bit of disapproval in her eyes.
“Hey, Brian,” she said, giving her little brother a hug. “How in the h*** did you get Mom to agree to live up here in the middle of nowhere?”
Brian was taken aback and said defensively that Grandma had asked to live with us. Aunty Laura did not seem to buy his story, but she looked over at me and Samantha and smiled.
“Wow, you girls are all grown up,” she said, hugging us. She looked at me and asked my age.
“I will be sixteen next month,” I said with little enthusiasm.
She raised her eyebrows and looked at me in my long, dark dress, cape, apron and covering.
“So, did you finish school already?” she asked with raised eyebrows.
Mamma popped over and put an arm around my shoulders. “Our Misty is really smart,” she said. “She just finished the tenth grade but has decided to stop now.”
“Well, she still has those giant, green eyes. I am sure some boys are going to come knocking your door down any day. Better have your shotgun ready, Brian.” She laughed and winked at her younger brother.
I smiled as I was supposed to, thinking how much I wished it were true.
Aunty Laura hugged Samantha exclaiming how she, who had always been short and chubby as a little girl, was now several inches taller than I was. When she asked Samantha what grade she was in, Mamma answered that she was in the eighth grade. It was obvious that Mamma and Aunty Laura still had no intentions to like each other even a little bit.
In stark contrast to Aunty Laura’s trim figure and confident manner, Mamma, who was nearing two hundred and seventy-five pounds, had a defensive-looking face and a brow that was constantly furrowed and angry. Her green eyes were penetrating and miserable, and her blackish-brown hair was always combed severely back away from her face. I had always wondered