My Year with Grandma

Family Barbeque

"Maybe!" Gram called from the porch.

"Yes, ma'am?"

"You wanna get your dog out of the punch bowl?"  Bruno had his front paws on the picnic table lapping up the fruity drink from the bowl.

"Oh, dear.  Sorry Gram.  Bruno!"  The dog jumped from the table at the sound of his name.  "You lost privileges, boy.  You gotta go home now."  He whimpered as she led him away.

"I'll get the bowl cleaned up, Gramma." Offered Backus as he grabbed the empty bowl.

"How come he gets to call you Gramma and I have to call you Gram?" I whined when he disappeared into the house.

The woman looked down at me with her playful violet eyes and smiled.  "Have I graduated to Gramma in your eyes, yet?"

"Well, you are my grandmother, aren't you?"

"Doesn't matter what I am to you.  The question is, who am I to you?  Gramma? Or Gram, the warden?"

Oh, right.  I was sentenced here.  I gave her the only answer I could think of. "Both?"

"I see.  Well, in that case, for the next... what do you have left? Five, six months to your sentence?  For the remainder of your time required by law, call me Gram.  When and if you are ever here of your own free will, and you have willingly accepted your position in this family, then you may call me Gramma.  Fair?"

"I guess."  I rubbed my belly and pondered what she meant.  True, I wasn't happy about being here in the beginning, but I thought I had changed.  I like it here.  I really do.  I mean, I sleep with that stupid skunk almost nightly.  Jimmy and I don't fight much anymore since I found out he was my father.  We actually talk a lot these days rather civilly.  I have come to spend as much time with him as I can get.  I can't help him with some of his chores because the doctor says I can't and by doctor, I mean Jams.  I can still feed with him and handle chicken chores and light stuff like that but at least now, when I work with him, he talks to me about my dad, which of course, is really my bio-uncle.  That just sounds weird; like the family tree doesn't fork.

I stopped physically running into him and he stopped being a jerk.  Well, mostly.  He's pulled some devious pranks on me that I didn't appreciate much, like short sheeting my bed or making it with wet sheets.  But to be fair I pulled a few on him too like painting his saddle with peanut butter and putting rice in every one of his socks.  Just this morning he had put salt in the sugar bowl knowing I'm the only one who puts sugar in my coffee so naturally I had put vinegar in his water bottle.  This is how it's been since the big daddy reveal last month.  Fun.  I still don't know what to call him though.  'Jimmy' seems wrong in light of what he is to me, and 'Dad' seems too strange right now.  Mostly I just call him 'Hey' to avoid calling him the wrong thing.  I've also called him John Boy a couple of times to which he tells me he's not a Walton, whatever that means.

Gram's voice snapped me out of my thoughts. "You okay?"  She asked with shockingly green eyes.  "You look a little pale."

I followed her eye to my belly that I had been inadvertently been holding onto rather tightly.  "Oh, I'm fine.  A little uncomfortable, is all.  It's just hot."

"Why don't you go inside and rest up a bit.  We can finish up out here.  Party isn't until sixish anyway."

"Okay.  Thanks Gram."  I left her on the porch and went up to my room.  Tonight, was the annual family barbeque and anyone that considered themselves family was invited whether they were actually related or not.  Gram had said that roughly two hundred or more people come every year.  They already had a pig roasting on a spit and a mudhole made up for the kids' tug-of-war challenge.  They had also set up a makeshift dancefloor in the field next to Gram's house with a semi-trailer parked out there with their instruments on it.  I have never been to such a large party before.  Not even the school dances in Reno had as many people as she was expecting.