Short Stories Collection -- SP Weber

Gothic Grandma

Title: Gothic Grandma
Genre: Slice of Life Comedy
Warnings: none

Description: Iisan has to pick up his grandma from the airport. He hasn't seen her in years and is afraid of the judgment he'll face with her when she finds out he's become a goth.

Note: This is very short and sweet in length, so it's a quick read!

Iisan was dreading his grandmother's visit. His grandmother lived in Japan, just as most of his family did. With his grandfather, Nishimura, having just passed, his grandma Yokoyamo of seventy-three years was moving to America to live with the Takanashis--aka, Iisan and his schizophrenic mother. So really, this wasn't just a visit. This was an evaluation of Iisan's home, and his grandma Yokoyamo was practically going to grade them like a poorly written essay on how suitable their home was for her to live in. She didn't even ask to move in, she simply decided it would just happen with no complaints. After all, this was his mother's mother, so who was Iisan to argue?

With his mother unsuitable to drive, it was Iisan who had to pick up his grandma from the airport. And unfortunately, that was a whopping four hour drive all the way out to Denver. Iisan dreaded the drive home before he even reached the airport. All he could think about was his grandma Yokoyamo, and how the last time he'd seen her was when he was only eleven years old, back when he lived in Japan. So much had changed about him between now and then. And his grandma? He could already hear her nitpicking every attribute of his gothic appearance.

Once he'd reached the Denver airport, he waited for his grandmother to message him to come to the terminal. When she did, Every Word In Her Text She'd Sent Was Capitalized Like This, which was odd because... she was using a japanese keyboard. (None of the alphabets--hiragana, katakana and kanji--even had capital letters, so his grandmother had truly broken the whole writing system somehow.) Iisan pulled up to the terminal, his eyes scanning the area for his grandmother. He wasn't even sure what she looked like anymore, his memory of her was so obscure. And certainly, she wouldn't recognize him. I mean, he was wearing eyeshadow! She would think that was preposterous!

He saw an old woman up ahead in terminal 3A. Of course it was 3A, she had to pick the most complicated one to get to. But that couldn't be his grandma. Surely, he had missed her. Because this old woman was surely a peculiar sight. Dressed in all black like she was attending a funeral, and fishnets lacing her arms and connecting to her thick black fingerless gloves, this old woman was... gothic? She had black eyeshadow and lipstick, a little black hat tied to the side of her head, and long--and I mean LONG--dark black eyelashes which could blow someone under 5'3 away with just a bat of a furry eye.

"Grandma Yokoyamo?" Iisan asked skeptically, for the woman looked vaguely familiar. The gothic grandma stared into his soul with pitch black eyes, which were a natural genetic color on his mother's side.

"Oh Iisan! You're so big!" his grandmother replied before disappearing behind his car and flipping her suitcase into his trunk which he hadn't unlocked. Had she broken it open before he could even offer assistance? She then circled back around to the passenger seat, murmuring about how odd American cars looked with the wheel flipped onto the "wrong side." She repeated her statement about him and gave him a big sloppy kiss on the cheek. Iisan was still unsure if he was related to this woman. "I mean, you look so tall! What happened?"

"I'm not... eleven anymore?" Iisan said nervously.

She then studied his appearance as he pulled away from the terminal. "Something's different... Are you... a goth?"

"Uh... yeah?" He couldn't help but feel nervous. Perhaps her appearance was a hoax to mock him.

"Me too! I absolutely adore these gloves, do you like them?" she asked, waving out her fingerless black gloves for him to see.

"Yeah, I do," he said with a smile.