Grandmother Yellow, One Hour Away

Grandmother Yellow has four eyes and two sets of ears. She has a knee which has stiffened in age - and walks like a melon rolls. She touches without seeing, and squeezes together the rolls of fat in the hand, like a doctor palpates the wrist. Her nails are sharp and her fingers gnarled, sometimes turning in on the flesh of your hand and piercing. She sees men that talk to her with her ears that you do not have, and sees you who is not there. She sees a you who has never drunken soy milk, who turns his nose upwards at fish. Who lives in a house that is cold and misty with a dog in the walls. The dog goes a shake a shaking, and she knows that you will be back by the weekend, with a knap of clothes that smells and hair that needs to be washed. She will board a car that takes her to that cold and foggy city in an hour, and have lunch at the japanese diner which serves whatever you order, which does not have soy milk or fish. She does not fold the chopstick wrapper into a chopstick holder, she lays the chopsticks on the napkin or the table. She tells you about men that she has seen with her other eyes, the ones that you do not see - they are getting rich taking her money, she tells you. They are men from far away, with mud on their faces and skin, and wild eyes that bolt out of the skull from drugs - fentanyl or cocaine. Your cousin once, like you, told her those men were not there - that they did not have laptops which took money out of accounts like telecommunic vampires. She smiled, looking down and wagging an accusatory finger, “is that right?” she asked, dropping the topic. She will hand you her fried cantaloupe and two slices of salmon, and you will exchange it with your fried shrimp. “Robert” she will call you, the name of her son - before quickly changing back. In the car you will become him and you will become you from ten years ago, the boy with the big ears and the garish smile. She will walk up the stone steps of the foundation, and into the house, where she will turn on the television with a remote you cannot touch, and see a man tell her about the war that is not happening over the Indian Ocean