Sent to my Grammy's house, and I'm told it's supposed to be for the whole year. I wonder what it's going to be like living with my grandparents and being homeschooled. Certainly it has to be better than the life I had before. I really don't want to do anything anyone wants me to, but I'd rather listen to my grandparents than my parents.
I get the care I need from an adult figure immediately after walking through her door. She has me wash and change, takes care of any health problems I have at the time. Inside it soothes and unsettles me at the same time.
" You really know how to care for kids, don't you, Grammy?"
Though I don't know it, these words both break my Grammy's heart and warm it at the same time. Now the cat is partially out of the bag, and I immediately regret letting those words slip out of my mouth. If my mother finds out I told anyone anything about how she treats me, when I go back there'll be more hell to pay.
I'm only ten years old, but I feel so much older than that. Still my grandparents treat me like the little girl I am, and on the inside I enjoy that fact, except I show her more trouble than she needs. I try so hard to push Grammy away for fear if she gets too close I'll tell her too much and she'll either hate me or get me in more trouble unknowingly. Secretly I wish I could stay here forever, but I show Grammy just the opposite.
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"No! I won't do my homework!"
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"No! I won't do my sit ups or take a walk!"
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"No! I won't eat that!"
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"No! I won't help out around the house!"
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Every time I had my little temper tantrums, all I heard from her was
"As soon as you're done, you'll realize you can come to me for anything. I will always love you, no matter what."
At the time I was so confused; how could she love me when my own mother hated me no matter what I did?
Soon after each fit I had, I did just what I said I wouldn't do; help out around the house, sit ups, taking a walk, eat whatever I said I wouldn't, and so many more things I gave her trouble about. She knew I was a troubled little girl, but she didn't know anything about what was going on whenever I was with my mother. I would always try to give her hints, but they were never big enough to clue my Grammy in. I love her so much and I knew she would save me if she knew, but I didn't have the courage to straight out say everything that was happening.
So when my mother came around begging me to come back, and like the child I was I believed she had changed, so I went back with her not more than a month after moving in with my Grammy. I knew the possibilities of things going back to the way they were before, but I still left my temporary heaven for a more long term hell.
This is hard and tricky material but you treat it very simply, not over-analyzing, not trying to over-explain, and (I guess I'd say) keeping the heat lower than on your travel piece, though it's dealing with the same material.
ReplyDeleteHeat has to match the writer's skill--the more skill, the more the writer can pump oxygen on the material and let it blaze, but, whatever skill level, the writer seldom goes wrong in underwriting, in letting the reader do some of the imagining, and in keeping the material quiet and letting it speak for itself, as you do so well with those italicize quotations.
I'd say it maintains a very consistent quiet tone throughout and finds a lot of success. The only change I'd suggest would be to drop the last two 'to this day' sentences. Those are too much in your present-day mind, too much in the future, too far away from the very small little girl's world you -present so well.
If ou leave us with the word 'hell,' well, it just hangs there vibrating in the reader's mind, very effective.