My Mother’s Keeper
My husband is cooking dinner, singing loudly and off-key, punctuating the chorus with rhythmic farts.
My twin boys are playing trains, arguing over who gets to be the red one.
My youngest, Molly, is playing with a big yellow truck, mashing purple playdough into the tray part and squishing her Barbie’s feet into the soft dough in order to make her stand up.
And my mother is sitting on the couch next to me, crossword book on her lap, pen tapping against her forehead as she tries to think of a 6 letter salad vegetable starting with E.
“Why are you watching this crap?”
“My TV, my choice of show. And the word you’re looking for is endive.”
She grimaced before scrawling the answer in the little boxes.
“Dinner in ten!”
The twin boys race to the table, knocking over the rail bridge in their hurry. My daughter removes Barbie from the playdough, peels off the remaining goo, and, holding Barbie’s hand, toddles off to the bathroom to wash her hands.
I flick the TV off.
“I was watching that!”
“You just called it crap.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t want to find out who Desiree was calling the cops about,” Mum pouted.
“Are you having dinner with us tonight?”
She continued scrawling answers onto the crossword. “No. I think I’ll take myself out for dinner.”
“Fine. Don’t bring anything back for the kids.”
I set the table while my husband drained the spaghetti. Mum took her purse and before my kids could ask where she was going, she was out the door, her car headlights shining through our glass front door.
“Is grandma gonna bring us back something good?” Tim asked.
“No, now eat your pasta,” said my husband Cam gently, shooting me a look. “When is your mother leaving, anyway?”
I shrugged. “We’ll have to talk about it when the kids go to bed.”
“Ohhhh but mum! We want to know too!”
“Sean, just eat your spaghetti. Your father and I will talk about it later.”
I know Cam gave the boys a glare, because they muttered, “Ooooh” to each other before flicking their spaghetti at each other and throwing a meatball at their sister while she was trying to feed Barbie.
We had almost finished when my mother returned, a takeaway bag in her hand and a cardboard tray with ice creams in the other.
“ICE CREAM!”
All three kids ran to Grandma, who laughed and said it was a treat for after their baths. It must be the only time in history that all three of my children tore off their clothes and scrambled over each other to get in the bath first.
I helped Cam clear the table and wash the dishes while my mother supervised the kids in the bath. I could hear a bubble fight and crying from my daughter while Grandma threatened no ice creams if they didn’t calm down and clean themselves.
“So, are we going to talk about your mum?”
“What do you want me to do? She’s got no money, or so she says. No place to live while her unit is waiting for the lease to do whatever the hell they’re doing. She needs the bond back from that first place before she can get into another place.”
He didn’t say anything but I saw him scrub the pot harder than it needed.
“Look. I know this isn’t ideal. But, she is giving the kids a bath.”
“Yeah, because she bribed them with ice cream! Tell me, how can she cry poor when she’s buying ice cream for the kids every time she goes out?”
I dropped the tea towel on the rack and twisted to face my husband.
“I don’t know. I can’t just kick her out.”
“Why can’t your sister take her?”
“Gina? Ha! Gina’s husband will probably divorce her. You know what they’re like. Mum’s always been closer to me than to Gina.”
“Hon, she’s not your problem. She’s a grown woman -”
“- who can’t manage her money. I know, I know.”
Bathing finished and three children wrapped snugly in bathrobes, Cam and I had also finished the washing up. I noticed Mum’s takeaway bag on the counter, grease stains seeping through the paper to create windows of heart disease. Because that’s what we needed: a dead grandmother.
“Isn’t it funny how your mother always complains about being allergic to everything yet has no problem with the Colonel’s eleven herbs and spices?”
“Shush you.” I playfully slapped his thigh with my sodden tea towel, leaving a wet mark on his pants that, of course, the kids then teased him about.
“Look, daddy wet his pants!”
The littlest kiddo danced around her daddy, poking the wet patch and saying daddy needed to wear a nappy like she did.
Five seconds later, our three children flew into the lounge room screaming out catchphrases from their favourite superheroes, followed by Grandma waving three sets of pyjamas.
“Well, goodnight you lot. I’m going to my room.” Without waiting for good nights from the kids or us, she went straight to her room and closed the door. I could hear the crinkling of takeaway paper bag above the screaming kids and through her door.
“ICE CREAM!”
“Fine, just get your pyjamas on,” said Cam. He looks at me. “What? Bribery works.”
All three children sat on the couch and ate their ice creams. Our daughter drank some milk and then I shoved them into the bathroom to brush their teeth.
“Aww, no fair!” Tim cried as I smoothed toothpaste on his Spider-Man toothbrush.
“You eat food, you need to brush your teeth. Especially after all that sugar Grandma feeds you.”
“But sugar’s good for me,” said Sean. “Miss Davis told us so. Yep, she did. She said we need sugar for our brains to grow so we can learn stuff!”
“Well, it’s still bad for your teeth and you need to brush them.”
Too early the next morning, even before the kids were awake, I saw Mum walk past our bedroom door and leave the house.
“Where do you think she’s off to?”
“Hmm?”
I poked Cam. “Mum. She’s just left the house. It’s just gone six,” I said, checking my phone charging on my bedside table.
I sent her a text. No reply. Nothing, not even two hours later. I tried calling but she didn’t answer.
“Maybe our wish came true,” joked Cam. “Did we rub a genie lamp the right way?”
Just after dusk, mum returned. All three of the kids swarmed to her.
“Where have you been?” I snapped. “I’ve been calling you all day. It’s really rude to not answer your phone.”
“Just around,” mum replied, her face crunched into a sour look.
“You barely leave your room, let alone the house, and you’re ‘just around’ all day?”
Without answering, she went into her room and emerged a few minutes later with a suitcase packed. “I’m staying at your sister’s tonight. And every night.”
“Why?”
“There were mice on my bed last night and I refuse to sleep there,” she said, and left the house without even acknowledging her grandchildren.
Confusion on his face, Cam gave me the look. He jumped up from the couch and went to her room. He swore loudly and returned, his face beetroot red.
“No wonder there were mice in her room,” he seethed. “Go take a look!”
Naturally, the kids wanted to come too, but Cam held them back. Inside Mum’s room, there were empty chip packets, biscuit wrappers, and lolly bags littering not only the floor but her bed as well. Any mice who found their way in there must have thought they’d died and gone to Heaven. It was a total mess.
I called my sister Gina, my anger bubbling just below the surface.
“Hey,” I said, “Just a heads up, mum’s coming over and she’s in a really bad mood.”
Gina groaned. “Well nice of her to call me herself. I suppose I’ll get the guest room ready. Thanks Bel.”
“I don’t know why she doesn’t stay with Gina,” Cam said. “She’s got a proper guest room, not just an inflatable mattress like we do.”
I shrugged. “Who knows why mum does anything.”
She was only at Gina’s a few days before. a property became available and she was free to move in straight away. Both Cam and I sighed with relief. My mother was finally out of our hair!
…For a month.
The new place was small, next to a communal carport where some guy also living in the complex liked to work on his car all night, pouring noise and smoke into mum’s unit and causing her much stress.
One morning, the kids and I were leaving the house for school when I saw mum’s car on my front lawn, mum asleep inside, covered in her bathrobe as a blanket. I quickly texted Cam, who sent back an angry face emoji.
I held back tears as I drove the kids to school. The boys asked why Grandma was in her car. I had no answer.
Every morning afterwards, I woke to find mum asleep in her car. She was always gone before I returned from the school run.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I sobbed to Cam more than once. He had no answers either. Eventually the stress became too much for mum, and she moved in again. The room she’d been in was now a games room for the kids, so she chose to sleep on the couch every night. It meant that she was always in our space, having no room of her own.
“Are you alright?” Gina said to me one day as I popped over for a coffee and lunch.
“I’m really not.”
She placed a hand over mine as I cried into my latte. “I just don’t know what to do anymore. She only eats junk, so the kids love her, but she’s not doing anything. She doesn’t cook, clean, well, I mean she does the washing up, but that’s it. Oh, and rent-free, did I mention that? She’s too poor to pay board.”
“How does she afford rent?”
“She’s still paying rent on the unit, they won’t let her break her lease.”
“So… she can’t afford to pay board but she eats McDonald’s and KFC every night?”
“Yep.”
“She’s insane. I’m so sorry you’re going through this.”
“Do you want her for a while?”
Gina chuckled. “There’s no way she’d stay here. She’s convinced Harvey hates her.”
“Does he?”
A wicked grin. “Maybe a little.”
At home again, mum had a list of places to inspect. “Can you take me to look at these places?”
“Why can’t you do it?”
“I don’t know where they are.”
“Give me your phone.”
She unlocked her smart phone and handed it to me. Within a couple of minutes, I handed it back to her.
“You now have a GPS app. Have fun.”
“But my car isn’t like yours. I can’t look at the phone while I’m driving.”
“Mum, it talks to you.”
“How do I make it do that?”
The day she moved into her new home, Cam and I sipped chilled champagne. The house seemed lighter, fresher, spacier.
The kids had been asking all day why Grandma couldn’t stay here. I just smiled.
“I’m not my mother’s keeper.”
