The Becoming

When the movie ended the boy shook Grandma awake. “The movie’s over, Grandma.”

She opened her eyes slowly. “Let’s head off to bed.” She coughed twice then hacked up a large, unseen ball of phlegm. She reached for a tissue, spat and tucked it away. “What are you looking at? Can’t a woman hack up snot in the privacy of her own home? You’re just as bad as Henry. ‘That’s not very lady like, Edith.’ To hell with being a lady. My mother was a lady and she died a sad, fat, bag of skin. Don’t marry a lady, Boy, they’re horrible in bed. No man really wants a lady anyway.”

“Do you want help up?”

“Did you, were you even...oh, all right, I suppose. It’s going to rain soon, my knee is swelling up bad. Hold on tighter than that, I don’t weigh what I used to. Nobody tells you how fat you get when you’re old. I used to think that all those old hags were too lazy to work out. It’s a cruel joke. The last laugh those bitter bitches get, I suppose.” She couched once, losing her grip on the boy, who waited for more to follow. She tugged at his arm, “c’mon, Boy. I thought you were going to help me, not the other way around.”

The boy lead her up the stairs and lowered her gently into bed. She groaned when he let go. The window A.C. came on with a hungry growl. The hallway light burned dim on Grandma’s face. Suddenly the boy felt very tired and could think of nothing better than stretching out on his small bed in his small room. “You look more tired than me,” she said. “Go get some sleep. We’ll try this all again tomorrow. Maybe things won’t be so crazy.”

“Do you want me to tuck you in?”

“I’ll live. Go on.” She waved a hand limply towards the door.

“Hey, Grandma?”

“What?” she said, drifting away.

“What did that lady say on the phone?”

Her eyes opened wide. Her head craned up from the deep divot in the pillow. She started working that piece of gum in her mouth again. “Nothin’, she said, nothing’. Get in bed and go straight to sleep, don’t even turn you light on to change.”

The room was warm and clammy. The boy would hear the A.C. working hard in the other room and he longed to lay in a nest of warm blankets under an artificial chill. His sheets were cool but wouldn’t suffice. He turned to his left and saw the dark pistol resting on his nightstand. Street light shone silver in its grooves. He found he couldn’t take his mind away from it. Grandma was right, it never left your thoughts. Except, he didn’t think of it as a third arm, rather an implication towards something that has not happened yet, like waiting for an expected outcome, though one he was not sure of yet. This idea both terrified and excited him. He shut his eyes and waited for sleep. After a while, the A.C. shut off noisily. Crickets turned the air into a tide that never receded. He waited to drop off. Sheet’s whispered down the hall. The house creaked. He squeezed his eyes so tight that he saw fireworks. A bead of sweat crawled along his temple, down his cheek and got caught in the crease of his lips. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and threw the sheets aside.

With the window open and the blinds fully drawn he laid back down and watched the empty street on his side. The night air hung heavy with the smell of damp grass. Cold above and warmth beneath he closed his eyes and fell away.

Great, chesty, bellows awoke him. He heard phlegm rise to the surface and then force itself out. The boy’s muscles went rigid. The hacking grew louder and the coughing became ceaseless. He could see her in there, lips pursed, face purple, eyes bulging, body contorted into a vaguely sexual position.

“Boy. Boyyyy.”

It would die down like it always did. He’d pretend he was asleep and eventually it would go away.

“Boyy.” There was a whooping cough, the kind, he knew, that hurts the sternum. “Water, I need water.”

The boy didn’t move.

“Mmmboyyy,” the other voice cried, the monster voice. “Waaat-”

“I’m coming, Grandma,” he shouted, springing from his bed and nearly sliding to the ground. He threw his arms out for balance, righted his feet, and ran to her.

She was worse than he had imagined. Her face wasn’t blue or red or purple but a pasty newspaper gray save for the geographic liver spots that inked her cheeks and chin. Her eyes were the opposite: full of red shaky threads and pupils so wide he couldn’t see the brilliant gold that tinged her irises. She bore her teeth like a frightened dog, revealing patches of black and brown plaque growing out of every crack like mold. Her tongue rest on the floor of her mouth like a dead, fuzzy slug. She was so old, so goddamn old and helpless. And for a second, while he watched her honk and convulse and stare off into space, he thought ‘die, just die. Why do this to us?’ As quick as it came it was gone. Tears pricked his eyes, his nose ran loose with snot. “What do you need, Grandma?”

“Water,” she croaked, “water, water.”

His mind conjured up the image of a teal plastic cup sitting on the bathroom sink in the dark. The rinse cup Grandma used to gargle her funny smelling mouth wash. The boy left without another word.

The cup was sticky with humidity. He filled it and went back to Grandma who grabbed it too quickly from his hands and splashed water all over her sheets.

“Sorry,” the boy said.

She sipped. Her nostrils flared, air plumed out and could be heard swirling around the cup. She finished with a wet gasp and let the cup fall at the boy’s feet. She moaned, “breathe, so hard.” She sucked in, it sounded like drawing in through the narrow passage of a straw. “I,” she inhaled, “I can’t.”

“What do I do?” the boy asked? “What do I do?”

“I can’t, heh, huh, huh, I-”

“I’ll call 911.”

“N-n-n-ooooo.”

But the boy was gone before she finished, clomping down the rickety steps.

“No,” she said again, the word dying as soon as it came out. “No.”

The phone line was unplugged. He clicked the wire into place and heard the steady, confident hum of the prompt to dial. He put in the three numbers. The phone rang twice then went silent. He could hear someone on the line. Were they waiting for him to speak? Was that how it worked?

“Hello? I need help, my grandma can’t breathe. She’s in a lot of pain. I live at 233 Graham street.” Above him he heard Grandma’s raspy voice but he couldn’t concentrate on it. Whoever was on the line shifted slightly. Perhaps adjusting the speaker closer to their face. “Hello?”

The phone began to breathe loudly. Faster and faster until it was nothing but a static crumpling sound.

“Who is this?” he asked, holding the earpiece away from himself.

“Boyyyy,” the phone said in a genderless whisper. “Boyyy, I need water.”

“What?”

“Heh, huh, huh, huh. Boyyieee. Boyyiee come and lick me, heh, huh, huh, huh. Come and lick me boyyieee.”

“Stop it,” the boy said. The receiver was so close but he couldn’t muster the strength to hang up the phone. The voice and Grandma were calling to him in a baleful form of stereo sound.

“Ohhh,” Grandma said above him.

“Boyyyieee, come and taste me,” the phone said. It started shouting, “OHHHH. BOY. BOY I HEARD YOU OPEN THAT WINDOW. OHHH BOY, I HEARD YOU LAY AROUND WHILE I DIED OHHH-”

The boy dropped the jack from the wall. A small wire came out, it’s fiber insides exposed. He put the phone back carefully and stood there, inspecting the seeds on the strawberry wallpaper. He thought about shoving the cord back into the fixture and trying 911 again, hoping that maybe it was just him, that he was going crazy from all the stress. Or maybe the wires got crossed, he’d seen that on a movie once. And yet, he knew that same voice would pick up, and this time they would say something worse.

From upstairs, Grandma had stopped trying to speak. The only sound she made was a scratchy, throaty thing that was at least more passive than when she had first started. The boy left the kitchen and stood in the foyer. The front door looked like a square shaped voice shrouded by the silver light of the narrow glass windows that were on its flanks. He looked out at the sleeping neighborhood and wondered if he and Grandma were the only people awake. Did things like this happen to anyone else? Why wouldn’t she stop? She always quieted down. Furthermore, what was he supposed to do now? Adults were the ones who made the decisions him, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Outside, one of the dark homes flashed a buttery yellow. The boy waited and saw it again. He threw the door open and ran down the cool sidewalk barefoot, the tide of night flooding his ears.