Andrea Tode

Come And Go, Come And Go

My grandmother deteriorated a little at first, and then all at once. The first time I stayed with her was when my mamá was in a coma for two months. My mamá and I had been living in the Argentinian countryside for three years, relishing in the fresh air and the rolling hills of endless green.  One day, I came home from preschool and found my neighbour there, pale-faced, her red-rimmed eyes sunken and her mouth in a grim line. My mamá didn’t come home that night, or the next. I was told she was very sick with a brain haemorrhage. I was four. 

My grandmother came from Peru to stay with me soon after my mamá’s hospitalisation. 

‘Oh, thank God, you are here too,’ I remember thinking. ‘I thought I was alone, but you’re here too.’

Though they were mother and daughter, my mamá and my grandmother looked nothing alike. My mamá and I had an ever-present tan from days spent running around playgrounds and backyards and wavy brown hair to match our eyes. My grandmother had perfect fragrant blonde curls and the most piercing blue eyes I have ever seen. She’d glare at me, sometimes, when she caught me throwing out her cigarette boxes. I could swear she could not only see into my soul, but also hated whatever stared back. 

During the first few weeks I spent with my grandma, we settled into a routine: I’d go to preschool, come back home and colour next to her while she read a book—crime novels, mostly. My mamá would call at 6 pm and tell me an abridged version of her day—all boring lab work, nothing I have to worry about, and she’ll be home soon. I would swim, if it was warm out. My grandma never would swim with me—her hair bleach would get tainted, and everyone would be able to see her tummy rolls. 

When we’d eat dinner, she’d drink, glass after glass of sickeningly sweet red wine. At 8 pm, I was sent to bed with a tight smile. I remember trying to make my grandmother laugh. I tickled her, told her whatever silly joke I heard at school. I never could crack her unless she’d drunk a glass or two. I missed my mamá. One day, she stopped calling.

I asked my grandma about it, the day my mamá fell into a coma. I wondered why she hadn’t called. My grandmother, gracious in all ways except tact, said, in no uncertain terms, that my mother couldn’t call me anymore. For two months, I believed my mother was dead; that I was an orphan, and no one had found a way to tell me yet. For the next two months, I carried on with our little routine, too shocked and hurt to ask any more questions. Torn open on the inside and bleeding from a wound with wavy brown hair and dark eyes, I couldn’t risk finding out more. If my mamá wasn’t coming back, I didn’t care to know.

My mamá did come back, bald and missing chunks of her memory, but undeniably alive.  At four, I didn’t know you could feel rage like the kind I felt towards my grandmother then. How could you? I thought. How could you? My mamá wore bandanas and head scarves for the next year or so, and I, in my ever-present desire to be just like her, joined her. 

‘You’ll cover your pretty face!’ my grandmother protested. Maybe that’s why I continued wearing them in my teenage years. 

The three of us moved back to Peru, and I began staying with my grandma whenever my mamá travelled. Our routine changed in the next few years. Instead of reading, my grandma would binge-watch Criminal Minds, followed by a bit of CSI Miami until, as if she remembered there was a child with her, she’d put on Tom and Jerry, always, at 7 pm. She barely read anymore. I should’ve noticed her mind was slipping. 

When I was twelve, my mamá took my grandma to the hospital and sent me to summer camp. While they were away, I was trampled by a horse and needed surgery. My mamá was able to pull some strings, and I was able to stay with them at the centre afterwards. One day, she was fetching my grandmother’s medicine when she turned to me, smiling, smiling, smiling.  

‘Your mother is so sweet.’

It was the first nice thing she’d ever said about my mamá in front of me. Suddenly, I was four again. 

‘Remember when I thought she was dead?’

I didn’t know why I said that. I didn’t understand why I was so angry. I had no reason to be. 

‘No.’

‘When she was in a coma?’

My grandmother’s beautiful face turned into a prune-like scowl, alarmed and horrified.

‘Your mother was in a coma?’

I was always so concerned about my mamá’s health, I didn’t realise how quickly my grandmother’s memory had crumbled until I was staring at its remains. 

After that, my grandma declined faster and faster, until it was impossible to keep up with what she knew to be true and what she didn’t. 

‘You are so pale,’ she began saying, over and over, after I became anaemic. She’d look at my mamá, then back at me, and ask, ‘What colour is your father? Where is he?’

My father had left shortly before my mamá’s haemorrhage. I’m told my grandma’s the only person he liked. I shouldn’t have been angry at her for that. It’s not her fault. And still. 

My mamá decided to move to Spain during the pandemic, and I was surprised when she announced she intended to take my grandmother as well. I shouldn’t have been: of course, my mamá would do that. My uncle initially sent checks to help out, but those soon began to filter out. This isn’t my grandma’s fault either. And still. 

She dreams at night. Sometimes she calls out things she wants to eat the next morning, and other times, she speaks to her parents, uncles and cousins, as if she can see them in the shadows on the wall. My mamá asks her to stop when she does that; she says it scares her. 

Some nights, my grandmother gets frightened of it all-- mortality, the end, and the horrifying idea of the only person left at home. One time, I heard her shuffling through the hallways at 3 am and went to help her back to bed.

‘Oh thank God, you are here too,’ my grandmother said, fragile wire-like arms coming to embrace me. ‘I thought I was alone, but you’re here too.’ 

And I was transported to a time when I thought my mother was dead, and my grandmother came to stay with me. Thank God indeed.

‘Do you remember when you watched me while my mom was sick?’ I asked her another day, as we watched the ocean waves crash into the sandy beach of San Juan from our window. 

‘I remember.’

I hadn’t heard those words in a while. I watched the waves come and go, come and go. Finally, I let go. 

These days, my grandmother can’t remember how to swim, but now she goes into the water. She doesn’t remember that she likes to drink, and she enjoys cartoons as well as her lifelong favourite police dramas. More than anything else, she smiles and laughs, laughs, laughs. She’s the happiest she has ever been. She’d the least like herself, too. This isn’t her fault. And still.