disappearing behind us. In the pitch-black night, there was nothing to
look at but the road ahead, lit by the car's headlights.
GRANDMA SMITH'S BIG white house had green shutters and was
surrounded by eucalyptus trees. Inside were tall French doors and
Persian carpets and a huge grand piano that would practically dance
when Grandma played her honky-tonk music. Whenever we stayed with
Grandma Smith, she brought me into her bedroom and sat me down at
the vanity table, which was covered with little pastel-colored bottles of
perfumes and powders. While I opened the bottles and sniffed them,
she'd try to run her long metal comb through my hair, cursing out of the
corner of her mouth because it was so tangled. "Doesn't that goddamn
lazy-ass mother of yours ever comb your hair?" she once said. I
explained that Mom believed children should be responsible for their
own grooming. Grandma told me my hair was too long anyway. She put
a bowl on my head, cut off all the hair beneath it, and told me I looked
like a flapper.
That was what Grandma used to be. But after she had her two children,
Mom and our uncle Jim, she became a teacher because she didn't trust
anyone else to educate them. She taught in a one-room schoolhouse in a
town called Yampi. Mom hated being the teacher's daughter. She also
hated the way her mother constantly corrected her both at home and at
school. Grandma Smith had strong opinions about the way things ought
to be done—how to dress, how to talk, how to organize your time, how to
cook and keep house, how to manage your finances—and she and Mom
fought each other from the beginning. Mom felt that Grandma Smith
nagged and badgered, setting rules and punishments for breaking the
rules. It drove Mom crazy, and it was the reason she never set rules for
us.
But I loved Grandma Smith. She was a tall, leathery, broad-shouldered