We passed the Green Lantern, with the Christmas lights twinkling over its door, and the Owl Club, with the winking neon owl in a chef’s hat, and then we were out in the desert, the lights of Battle Mountain 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 woman with green eyes and a strong jaw. She told me I was her favorite grandchild and that I was going to grow up to be something special. I even liked all of her rules. I liked how she woke us up every morning at dawn, shouting, “Rise and shine, everybody!” and insisted we wash our hands and comb our hair before eating breakfast. She made us hot Cream of Wheat with real butter, then oversaw us while we cleared the table and washed the dishes. Afterward, she took us all to buy new clothes, and we’d go to a movie like Mary Poppins.
Now, on the way to Phoenix, I stood up in the back of the car and leaned over the front seat between Mom and Dad. “Are we going to go stay with Grandma?” I asked.
“No,” Mom said. She looked out the window, but not at anything in particular. Then she said. “Grandma’s dead.”
“What?” I asked. I’d heard her, but I was so thrown I felt like I hadn’t.
Mom repeated herself, still looking out the window. I glanced back at Lori and Brian, but they were sleeping. Dad was smoking, his eyes on the road. I couldn’t believe I’d been sitting there thinking of Grandma Smith, looking forward to eating Cream of Wheat and having her comb my hair and cuss, and all along she’d been dead. I started hitting Mom on the shoulder, hard, and asking why she hadn’t told us. Finally, Dad held down my fists with his free hand, the other holding both his cigarette and the steering wheel, and said. “That’s enough, Mountain Goat.”
Mom seemed surprised that I was so upset.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” I asked.
“There didn’t seem any point,” she said.
“What happened?” Grandma had been only in her sixties, and most people in her family lived until they were about a hundred.
The doctors said she’d died from leukemia, but Mom thought it was radioactive poisoning. The government was always testing nuclear bombs in the desert near the ranch, Mom said. She and Jim used to go out with a Geiger counter and find rocks that ticked. They stored them in the basement and used some to make jewelry for Grandma.
“There’s no reason to grieve,” Mom said. “We’ve all got to go someday, and Grandma had a life that was longer and fuller than most.” She paused. “And now we have a place to live.”
Mom explained that Grandma Smith had owned two houses, the one she lived in with the green shutters and French doors, and an older house, made of adobe, in downtown Phoenix. Since Mom was the older of the two children, Grandma Smith had asked her which house she wanted to inherit. The house with the green shutters was more valuable, but Mom had chosen the adobe house. It was near Phoenix’s business district, which made it a perfect place for Mom to start an art studio. She’d also inherited some money, so she could give up teaching and buy all the art supplies she wanted.
She’d been thinking we should move to Phoenix ever since Grandma died a few months back, but Dad had refused to leave Battle Mountain because he was so close to a breakthrough in his cyanide-leaching process.
“And I was,” Dad said.
Mom gave a snort of a laugh. “So the trouble you kids got into with Billy Deel was actually a blessing in disguise,” she said. “My art career is going to flourish in Phoenix. I can just feel it.” She turned around to look at me. “We’re off on another adventure, Jeannettie-kins. Isn’t this wonderful?” Mom’s eyes were bright. “I’m such an excitement addict!”
WHEN WE PULLED UP in front of the house on North Third Street, I could not believe we were actually going to live there. It was a mansion, practically, so big that Grandma Smith had had two families living in it, both paying her rent. We had the entire place to ourselves. Mom said that it had been built almost a hundred years ago as a fort. The outside walls, covered with white stucco, were three feet thick. “These sure would stop any Indians’ arrows,” I said to Brian.
We kids ran through the house and counted fourteen rooms, including the kitchens and bathrooms. They were filled with the things Mom had inherited from Grandma Smith: a dark Spanish dining table with eight matching chairs, a hand-carved upright piano, sideboards with antique silver serving sets, and glass-fronted cabinets filled with Grandma’s bone china, which Mom demonstrated was the finest quality by holding a plate up to the light and showing us the clear silhouette of her hand through it.
The front yard had a palm tree, and the backyard had orange trees that grew real oranges. We’d never lived in a house with trees. I particularly loved the palm tree, which made me think I had arrived at some kind of oasis. There were also hollyhocks and oleander bushes with pink and white flowers. Behind the yard was a shed as big as some of the houses we had lived in, and next to the shed was a parking space big enough for two cars. We were definitely moving up in the world. The people living on North Third Street were mostly Mexicans and Indians who had moved into the neighborhood after the whites left for the suburbs and subdivided the big old houses into apartments. There seemed to be a couple of dozen people in each house, men drinking beers from paper bags, young mothers nursing babies, old ladies sunning themselves on the sagging, weathered porches, and hordes of kids.
All the kids around North Third Street went to the Catholic school at St. Mary’s Church, about five blocks away. Mom, however, said nuns were killjoys who took the fun out of religion. She wanted us to go to a public school called Emerson. Although we lived outside the district, Mom begged and cajoled the principal until he allowed us to enroll.