Such a drastic development is the destination of a series of coincidentally bad breaks. But the aftereffects of such a move reverberates still, and therefore I have yet another thing I have to contend with.
I am trying to make a point of getting to "work" on time; this is all the money I have, and I don't want to do anything to lose my "job," even if I've been chronically late for years now and my "boss" doesn't seem to care. But I dinked around the Internet too long, and I had about a half hour before I had to be there, which is, once again, too late.
So I hurriedly say goodbye to my Grandmother and put my shoes on. I was about out the door until she stops me and asks me to help with the backdoor. I act like a brat by heaving my shoulders and sighing, but I stomp up the stairs, shoes on like I'm not supposed to.
She asks me to fix the door because ... because. At some point she says, again, that our parents might use it and they might get mad if they can't. And that's one of those triggers that get to me; who gives a shit that they'll get mad over a stupid door/window thingy? So, with my patience already wearing thing and my subconscious on red over my Grandmother's fear over what my 'Rents think, I jar both backdoors loose. I then head to the propane stove. There's a little door that was askew, and I placed it on these tiny pads that keep it in place.
I go back inside where Grandmother says, "Don't put it so tight." So I poke my head out again and try and readjust the thing so it's looser, to which she replied, after I go back inside, "Not that, the door!"
This is where the language barrier led once again to a failure to communicate. I feel I can't do anything right, so I just explode. "You told me to move that thing, not the door! You want me to fix the backdoor, you point to the backdoor!" And I slam the backdoor shut.
And that's when she hits me ... across the arm. But stronger than she ever has since she waylayed me regular back in the day. And my Grandmother screamed, "TOO HARD!!!" in a voice I haven't heard since she waylayed me regular back in the day. Instinctively I returned back into meek child mode and calmed down. Well, more like quieted myself; I'm never calm. I bolted through the front door, slamming it shut, without saying goodbye. I was 5-10 minutes late to "work" instead of being 10-5.
All day, when I got up to when I got back, Grandmother was unusually industrious. I woke up early in the morning to the sound of splashes in the dining room. That's her splashing detergent-filled water out of a shallow bowl onto the floor in order to mop. And before I left for the Auto Show she was in the bathroom, feverishly doing something over the bathtub. Is she cleaning her clothes in there? Or is she cleaning the tub? Most important, why?
I realize that she probably was as stressed as I was, even more so. But I need to know why. I need to understand what caused this confrontation from her end. There are very serious implications either way. If she had some shit she needed to do, and she was just pissed off, that means she is no longer the sanguine Grandmother I remember her as since I came back from El Paso. She now believes that she can push me around, and that is a diametric change in how I perceive her. However, if she's cleaning and doing all this unnecessary bullshit because My Fucking Father yelled at her to do so -- and that's quite possible -- then she's passing along the stress that was laid on her by him. Which means he's being controlling once again, only this time it made my Grandmother snap. This too is a new predicament, and sadly, I don't know how to thwart this vicious attack from him, too.
Haven't really spoken to Grandmother since yesterday. She's probably still mad at me.
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