Now I'm Really Worried About Grandmother

And it goes beyond her forgetting and thus repeatedly asking me stuff, like the many times she's asked me when I'm going on vacation, or if I got her the money out of her checking account from the bank, though she's done that a lot in recent months, and it both bugs the shit and frightens the hell out of me.

Two things stand out:

1) When I stopped by my aunt's apartment to give her the money and food Father wanted me to deliver to her last week, my aunt said something odd. I was making small talk with her after I gave her everything and was about to get into my car -- hi, how are you doing, stuff like that. As that conversation was ending, my aunt told me, "Don't tell your Grandmother you were here and gave me stuff!" I gave her a puzzled look: "Why?"

"Because she no good," she said in her broken English. No good? What do you mean? Is her forgetting jags getting to bug the shit out of my aunt, too? Or does it have to do with something Grandmother has told me in the past, namely that she thinks that when my aunt comes here weekly to do her laundry, she takes stuff, mostly food. Maybe Grandmother accused her of that, and my aunt's afraid she'll see this delivery as just more evidence she's a thief.

Whatever the case, I was floored by how a family tension that I didn't even think existed would bubble to the surface, and so violently. If there's bad blood between the two, I can't imagine the air between the two when my aunt waits for the laundry to be washed and she comes upstairs to watch TV, and my Grandmother comes out because she has nothing to do in her bedroom and always walks to the place in the house with commotion and sits down to watch with her.

---

2) Last week I came home late, either Friday from seeing a burlesque show or Saturday from a GameWatch. I did not test Grandmother that day, so I wanted to do it that night.

While I was finding her blood pressure and sugar levels, she relayed a story that made some sense. She was at the casino that day and came back when I was gone. Grandmother claims that after she came home, Father came up from downstairs and locked the doors -- latches and chains. She knew I wasn't home yet, so she went downstairs and unchained and unlatched the front door. Mother then stormed out of the master bed and yelled at her, for what either I don't recall or Grandmother didn't say.

And then she said, "Mother wants me out of the house." I've never heard her say that before. Now, I've heard her say that Father wants her out of the house, many times. But Mother? She can be annoyed at the way she hovers around the kitchen, or makes rice every single night, even on the nights they tell her not to. But Mother has never voiced anything close to wanting to kick her out of the house.

It seems out of character for Mother, especially because she needed Grandmother's help when they decided to leave Vietnam. From what I can best recollect, Grandmother was asked by Mother to immigrate with them when they decided to bolt for the States. She has a son at home, a son whom I believe she hasn't seen in decades. I don't know why she essentially abandoned him for us. All I know is she was the one who took care of me and my brother and sister when we got home and my parents were still working at the soon-to-be-closed store, as well as the restaurant and theater they had back in the day. That's why I'm so close to Grandmother; she was there when I needed someone, and my parents were not.

At some point the relationship between Grandmother and my parents soured. It's probably due to the grind of seeing the same person day after day. I still don't believe that Mother would intentionally want Grandmother out of the house; after all, this is my scatterbrained Grandmother, so very well may have heard incorrectly. But regardless of whether she did or not, she seemed very hurt by what Mother said to her that evening. She sits up when I test her levels, but she had a noticeable slouch to her shoulders, and she was sighing and looking down with intent, like she didn't want me to see the look on her face. She looked both fatigued and depressed by yet another threat by the breadwinners in the house.

After I was done, the only thing I could do was hug her. And so I did. And the hug was different, too. Whenever I hug her out of the blue, she just stands or sits there, arms still off to her side, as I wrap her in my arms. This time I felt no rigidity, no resistance from her. It felt like she needed someone to embrace her, someone to protect her from happened to her that night.