Reading To Grandpa

Grandpa Tom was my maternal grandfather. He was a steely eyed, quarter-blood-Cherokee who’d worked for the Wichita Falls daily newspaper all his life. 

I don’t remember grandpa Tom much before I was six-years-old, when we visited Texas for the summer. He had a favorite chair by the window where he would sit for hours. He had been ill, we children were told, so please be quiet around your grandpa. 

Every morning, mom used to hand me the newspaper and tell me to go over and read to my grandpa. “Show your grandpa how good you can read,” she’d urge. 

“The whole thing?” I’d complain. At first I was a little afraid of grandpa Tom, him being ill and so quiet and stern looking. He used to stare off into space and work his jaws as if he were eating. His fingernails were stained from the printer’s ink, too, which somehow I found upsetting. 

“No, honey,” my mom would reply sweetly, “just read to him until he falls asleep.” 

He fell asleep in his chair all the time. Later I learned that grandpa Tom had been recovering from the first of his many strokes at the time. While we stayed there that summer, I read to him every day, sitting on the leather ottoman at his feet, as he listened quietly and stroked an orange cat who slept in his lap. 

Eventually I forgot my fear and we became friends, grandpa and I. He’d smile crookedly with anticipation in the morning when I came to him with the newspaper.

Later, with great solemnity, he gave me an old, ivory-handled pen knife. “For you,” he sputtered, placing it in my hand. His words were terribly slurred from the stroke. “Don-don-don’t forget… to clean it.”

One day, I put the newspaper down when I thought he was asleep and I started reading to him from one of the books I’d brought with me from California. (Not sure if I could get books in Texas, I’d stuffed my suitcase full of them. “Whataya got in here?” my dad asked as he packed the car for the trip. “Rocks?”) 

What I read to grandpa that day wasn’t a rock. It was James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl. 

“Good!” grandpa said, startling me. I didn’t know he was awake. “More, please,” he added.

All that summer we laughed together at the adventures and misadventures of young James, while we hated and feared the cruel aunts Spiker and Sponge. When Spiker and Sponge deliciously got what they deserved and were crushed by the giant peach, grandpa laughed so hard he upset the cat, tumbling it to the floor with a squealing meow. Grandpa found the story very funny, laughed all the time, which surprised me somehow, and my mother thought was suspicious.

“What are you guys doing in there? Rusty? Dad?” she called. 

“Just reading,” we’d call back, laughing, but it was more than that. 

We were in another world together.  

   “And James Henry Trotter, who once, if you remember, had been the saddest and loneliest boy that you could find, now had all the friends and playmates in the world.”

Ah, Dahl, you magnificent bastard!

Letter to Santa Pt 3

Well Santa, I went off to boarding school.

Which was pretty horrible. 

Being only twelve I was one of the younger boys and with my uselessness at sports and such I didn’t make friends easily. Plus I wasn’t the boarding school type, I guess, so my teachers were generally pretty disappointed in me too.

I felt lonely and dumb.

The one bright spot was art class, where I could draw.

One day after class the art teacher looked at my drawings of Bradbury the axolotl and said he saw promise in me.

I was so happy!

Then he touched me between my legs.

He told me how handsome I was and how he could see that I was a sensitive, loving kind of boy.  

That we could be special friends.

No one had ever spoken to me that way before, Santa.

So I let him kiss me and put my penis in his mouth and I have to say that it felt good.

Although I felt guilty about it later.

He used to make me stay after class so we could be alone. We did many things together which pleased him and I loved him with all my heart. 

He told me I was his special boy, but we have to keep it secret.

Of course it ended badly.

Another boy he was doing things with told his parents and it all came out. 

I had to leave school.

“Ugh! How could you?!” said my stepmother when I arrived home. “Doing it with a man. Little pervert!”

“I didn’t know it was wrong,” I said. “Really he was a nice person.”

“Little sissy,” said my dad and this time I knew he meant it.

We didn’t speak much after that.

But Boris, my stepmom’s brother who took over my room, he looked at me funny and that night he came to me where I was sleeping on the couch and said he wanted me to do the same things with him that I did with the teacher.

I said please no it got me into trouble but he just put all his weight on my chest pinning me down and told me to start doing it.

Then he called me some nasty names while I did what he wanted.

I was so scared my dad would catch us I used all my skill so that Boris would finish quickly.

He moaned and quivered and clutched me tightly.

I kept going till he was done.

Then he pushed me away and told me never to tell or I’d be sorry.

I was sorry already.

Boris visited me every night and even caught me in the bathroom a few times.

I remember the rug on the bathroom floor and Boris looking at himself in the mirror. He wasn’t like the art teacher, who was kind and said nice things. Boris was rough and called me names.

Like he hated me for what I let him do to me.

At least he stopped beating me up.

Luckily, I was soon sent to live with my aunt in Texas.

My father couldn’t stand the sight of me anymore, said my stepmother.

“So long, kid,” she added. “Good luck.”

She handed me $30 and put me on the bus to Amarillo, Texas.

My father didn’t even see me off.

My aunt picked me up at the station in Amarillo.

Her name, believe it or not, was Sissy.

Which made me laugh!

She laughed too. She had kind eyes like I remember my mother had so I gathered my courage and told her my story and how I came to be on her doorstep.

“I know,” she said softly. “Your daddy told me.”

“He thinks I’m a sissy,” I said.

“What do you think you are?” asked my aunt.

So we talked about it and I told her everything that I’d kept locked in my heart until then.

“It’s okay,” she said when I finished and it was the best thing she could have said.

Christmas that first year with aunt Sissy was fun. She had a daughter older than me away at university who came home for the holidays and with aunt Sissy’s husband Roger we all decorated the tree and had a grand time! 

It was the best Christmas I ever remember!

You brought me books that year, Santa, including one that became a favorite, James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl.

I suppose I identified a bit with James.

But then, don’t we all?

After awhile living with my aunt and her family I sort of forgot about Boris and the art teacher and the things I’d done with them.

I became a boy again. 

Aunt Sissy encouraged me in my drawing. She took me to the rodeo where for the first time ever I drew a live horse! She looked at my drawing and said my mother would have been proud of me.

Boy! That was a great day! 

Over the years aunt Sissy and uncle Roger became like my mother and father.

They loved me and treated me with kindness.

And I was a good son to them, making them proud mostly. 

I left Texas when I was nineteen, and went to New York where I hoped to become an artist.

“Don’t go, Rusty,” said aunt Sissy. “Stay with us and go to school here. You can go to New York later if you still want to.”

But I had wandering feet.

“I have to try,” I answered. “The bright lights of the big city beckon. I love you and uncle Roger and I’ll be forever thankful, but something calls me and I have to go.”

To be continued…