My mom and my grandma don’t speak much. Sometimes years go by and they don’t talk because they’re in some stupid fight. Three years of silence because my mom didn’t fire a housekeeper we had that Grandma said was rude to her, back when my mom and dad were still married. Another two years they don’t talk when Grandma chops off our dog’s beard (he looks like a clam head until it grows back).
         When my mom and dad divorce, my mom won’t discuss it with my grandma because she says divorce is enough stress without adding her mother into the mix, and Grandma gets it into her head that my mom’s a psycho. Grandma talks to a lawyer about taking me away from her, and leaves my mom messages, saying she’s crazy and needs help. My mom about busts a gut until my uncle, who lives across the Pacific in Hawaii, calls and straightens out the whole mess.
         Grandma’s old and cranky, set in her ways. She thinks the world’s trying to rip her off and you can’t convince her otherwise. She’s cool with me, though. She makes the best food and talks about her life, and we go through her stacks of National Geographic magazines. We watch movie videos, old and new, and play Hearts for hours. She’s amazingly smart for an old lady, knows all kinds of history and classical music and Greek myths.
         She likes to pull out old jewels that she keeps in velvet bags hidden in her wall safe; strands of creamy pearls, jade dragons, dainty, old wrist watches, rings and earrings and bracelets with sapphires or diamonds or pearls; and a solid gold, little hand that belonged to her father. “These will be your mother’s one day,” she tells me, fondling them with gnarled, bluish fingers.
         She gives me money to help her in her garden and now that I have my license, she lets me drive her white Caddy to the market. When we see any of her neighbors she says, real serious, “This is my grandson, William,” even though I’ve met them like, a million times ever since I was born. She holds me up for inspection like I’m a diamond ring.
         My mom is, of course, my mom: all business and grades and suspicion. My dad pays her enough alimony so she doesn’t have to work and she sees this as her opportunity to become a writer, so she takes writing classes and spends all her time writing stories. If she’s not writing a story, she’s a space cadet thinking about one, which is fine since it keeps her out my hair. 
         My grandma becomes desperate with curiosity to read my mother’s stories and offers me five dollars to steal a few for her, but I say no and she gives me the money anyway. They’re in a Speaking Phase so my Grandma asks my mother if she could please read one or two and my mother says, “No, you won’t like them,” so then my grandma says, “I won’t say a word. I’ll just read them and I won’t say a word.” So my mom agrees to this and gives her a few stories because I think deep down she wants to show Grandma what a great writer she is. Then she’s asking me, “Has Grandma read my stories? Has she said anything?” and I’m hoping Grandma will like her stuff.
         But my Grandma tells me that my mom’s just spinning her wheels and wasting money on writing classes that should be going for my education. She must say the same thing to my mom because I overhear my mom on the phone telling her, “You said you’d keep your mouth shut. I don’t want your opinions and what do you know about contemporary short fiction anyway?” This must really get my Grandma squawking because my mother hangs up and we usher in a new Non-Speaking Phase.
           It goes on for months and Grandma gets all depressed. She pumps me about my mother: is she still writing, is she dating, is she fat? Her eyes are getting filmy and sometimes she seems confused for a moment for two, forgets my name or what we’re doing.
         I go to her house every week and when I get home my mom asks, “How’s Grandma? How’d she look, what’d she say, is she okay?”
         “You should call her,” I say. “How would you like it if I were to treat you like this when you’re eighty years old?”
          “You’d have no reason,” she says. “I’m nothing like her.”
          “You’re exactly like her,” I say. “Stubborn.”
           She lets that pass and says, “I cannot get along with her.”
         “Grandma’s old. She can’t change. It’s up to you to be the grown-up, the mature one,” I say. She looks at me with squinty eyes because she knows she used to say that to me, about my dad, how she always had to be the grown-up, the mature one, when it came to dealing with him.
         “This is between me and Grandma,” she says. “Butt out.”
         My mom goes to an all-day writing seminar one Saturday and I go to Grandma’s with my mom’s video of Reservoir Dogs that Grandma tries to turn off but I make her watch it with me while she keeps saying, how disgusting, how sick, but her filmy eyes are glued to the screen, and we eat feta cheese quiche and a huge bowl of grapes.
         I get home before my mother does and sit like a blob, sleepy from eating so much, dusk falling, thinking how sad my grandma is when she’s not speaking with my mom. When my mom walks in the door to where I’m sitting in the living room in the semi-darkness I’m about to make a pitch for her to call Grandma and make-up before it’s too late but instead, for some reason, I say, “Grandma’s dead.”
         Her eyes go huge and she covers her mouth with her hand. “Oh no,” she says, bending over like her stomach hurts. “Oh no—my sweet mama—how? When? Where is she? Where is my mother—I need to talk to her—oh no, oh no,” and then she’s wailing.
         I get caught up in her reaction and start bawling too. She could be dead though she was fine when I left her an hour ago, so I’m hugging my mother and we’re both crying and she’s shaking like a jackhammer and saying what a stubborn idiot she is and how she should’ve been the grown-up and called her and made her last days happy because she knew deep in her heart how much Grandma really loved her and deep in her heart she really loved Grandma. I’m still crying but more now because I know she’s going to kill me for putting her through this and I’ll probably be grounded for the rest of my life and never, ever will I be able to drive her car and then the phone rings, and my mom, still blubbering, picks it up and it’s my grandma asking to talk to me.
         “Mama? Mama? Is that you?” my mother says, blinking, her face blotchy red and gooey with snot. I try to slink away but she grabs me by the ear. “Are you okay? Willie said—Willie said you were sick.”
         Well, I get grounded (only for a week), but my mother and Grandma talk every day on the phone and now my mom and I go see Grandma together and she stuffs us with her good, good food and we ooh and aah all over her jewels and disgust her with our favorite movies.

Alicia Gifford lives, loves and writes her heart out in Southern California.  She is an emerging writer who has published in or has upcoming work in The Mississippi Review wEB, The Phone Book, NFG Magazine, and Pig Iron Malt.  She has a brilliant son in college, two wheaten terriers and loves a man named Gene.