In My Grandmother’s Kitchen

The other side of the story

I wrote recently about a conversation that occurred when I was a child. My maternal family was assembled in my grandmother’s kitchen when a typical Sunday family get-together morphed into a conversation about murdering me for being a witch.

The vast majority of the comments were empathetic and supportive (or the people writing them thought they were). Many felt that there was no reason for me to continue to have contact with my grandmother who had initiated the debate. Of all the many people who were in that kitchen all those years ago, she’s the only one I still speak to.

My conflict within over whether to continue our relationship has its roots in that moment — that’s where it was born. But its current incarnation is why this has grown between us like a pernicious weed.

Yet, as in all stories, there is another side to this one…

I’m the lucky one

I never fully appreciated how lucky I was to survive my childhood. Decades of my family telling me I wasn’t being abused even as its members stabbed, strangled, and drowned me forever altered my mind. I’ll never know who I could have been without their abuse — one of the greatest tragedies of my life.

That was my nuclear family. My extended family (on the maternal side) is complicit in that they saw, heard, or knew of it and chose to do nothing. It wasn’t their place to get between a parent and her children according to their belief system. I think none of them was willing to take responsibility for three kids who weren’t theirs, which is what they would be expected to do if they intervened.

In the maelstrom of darkness and violence, Grandma became my port in the storm. Like the rest of the family, Grandpa didn’t want to raise another set of children. Grandpa and Grandma had an old fashioned relationship: one in which Grandpa was the final authority. But Grandma is the strongest-willed woman you’ll ever meet. She fought to give us as much love and support as possible.

In my grandmother’s kitchen

Growing up I spent Sundays at my grandparents’ house — everyone did. It’s not uncommon here in the Southwest to have a large family gathering weekly. We’d grill and swim and play games — badminton and croquet on the grassy part of the backyard. Inside, Grandma would play card games like Go Fish! and memory with the kids while making side dishes or snacks.

She sat me and Desi down at the table one afternoon and taught us how to play rummy. I was four years old. It became a default for us. We both loved the game and sitting around with nothing to do but talk drives us both crazy. I spent decades at that table shuffling and dealing cards.

After my parents divorced, Grandma started having me over for Saturday night sleepovers (Grandpa was not pleased; they shouted the house down, but Grandma can be unbelievably stubborn). We would turn on Nick-at-Night and watch classic TV shows like I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

She would take me into the kitchen, and I would help her assemble everything to make popcorn. I pulled the old air popcorn machine from the back-bottom of the corner cabinet cause it was easy for me to wiggle into; she would grab the seeds and the butter. Then she’d lift me onto the counter where we’d measure everything out and turn on the monstrously loud machine.

Popcorn on sleepovers was Grandma’s only exception to the “No Food in the Living Room!” rule. We’d put the lot into a giant metal bowl and share. I stayed up as late as my little exhausted body would let me, eventually drifting off while watching Mork try to blend in with humans only to wake the next morning magically transported to the spare bed. The sunlight and birds chirping in the window made me feel like I’d woken in one of the old shows or maybe a cartoon until the smell of breakfast hit my stomach and then it was right back to Grandma’s kitchen for food, puzzles, and love.

My mother refused to celebrate me as a person. Something I sadly internalized. Even the (now dead) name she constructed for me after my birth was designed to be a dig at my father’s ego — her coup de grâce to win the fight they’d been having during the delivery. She only celebrated my birth if she was forced to, and even then, only as much as she was expected to for appearances sake.

She couldn’t “forget” or skip it because two of my cousins had the exact same birthday — there was already going to be a party at Grandma’s, it would be too weird and horribly obvious if I was omitted.

In my early years, Mom would make a triple-tier cake: Brandon’s was the base as he was the eldest, I was the middle, and Ashley got the littlest cake at the top all to herself as she was the baby. It was fun while it lasted. My uncle was killed by a drunk driver just before my parents divorced. Ashley was his step-daughter and her mom found it too hard to be around us after that. Brandon’s parents moved them out into the middle of the desert — too far away for family Sundays and most other celebrations.

In the void that followed, Grandma stepped up. She had been teaching me to bake in that kitchen from the time I could read a recipe (when I was three). She would call first to see what my birthday plans were. I would tearfully tell her that I didn’t have any. Desi was going to her best friend’s party, and I was not allowed to come because Katy’s mom didn’t want it also being my birthday to distract attention from her daughter.

Grandma would come get me. She’d take me shopping for presents I could pick out — a cute outfit and a book usually. Then we’d go back to her kitchen, just the two of us, and bake a German chocolate cake. She made sure I knew that it was my mother who was broken and not me. She always, always wished me a” Happy Birthday!” and told me she loved me.

Teaching me to be a better human

My grandmother is responsible for the best of me. Not entirely, there were a couple other shining lights who guided me through the darkness, but none who endured as she did. Grandma was my North Star leading me where I needed to go.

She taught me to give back to the community and that opening myself to the experiences of others can expand my own horizons. We volunteered for M.A.D.D. together years after my uncle had been killed. It opened my eyes to the humanity of those who had been vilified absolutely by my mother and taught me about empathy on a whole new level.

While my sister was out having far too many sexual experiences for her age and my brother was nurturing what would be his lifelong addiction to drugs, Grandma (and Grandpa) let me tag along with them on Friday nights to their dance hall. They paid my dues each time and I spent that time connecting with the generations above me and filling in as a partner wherever needed. I learned to dance and move with joy because of her.

She countered Mom’s abuses wherever she could. When Mom had me sleeping on wooden slats, Grandma spent hundreds of dollars buying me a bed (no one had ever spent that much money on me in my whole life; the loudest counter to Mom’s favorite chant: “You’re worthless!” I could ever have received). When Mom started starving me as “punishment,” Grandma would send me home with food. When my clothes were too small and tattered, she took me shopping and bought me what I needed (including my first bra).

How could I even think of abandoning her?

I’m not going to downplay the killing conversation — I can’t, my body won’t let me. It was horrifically traumatic — all the more so for having occurred in my safe space, initiated by one of the few people I trusted not to hurt me. I would just let it lie, as I have done for decades. But in the last few years, whenever I see her, she breaks our no-gods truce and it rises up inside me, hijacking my senses and activating all the religious trauma that followed.

I think I have to see her again, even if it’s just once. Otherwise, the last conversation we had together that culminated with her desperate, eleventh hour efforts at conversion will be our ending, and I just don’t think I could live with that. The thing that stops me is the fear that our next encounter will simply be a repeat of the past, and how in the hell am I supposed to handle that?

© Maevyn Frey 2024

Maevyn Frey is a neurodivergent wordsmith with a passion for justice and equality. If you’d like to support her writing, you can leave her a tip on ko-fi.

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