Happy Father's Day to all the men who bless their children with beautiful memories. My grandfather was one of my favorite people ever! He let me hang with him despite my inability to keep my mouth shut! lol! Here's one of the stories I wrote about just such an occasion. Enjoy!
When I was little my grandfather, affectionately known as Trap, either for his pool playing skills or his skill with the ladies, I forgot which one, and I were two peas in a pod! Wherever he went I’d go whether it was a worksite, (he was a master plasterer), or one of he and granny’s rental properties, or the record store they owned on busy Mack Avenue. Heck I even hung out with him and the fella’s at the bar next door to the record store while they drank brandy and talked about the fine ladies whose houses they’d worked on. “Man Mrs. Washington sure is some wasted vanilla” that meant she was light skin but she wasn’t cute. If she were a prime piece of chocolate that meant she was brown skin and good looking or “Fine” as they would call it. There I’d sit on the bar’s counter with my ruffled socks and shorts, t-shirt and pigtails munching from the bag of chips and drinking pop (We call it pop in Detroit but I think you guys may call it Soda), eating the bribe I’d received after promising my grandfather that I wouldn’t tell grandma where we’d been. Only to break that vow as soon as we walked in the door and she’d ask, “Where y’all been?” “Hanging with Mr. Jack”, I’d say, still munching on my chips and the argument between granny and granddad would begin. But not before granddad would bend down and say, “I thought you said you wouldn’t tell on granddad. That’s ok you’re still granddaddy’s baby”. Off I’d go upstairs to where my mom and I lived. That was our summer routine until one Saturday.
On this Saturday my mom and I were at the Laundromat. While playing near the door I saw granddad’s green caprice headed down the alley with a lady who wasn’t granny in the car. “Momma, look its granddad riding down the alley with some lady in the car” I’d said just in time for my mother to raise her head and get a glimpse of him. “That’s not granddad”, she’d said, “Yes it is!” I’d said. I’d been in that car enough to know it when I saw it. “That was granddad. I don’t know that lady but that was granddad”, at that point mother knew that she couldn’t convince me otherwise so she changed her tactic. “Ok that was granddad. You better not tell granny you saw him or you’re gonna get a spanking”, Wow! This was serious! I was gonna get a spanking for saying I saw granddad? “Ok, I said”, granddad’s bribes sure were better than mommas I remember thinking! Maybe next time I won’t tell on him. I continued to play as my mother finished laundry. Later that afternoon I’m riding my bike when my grandma stops me, “Have you seen granddad” she asked me. “Huh?” I say as I feverishly try to think of an answer. Shoot my mom always said not to lie because that was bad but then she also told me not to tell grandma that I’d seen granddad when I had, but she never said what to tell her if she asked.
So what do I say? If I say no, I’m lying and that’s bad but if I say yes I’m disobeying my mother and she’s already told me what my punishment would be. All the time that I’m thinking about what to say I’m squirming on my bike and scratching my head, “Shan, Look at me!” Shan is my nickname, “Have you seen granddad?” I couldn’t lie looking in my grandma’s face, “Yes I saw him riding through the alley with some lady in the car”. “What?” Maybe I should’ve left out the lady part but it all came out so fast I couldn’t stop it. “I saw him riding down the alley”, I repeated, this time I left out the part about the lady but grandma remembered because she ended by saying “With some lady in the car? I’m gonna kill him”. “Don’t kill him I said because my momma will know I told you what I saw and will spank me.” “Your momma’s not gonna spank you and I’m not gonna kill him but he’d better have a good explanation” she said as she walked away. I put my bike up. Riding it just didn’t seem like fun anymore especially with my stomach in knots now that I’d told grandma what I had been told not to. That night every time I heard the door open and close, I jumped wondering if my secret would be told. I wondered did granddad feel like this before we entered the house every time he told me not to tell. My stomach hurt, I was sweating, and my hands were clammy, “What’s wrong my mother had asked?” “Nothing” I said. Then the door opened and all we could hear was grandma yelling out the question, “What the hell were you doing in the alley with some woman”, I swallowed and looked over at my mother who looked at me with narrowed eyes and gritted teeth as she curled her fingers and snarled, “Come here”. “Didn’t I tell you not to tell grandma you saw granddad?” “Yeah you did but you also told me not to lie” I thought to myself. While granny and granddad were yelling downstairs I was yelling upstairs, I got that spanking momma promised, It turns out that granddad had taking a side job as a jitney, (a quasi transportation service provided at grocery stores), hence why he was driving down the alley with some unknown lady in the car. He didn’t tell grandma because he didn’t want her taking his earnings as she did his other paycheck. Granny was worse than the IRS when it came to money. I don’t think what I did that day was bad but I regret it because it marked the end of my innocence, so to speak. I knew from that point on that the truth was relative. People only wanted you to tell the truth if it was what they wanted to hear, not if it was in fact the truth. That day a lie ceased being the big bad no-no that it had once been. It had become just as viable as the truth and I began to use it at will!
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