Read Online I'M NOT DEAD: The Journals of Charles Dudley Vol.1 by Artie Cabrera - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Artie Cabrera
Tags: Fantasy
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believed in me when no one else did. I wasn’t like the others who only called her on Christmas when they lived minutes away.
I loved my grandmother, and in many ways we were much alike, which is why we stuck together, true and through.
She confided in me how she knew what dipshits my uncles and father were when she and I smoked pot on the porch together at night.
I did the shopping, the laundry, and the cleaning, and most importantly, I tended to her needs after I fired the home attendant for stealing the porcelain from Nana’s curio chest.
“‘Mr. Charlie, I do not know what you are tawkeeng, I don’t steel notheeng,” she claimed.
“Sure you don’t, bitch. Your bag wasn’t that loaded when you came into work this morning.”
I moved out of my parents’ house after mom died and in with Nana.
Nana, besieged by her illnesses, suffered multiple surgeries and the loss of her left eye and a portion of her esophagus. She needed me to fend off the vultures.
Where were my uncles or their heifer wives when I had to insert and suction out the prosthetic eye from Nana’s head? They were never the ones fishing for the dentures or the eyeball in saline that rolled around like an olive in brine. I was. They weren’t there when she had trouble eating or the ones who wiped her bottom when she had accidents or bedsores.
I was—Charlie was.
You would think good ol’ cancer would have deterred her from smoking, but Nana was still up to two packs a day. I would hide cigarettes from her; she would find them. I stopped buying cigarettes for her; she would have someone else buy them. Nana smoked so much she turned the furniture, walls, and the poodles into all shades of yellow and brown from the nicotine.
I found Nana dead on the cold bathroom floor on a Thursday morning, halfway through her business. I found her without her eye, teeth, and hairpiece, and her drawers down at her ankles by the toilet.
She had succumbed to the cancer after three years. One year longer than the doctors gave her.
It took my uncle Roger forty minutes from the time I made the call to get the seven blocks from his house to Nana’s. When he arrived, the paramedics were already rolling Nana out on the gurney to the ambulance.
There he was, “Yukon Dan” with his bad cop mustache, sipping on his coffee, smoking a cigarette, and entertaining the neighbors like the smug bastard he always was. “You had time to stop and get a cup of coffee, you stupid son of a bitch?” I asked. “You know your mother’s dead, right?”
I stormed back into the house to arrange for Nana’s cremation at Salvatore’s Funeral home the following afternoon and didn’t tell any of the relatives.
At 18, I inherited Nana’s home and her two 14-year old poodles, along with money I used for the mortgage and restoration. The Dudley children divided the rest among themselves, and I dropped out of school to go to work and support myself.
The poodles, Mimi and Bonnie, died from arthritis a year later. I had them cremated and then planted in the back with Nana’s ashes underneath the peach tree where the sunlight landed first in the morning.
Giving me the house was Nana’s way of saying thank you, and keeping her and her dogs by me was my way of saying it back.
I love you, Nana.
Charles
BUBBA
Friday, January 17 th , 2014
“Charlie, baby Stewart is not going to replace you; we still love you, Daddy and me, we still love you, you know that, right?” That was my mom giving me the horseshit a parent tells the firstborn to dispel any grief when the newborn arrives.
No, that’s cool, I thought. Let him get all the attention. It will keep you people off my ass anyways.
I knew my parents were assholes from an early age, and I didn’t mind playing second fiddle to the baby. I wasn’t jealous one bit. In fact, I was glad Stewart had become a diversion.
I didn’t need to constantly have the neurotic police running around after me and breathing
I loved my grandmother, and in many ways we were much alike, which is why we stuck together, true and through.
She confided in me how she knew what dipshits my uncles and father were when she and I smoked pot on the porch together at night.
I did the shopping, the laundry, and the cleaning, and most importantly, I tended to her needs after I fired the home attendant for stealing the porcelain from Nana’s curio chest.
“‘Mr. Charlie, I do not know what you are tawkeeng, I don’t steel notheeng,” she claimed.
“Sure you don’t, bitch. Your bag wasn’t that loaded when you came into work this morning.”
I moved out of my parents’ house after mom died and in with Nana.
Nana, besieged by her illnesses, suffered multiple surgeries and the loss of her left eye and a portion of her esophagus. She needed me to fend off the vultures.
Where were my uncles or their heifer wives when I had to insert and suction out the prosthetic eye from Nana’s head? They were never the ones fishing for the dentures or the eyeball in saline that rolled around like an olive in brine. I was. They weren’t there when she had trouble eating or the ones who wiped her bottom when she had accidents or bedsores.
I was—Charlie was.
You would think good ol’ cancer would have deterred her from smoking, but Nana was still up to two packs a day. I would hide cigarettes from her; she would find them. I stopped buying cigarettes for her; she would have someone else buy them. Nana smoked so much she turned the furniture, walls, and the poodles into all shades of yellow and brown from the nicotine.
I found Nana dead on the cold bathroom floor on a Thursday morning, halfway through her business. I found her without her eye, teeth, and hairpiece, and her drawers down at her ankles by the toilet.
She had succumbed to the cancer after three years. One year longer than the doctors gave her.
It took my uncle Roger forty minutes from the time I made the call to get the seven blocks from his house to Nana’s. When he arrived, the paramedics were already rolling Nana out on the gurney to the ambulance.
There he was, “Yukon Dan” with his bad cop mustache, sipping on his coffee, smoking a cigarette, and entertaining the neighbors like the smug bastard he always was. “You had time to stop and get a cup of coffee, you stupid son of a bitch?” I asked. “You know your mother’s dead, right?”
I stormed back into the house to arrange for Nana’s cremation at Salvatore’s Funeral home the following afternoon and didn’t tell any of the relatives.
At 18, I inherited Nana’s home and her two 14-year old poodles, along with money I used for the mortgage and restoration. The Dudley children divided the rest among themselves, and I dropped out of school to go to work and support myself.
The poodles, Mimi and Bonnie, died from arthritis a year later. I had them cremated and then planted in the back with Nana’s ashes underneath the peach tree where the sunlight landed first in the morning.
Giving me the house was Nana’s way of saying thank you, and keeping her and her dogs by me was my way of saying it back.
I love you, Nana.
Charles
BUBBA
Friday, January 17 th , 2014
“Charlie, baby Stewart is not going to replace you; we still love you, Daddy and me, we still love you, you know that, right?” That was my mom giving me the horseshit a parent tells the firstborn to dispel any grief when the newborn arrives.
No, that’s cool, I thought. Let him get all the attention. It will keep you people off my ass anyways.
I knew my parents were assholes from an early age, and I didn’t mind playing second fiddle to the baby. I wasn’t jealous one bit. In fact, I was glad Stewart had become a diversion.
I didn’t need to constantly have the neurotic police running around after me and breathing
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