Brunch Between the Cremation and Funeral

(TW: Themes and mentions of child abuse, disproportionate punishment of a child)

Jayme always knew the reason her mother and grandmother never got along was because they were so similar.

So when Grandmother Jemima died, Jayme and her brother Jamie had shared puzzled looks over the outpouring of grief that came from thier mother. From thier Aunt and Uncle as well.

From the stories they had all heard growing up, Grandmother Jemima didn’t sound like the kind of mother to be mourned.

Memories related to Jayme and all the other grandchildren of pants being pulled down or skirts being lifted up in the middle of the grocery store in front of everyone to get a spanking. The account of Jemima going into Aunt Julia’s classroom and slapping her across the face, before dressing her down as everyone in class looked on.

There was the story Jemima told herself, of the house punishment for bed wetting was to go to school the next day with the wet little underpants pinned to the guilty party’s shirt, and she claimed it worked after the third time.

Jayme could not understand how her mother’s face had gotten so red that last day at the nursing home. The way her mother had said softly, “I’m here, Mama.” Or how Aunt Julia had to leave the room to weep in the hallways.

She couldn’t understand how just an hour before, at the cremation, that her uncle, who from what Jayme had always pierced together was the least favorite child, needed to be held up by his sisters as they processed the fact that in the next room thier mother’s body was being turned into the 3.5 liters of ash that was then swiftly delivered to them.

It was bizarre getting Grandmother Jemima’s ashes so quickly. Or perhaps not? Jayme wasn’t sure how these things worked, but knew that being organized down to the letter was something very important to Jemima.

It would be just like her grandmother to have everything so organized and orderly to the letter that the cremation, ash delivery, and funeral being on the same day only made sense.

It was in this way that she couldn’t help reflecting, at brunch, that this was one other way her mother and grandmother had been alike.

Her mother, Jemima Junior, or Jay, had started smoking. Jayme had no idea if this was an old habit she picked up in her grief, or if Jay had simply thought, “Well, this is what you do once you are an adult orphan.”

The truth was Jay had started smoking soon after her second child was born. The first grandson, a gift for her mother that as far as she was concerned earned her all the cigarettes she had missed out on.

The cigarettes, the parties she declined to go to, the wine coolers in friend’s soccer bags after a game she refused; because she knew her mother’s eyes had a tendency to pop out of her head and roll around.

Jemima told her children that was how she knew what sin they had committed when they were all very little, and sure enough later that day J.J. had heard a rolling sound on the hardwood floor of that old house.

A heavy deep rolling, that in adult retrospect of course couldn't have been a pair of eyes, but at the time, her imagination had been strong and the evidence so very convincing.

It was funny now though. Her mother’s usual style. She couldn’t be just like all the other parents who said they had eyes in the back of their head. No, she went the extra mile to pop them out and snoop on her little hooligans.

Sixteen years ago, Jay would get so heated thinking about all this. The tricks, the exaggerations, the punishments. Everything that had been the sum of Jemima Kilborne, all sharp edges of her, would have Jay grinding her teeth until she was sure her tongue was running over cracks in her molars.

But now it just made her sad. She hoped she wasn’t like that. She hoped that she hadn’t made herself so distant from her children that she had to scare them into obedience, or well, it was more than that, wasn’t it?

Abuse, sure. No question of that. Jay and her siblings had all understood that early on. But it was more, wasn’t it?

She had always known of Jemima’s childhood during the depression. The story of being sold to a farming family, the awful things that happened there.

Jay's therapist said that many of that generation had predisposed conditions that were expedited by the trauma. Starvation, horrors of abandonment. Of course a child would develop a “Me first!” attitude. They'd have to, to survive.

That was what Jay was scared of most. It was what she cornered poor Fred about all the time. Especially the last few years with Jayme and Jamie getting into their adolescence.

What if it was the DNA of her mother fighting to get out of her? Something that she had marinated in in her mother's womb decades ago. Something inevitable. Something just there.

The last time she had seen her therapist she mentioned one of the last times her mother had been coherent.

Jemima had been inconsolable. It had been a list of reasons leading to the current meltdown, and by then Jay had been so used to it. It didn’t make it easier.

Once it was over, the nurse had cleaned the broken glass and spilled water, and Jay was wrapping her mother’s foot: Jemima had muttered something.

Laying back in her chair, arms crossed over a frail frame that had once been so hardy, her eyes looking out the window, Jay heard her something that had brought tears to her eyes.

“I’m sorry for being this way.”

How much reframing J.J. had done with this. She couldn’t tell Julia or Jason about this, they wouldn’t want to hear it.

‘This way. What was this way, Mama? How you are now? Or how you had always been?’ She thought at this brunch before the funeral.

Unable to eat anything, staring into her black coffee like you would into a crystal ball, what part of her mother had been hard to see all this time?

She thought about a little girl, in the middle of nowhere, on a farm wondering why no one seemed to care about her suffering. She thought about a young woman, who wanted just enough to ensure she didn’t need to rely on anyone else.

She thought of that same young woman, resenting herself for being so stupid as to fall in love with a man who would eventually leave her and their children in a large house.

She thought of an old woman, having to surrender the personal independence of using the toilet on her own, which had always been the one thing she had. If she had nothing else.

She thought about the girl across from her. Who was so unlike herself as a girl. Who she knew for a fact snuck out of the house, drank, came home once reeking of not just strawberry wine but the river on the edge of town.

The girl who she was most cetianly sure was either already having sex, or starting to move in that direction.

And she thought how she was already different from Jemima, for how she was handling all this. And she wondered then, when it came time for her daughter and son to sit in a diner for brunch, before her funeral, what would they think of her?

Would they find themselves staring into their cups of black coffee, like you would a crystal ball?

Fred reached across the table to hand his wife a napkin. She didn’t seem to care about the smudges mascara right now. She would eventually. He’d help her reapply it before the funeral, he had done it before.

The first time was when he found her crying at a friend's party.

That night, stumbling outside intending to throw up, instead he saw her. She was sitting on the edge of the balcony, her jacket wrapped around her, looking so heartbroken and fragile; he could say that was the only time he had ever been truly, sobered up so fast.

He asked what was wrong.

“I just talked to my Mom.” She answered.

The thing about Fred was that both of his parents had been so open in their crying, he had grown up used to making things all better for other people.

He had often been told by girls it was what made him different from other boys. It made him a choice cut, not that it did him any good, as far as dating. But it had somehow spread around campus that he was a guy safe, reliable, and as a result he found his girl-shyness quickly evaporating.

Fred didn’t even mind that he wasn’t getting laid. He supposed he was different from some guys he knew in that way. The chaste touching, and the warmth from a girl greeting him like an old friend before running off to class was enough.

He was still getting attention at the end of the day. And anyways, he liked getting to swoop in and make someone feel better. It was magical.

So when he opened Jay’s purse, wiped the stains from her face and reapplied her mascara, it was all business as usual to him. Fred the Great, coming to bestow his quarry of warmth from that big heart of his.

Then he saw the look on Jay’s face.

She asked what was wrong with him, fired off an expletive, snatched her purse back, and stormed off into the night of a college neighborhood.

He ran after her, because he was worried about her. It was dark, and for all he knew she was just as drunk as he was. And though he couldn’t remember how he had managed to quickly get in her good graces by the time he walked her back to her sorority.

By letting her rant about her mother.

Jemima Kilborne. From that time on she had been such a fascinating figure to him.

It had been fascinating, seeing Jay turn from the strong, chin raised woman, to a quiet little girl when in the company of her mother.

She wilted. Actually shrank, under Jemima’s roof. Her skin became paper thin, easily bruised. Quite often, a phone call would end in some agitation.

More than once Fred suggested going no contact. Jay never agreed, and he tried to understand. For one thing, Jemima seemed loving to all the grandchildren. Permissive and kind, which Fred had to admit, Jemima did have a large capacity for kindness.

When his father had passed it was Jemima who insisted on covering the funeral costs. She had send flowers, and askedhim questions in a gentle tone he didn’t think she was capable of about his father.

This kindness was the same as her offering to help a father with a baby go into the women’s restroom at a restaurant, because she knew the men's room probably didn’t have a baby changing table.

Some hidden reserve she hadn’t had for her children. If she had fallen into any of her old ways with Jayme or Jamie, he knew then all bets were off.

But it never came.

If it was possible for his wife to move beyond the past, to continue to put up with her mother, who was Fred to say otherwise?

At the same time, he noticed the grandchildren seemed to be not at all affected.

Just at their table alone Jayme is on her phone, and Jamie is reading a book while trying to not get eggs on it.

For all the kindness, the spoiling, the attention; you couldn’t erase who you were. You can’t just start over, while still keeping people distant.

Just as Fred was putting an arm around Jay there was a clang. Jamie had dropped the butter knife on the floor, and went to put it in the dirty dish tray.

As he did so, Jamie wondered when the funeral was. He knew he was probaly told so, a few times, so he couldn’t ask again.

If he did then he’d have people bellyaching about how he was told a million times, and going, ‘How can you not remember?!’

It was easy to forget something when you didn’t care. He and Jayme had talked about that last night, and even now, he wondered how much anyone here really cared.

Grandma was mean. Really mean, and had been even meaner to Mom, and Uncle Jason and Aunt Julia. They had all heard the stories a million times, and it was a little weird how after all that everyone was acting sad she was gone.

All the times mom talked about what grandma did to her, over and over again, until it was hard to feel sorry for her; why was she crying now?

Jamie understood intellectually it wasn’t that simple. But still. It almost felt like Mom and everyone was acting sad just because they felt it was how they were supposed to act.

Like that last day in the nursing home. They way Mom had started to get all emotional and upset. It felt like a performance. Like when you act a certain way because you think if you do, then you might actually feel it.

Like, Jamie could remember when he was seven and had accidentally knocked Lola over with a bouncy ball when they all played kickball. She was fine, but everyone was making such a fuss over her, and him for doing it, he started to feel hot in his face, even though he knew he shouldn’t.

Then he saw Grandma coming down the porch. He knew she’d be mad, so he thought if he started crying, and acting like he felt way more bad than he did, then maybe she wouldn’t make a big deal of it.

“No, Grandma, I’m okay!” Lola was saying. “Really! It didn’t even hurt.”

It wasn’t until Grandma was dragging Jamie back to the house that he realized everyone got real quiet.

When they got into the den, Jamie had stopped fake crying. He figured she didn’t believe it. She got stool and told him to stand on it.

He did, saying he was sorry again, he didn’t think he kicked it that hard. Grandma told him to shut up.

He felt his shirt pulled off him, over his head. And before he could react, his shorts and underwear were pulled down and she had him step out of them. She made him stand there, hands to his side for he wasn’t sure how long, before she got a ruler and spanked him. Hard.

His parents never spanked him. His parents never made him stand naked like that in the middle of a room either. Even if it was empty, the side window was open. He kept thinking someone would walk by and see him, but Grandma wouldn’t let him get dressed.

Jamie never told his parents about this. There was a feeling, he felt even then without having the words, that this wasn’t something to talk about.

It didn’t matter now, he figured. She was dead, she hadn’t punished any of them in years, far as he knew. She hadn’t really had anything to do with them before she got sick, so really, there wasn’t much for Jamie to personally feel sad about.

He didn’t blame his Mom though. She was sensitive.

Grandma was still her mother, at the end of the day. Mayb

e at that moment, his mom was pretty sad about it. Maybe she was really missing her mom.

Then after the funeral, tomorrow even, she’ll wake up and it’ll all be over.