The Great Corn Caper

The Great Corn Caper

Most people don't get the chance to have a relationship with their great-grandmother,

but I was lucky. Probably it was because of my birth position in the family – being the

oldest child of the oldest child of her oldest child.

Her name was Pearl. I called her Mammaw. I have a photo of her playing with me when I

was a year old. She was 60. Even then she looked the same as I recall her looking for

years after. OLD!  Silver white hair, thick glasses, and an aura of fatigue about

her.  Pearl was quiet, demure, a proper church lady who wouldn't say a bad word if you

pinched her arm.

From my earliest memories, Mammaw was always standing over an oven or a sink,

wearing an apron. There were freshly baked, latticed fruit pies cooling by the window. 

She rarely smiled. If she did, it was a fake smile. I could see that, even when I was eight years old.

I didn't want to stay in the kitchen with her because after you got done talking about the food,

and maybe school, there wasn’t much to say. You weren’t going to get a piece of that

pie until after dinner!

So, I would go find Pampaw, who would be more interesting to hang out with, even

though he kind of rambled a lot and talked baby-talk to the parakeet.

I remember Mammaw smelled good like pear soap. Pampaw’s scent was of pipe smoke

and his “special drink”. Occasionally, I would see him take out a metal flask and have a

quick swallow of whatever was in there. 

“Don’t’ tell my girl, Pearl,” he said, but I knew she knew.

One day, my mom left me to stay with Mammaw. I was a little worried about what I would

do all day. As it turned out, she had kitchen duties for me -- do the dishes and snap

green beans. Afterward, she said we must go out in the backyard and have some

lemonade. She made frosty glasses of the best lemonade ever made, and we went out

and sat on a little bench in her rose garden.

“Want to go see Donna Duck?” she asked.

“You have your own duck?”

“Yes, Donna has been with us a long time. She lives out here in the swamp.”

We walked a little way through the trees to a pond, and there was Donna Duck who

got all excited and started quacking and following us around, sort of limping.

Mammaw said that Donna loved corn so she would open up a can of it, now and then, as

a treat. Whenever Donna had corn, she would quack a lot, like she was overjoyed.

“Isn’t that corny?” Mammaw said, almost deadpan. I had never heard her tell a joke.

Then, she asked me if I wanted to go somewhere with her to get some fresh corn. So

off we go, in the car. I didn’t know she could even drive. It was a 1949 Plymouth

and Mammaw was a slow, careful driver. She took us to the outskirts of San Antonio

Texas, to an exit onto a dirt road where there were rows and rows of tall cornstalks. It

was August and she said that, here, “the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye.”

“Donna needs some fresh corn, don't you think?” she asked.

“Yes ma'am," I said. Everyone in Texas said “ma'am” to their grandmas. 

Mammaw stopped the car, looking around to see if anyone was coming down the dirt

road, and told me to go grab a couple of those ears of corn.

I think I just sat there, in the car. I didn’t know how to do that – grab some corn. So,

Mammaw got out of the car, paper sack in hand. She showed me how to stand by the

cornstalk, put my hand near the bottom of the corn, and my other hand at the top, and

bend/twist to snap the cob off. She snapped a few and I did a couple, and we stuffed

them into the sack. In the meantime, her eyes were darting like somebody might come

see who's out in their cornfield, stealing corn.

But nobody came and we took off, and suddenly Mammaw was driving like greased

lightning down that dirt road. I felt like a real criminal, and I asked why didn't we just get

some corn at the grocery store?

“Because fresh cooked corn right off the stalk is the best taste on God’s green earth,

and Donna deserves the very best and because Donna is going to die.”

So, there we were on a secret mission, to get the dying Donna Duck some prime corn

cobs, the very best taste that nature has to offer in a Texas cornfield at the peak of the

season.

We got home and shucked that corn, and I loved the feeling of peeling those silky fine

threads. Mammaw plopped it in a pot of boiling water with a little sugar. And when it

came out, she put butter and salt on it, and then she let it cool, and then she cut the

corn off the cobs, and we took it out to Donna Duck who wasn't doing very well at the

moment. She was sort of a lame duck, and I mean, that, in every sense of the word. Her

feathers were drab and messy, and she waddled with an even worse limp than before.

Mammaw asked if I wanted to feed the corn to Donna and so I did, right from my hand.

She must have been the happiest duck in Texas. Mammaw looked happy, too, because

she perked up a little bit after the corn feast, when Donna quacked up and fluffed up her

feathers. That was the first time I recall seeing my great-grandmother smile a genuine

smile. She told me not to tell Pampaw about where we got the fresh corn. "Don't tell anyone."

When we got back to the house, Pampaw was sitting in his porch chair and I could tell

he had just had another swig of his special drink, because I could smell it. He asked

what was on for dinner, and Mammaw said, "Corn on the cob!”

“I hope somebody cuts it for me," said Pampaw, "because I don't have any good teeth left.

Donna Duck can chew better than I can!”

After dinner my mom came to take me home and I was kind of sad to leave. I had

gotten to know my great-grandmother and found out she had an actual personality. I felt

like her sidekick, her accomplice on a caper.  She even winked at me when I left.

Two decades later, Mammaw was living in a nursing home. I heard from family that she had not

spoken a word, not a single word, in seven whole years -- because she was angry. She was

angry because her daughters had put her in a nursing home. When I travelled to Texas, I

visited her there. Her thin hair was a brighter white, and wrinkly skin sagged in bags from

her arms. She sat silently, sadly, and barely looked at anyone, including me.

I said, “Mammaw, do you remember Donna Duck and our great corn caper?”

Upon hearing those words, my great-grandmother finally gazed at me and said the first

words she had apparently said in seven years.

“Ohhh shit,” she said, smiling.

And everyone was astonished.