One Missed Call

Again, this morning, the blinking light that proves I try to always keep the phone as far away from me as possible. This is paired, I will graciously admit, with the recognition and appreciation that most of those I love in life don't do so. Your phone is there when I need you.

One missed call: Lala Home.

It's nearly impossible to express how anxious this makes me. When I tell friends I've gone over a year without calling Lala because I was scared, they can hardly believe it. Scared of your poor old grandmother, who odds are will die sooner rather than later? They don't actually ask me what kind of a granddaughter I am but the inflection says it all: there seems to be something wrong with you.

(Recently my mother told me about a frienemy from work who, in response to my mom expressing how scared she is daily about the prospect of calling Lala, said, "You have to call your mother, Rosita. She's so old. When my grandmother died I felt like such a good person because I'd called her every day for that last year. She died knowing how much I loved her and was there for her."

When Mom reports this to me I tell her, "This bitch's grandmother dies and all she can think of is how good she feels for calling her. Jesus! She's a Republican, right?"

"Right," my mom said. See what I mean about these people? You just can't include them in any rationale discussions about real life.)

This is Lala we're talking about here. And yes, I'm damned well scared.

Formerly this fear had much to do with what you'd expect, if you know anything about Lala: she's the world's number one martyr (the homophonic qualities of mother/martyr didn't escape me even as a small kid when I first heard my mom use the word in reference to her own mom, but I was confused until I learned the real word later, because my actual mother is the farthest thing from it. It took me maybe fifteen years to figure out motherhood was extricable from martrydom.). Martyrs, as we all know, suffer most magnanimously in the world, and you may or not be the cause, but there is nothing you can do to help. In fact, your comments or suggestions or sympathy will likely only be hurtful, because: you can't know my pain--you've never felt this way--I should just die and get it over with.

This last one is the most difficult to deal with, obviously. It's already hard enough to talk to you, lady, and now I'm a grandma killer because I don't call enough? Lala has actually accused several of us of wanting her to die, which extends beyond martyrdom to sadomasochism. My uncle Carlos has more than once boomed into the receiver, "Well then do it then, dammit!" This would be heroic to me simply because the man has never not said exactly what he's thinking, and he's impossible to bully or even nudge, but the truth is these qualities make him a real asshole. So when I've heard he's said that to Lala I'll call her immediately and tisk-tisk, "I can't believe he said that to you!" And I say she's wonderful and my other mother and that I love her this much (imagine my arms spread apart, wings style), then I ask her to tell me a story. Telling stories is what Lala has always done best, besides perhaps living them, and when you ask her to do this on the phone or in person she has a new voice. She's alive, a young woman ready to take some bullshit down, or maybe raise somebody up. She's the furthest thing from a martyr.

But here's the problem: her stories are slowly dying. Not her stories, exactly, but her way of telling them. The narrative thread isn't coherent, in the middle of one story she goes onto the next one, characters appear as integral then are abandoned. It's difficult to keep up with, especially while talking on a cell phone with its perpetual two bars and while listening in Spanish, which requires super-attentive ears for a sometime-gringa like me.

Or maybe my interest in them is what's dying. It's difficult to care when the story doesn't make sense. I won't get into too many details for another fear--my family will read this and lose it--but Lala is convinced she's seen several of my sisters/cousins having sex with random men. Yes, just doing it on my mom's kitchen table, just doing it outside the window on top of the gardenias. How am I supposed to react to this? Aw, that's a shame my sisters have sex in the middle of the night while everyone's asleep, even though they have their own homes, even though they wouldn't even have any place to sleep there if they were spending the night.

Then she gets into the sanctimonious business. "Women respected themselves in my day!" Etc., etc., ignoring that she got knocked up at 17 and lived a loveless, abusive (though thankfully short-lived) marriage with that asshole.

What scares me is how whatever story she's telling works its way back to me. "You didn't do what they're doing at that age, did you?" No Lala, I didn't have sex when I was twenty. I didn't even have sex for the first time when I was fourteen with my first boyfriend, and I didn't even write about his purple thingy in my journal and mom and Kevin didn't even read it and lose their collective shits.

Atop all of this is the guilt she hasn't even placed upon me but which I'm expert at creating myself: as her storytelling skills are dying mine are just on the cusp of creation. For the first time in years I'm loving writing and taking it seriously (translation: I'd rather write than watch TV. My how I've grown!). Is she consciously leaving me this legacy? Did I cull anything from my phone calls with her over the years? Even when I tried not to listen was I prudently listening and learning? (At least one thing that's good about me: I'll happily give her or any loved one credit for any skill or accomplishment. To take full credit means I own it and I'm sorry--not ready for that responsibility yet.)

So when Lala starts off on these stories that aren't real, or have changed throughout the years (formerly my grandfather bit off her beauty mark that matches mine--how my mother forced her to get it surgically removed), I simply get bored. I find myself staring at the book titles and deciding which to read next, wondering when this torture will end. I'll leaf through the Spanish-English Dictionary on my desk and pick a word randomly and give myself a test: Brooke, you have to use this word first in the next sentence you speak to Lala. Find a way to do it.

Even with resumen. Outline.