My Grandmother the Alien

Luis Lascano

Every grandmother is crazy in some way.  The reason for that may be related to the fact of simply having lived a long time.  The “aging element” becomes more evident when they are put in the situation of having grandchildren. Then grandmothers believe that they are mothers again. The only thing about this new scenario is that they have their own baggage of experience but a smaller responsibility.  In the case of my grandmother all of these issues were present. But also she had a huge tendency to behave in a really inconsequential way.  Cleaning out  some stuff in an old armoire that belonged to her, I found some old newspaper articles and some clippings that show her authentically.  This memorabilia explained the way she was perfectly.

My Grandma Maruja really enjoyed playing the clown for my two brothers and me, even up to points of transcending the barrier of what was acceptable.  A good example of this took place one summer while we were spending a weekend at her  house in La Lucila, a small town on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.  For some reason, she deliberately turned the power off, right before the moment she was going to put us to bed. It was the middle of December with an average of 100 degrees almost anywhere in Buenos Aires, and we had no air conditioner or fan.  So, she came up with another iinteresting method for refreshment.

“Guyyyyysss!!!  What  are you going to do if you are in a situation like this in the future. I AM telling you. You will wet your pillow!!!!”  She was yelling at us from the kitchen, so we could not tell if she was being serious.  Her command had an extreme scatological connotation, especially for little kids, like my brothers and me.  The three of us were relieved when she came in the room with a pitcher of water.

“Please move your head Luisin, you will see now,” she said.  Then, she grabbed my pillow and started pouring water gently on both sides while  singing  “Arroro, my bebe,” a lovely Spanish lullaby.  She repeated the act twice more with my brothers Marco and Ruben.

Later on, that became a tradition  for the four of us.  We understood that she was trying to teach us to think of  options in difficult situations, but she she never told us how she came up with the idea.  Also, she, my brothers and I came up with  variations of the tradition: pouring from a distance, pouring  in the darkness of our room  in the house in La Lucila.  Obviously, she had to come up with the better one:  pouring from  her mouth(!)  She would basically spit the whole contents of a glass of water while simoultaneously, reproducing the noise of an AK-47.  My brothers and I enjoyed this with hysterical laughter.  Ruben, who used to carry his Kodak Fiesta, inmortalized one of those moments.  In fact, one of the pictures that I found today displays tiny  drops in the lens, as part of the photograph.  Disgusting?  Probably but warnings were stated in the beginning of this story.

The bottom line was that she always wanted to to entertain us when she thought we were bored.  In another effort to achieve that, she once came with the idea of celebrating the birthday of someone or something.  I really don’t remember who or what.  It was Just for the sake of having fun.   Also, she dressed me as a clown.  For that purpose, besides the red lipstick taht she used to paint my mouth, she also used toothpaste as a replacement for the white paint that clowns usually wear.  That is still another Kodak moment. My dermis suffers with only one glance at that picture.

Maybe the memory that defines her better is capturted in an article of “La Voz Del Pueblo Groso de La Lucila,” which I happened to keep for my records.  The article covered the information of a murder in her neighbourhood, several years ago.  Two men had taken another man into the backwoods and eventually killed the guy.  The backwoods bordered my grandmother’s property.  Nobody really knew what happened, and the suspects remained in silence even after getting caught.  Days after this unfortunate incident, Granma Maruja called law enforcement  and said she would like to provide some inside details about the awful event.  Of course, we are talking about my grandmother, so you can prepare yourself for something bizarre.

My two brothers and I decided  to show up in court with her because, at this point, it is important to say that my grandmother was getting senile.  She would tell everybody that  she was married to Rodolfo Lapantera, a popular singer who later became a televangelist.  So I think you can get the picture that she was not totally right in the head.

The trial of the  two men came up, and,of course, it came her turn for the witness stand. The attorney who represented one of the two suspects asked her if she could recall anything happening around the time when the murder happened.  She answered affirmatively.

“Well, I remember watching Mr Bevilacqua—they guy that was murdered—closing his grocery store that afternoon.  He was carrying a briefcase that I guess had the money from the sales of his store.  From my porch, I saw that  one of the guys grabbed him by the arm while the  other one took a syringe out of his pocket and  made a hole in the outside part of  Mr Bevilacquas car. Mr Bevilacqua was shocked at this point. One of the guys stuck the needle in Mr Bevilacquaas arm. I could not believe that I was a witness of  such a horrible thing. Somehow, Mr Bevilacqua managed to push the guy who was holding  him and run across the street while still holding the briefcase with the  money.  He ran across my garden while the other two guys were still chasing him. The three of them passed  by the side of my house, all heading towards my backyard. Mr Bevilacqua, who was 68 at the point and I knew that had had two angioplasties, jumped the fence that lead to my backyard and fell down.  The other two hoolligans took the briefcase and escaped.

The  DA was really into the story.  “So, what hapened to Mr Bevilacqua, Madam?  Did he die instantly?”

Grandma Maruja looked at him innocently.  “Oh no!!!  I believe that he just ran out of  gasoline.”

When everybody realized that she was teasing the court, a recess was called.  Her testimony and the court session, which could have been the strongest  part of the case against the men, was dismissed.  The two guys were convicted anyway.  But I can still picture in my head  the drawing that court artist was doing that had my grandmother representing the moment that Mr Bevilacqua was stuck with the needle.

A few weeks before she died, I asked about the real inside story of the wet pillow game.  ”Well Luisin,” she said, “a lot of times I have to turn the electricity off because I do not want  aliens to come and take pictures of me.”

I  am convinced that aliens would not have ever dared to go  around my grandmother.

Luis Lascano is an artist, musician, and writer from Buenos Aires, Argentina, currently studying at Berklee.