My Brother told me that my grand mother had asked for tomato for her coffee. That was how she had known that some thing was wrong. She had told the mouth to tell Tina that she would like cream, and her mouth had said tomatoes. Red juicy tomatoes, solanum lycopersicum. Vine red, the name meaning wolf peach. She wanted none of this, she wanted cream.
I take after her in that way. I need to take my coffee and pour in a pound of cream. Ease the taste of the bean. My Brother, hates coffee, my mother takes hers black, my father two spoons of sugar and a dash of milk not cream. Never had I reached for the Heinz, and as far as I know nor has my grandmother.
Not knowing why her mouth had done this, she asked Tina once more for Tomatoes for her coffee. Tina’s eyes had look down at my grand mother and asked her if she meant cream. Tina must have thought that my grandmother was crazy. Not that she had had a stroke. That’s what it was the doctor told her a mild stroke, just a touch. Not enough of one to kill her, or even hurt her, or get in the way of her life in any way. Just enough to force her to face her own death. Just a taste of a stroke. My grand father, her ex-husband had a stroke, now he cant walk. Isn’t the peach lucky she can walk?
Jim had told me that most people that die of old age; lose their mind before hand. He was trying to tell me how fucked up life is, your going to end up craping your self in some nursing home, with no idea who you are, where you are, or where you have been. I found this to take so much stress off my mind. I know I am going to get old, but the thought of one day setting in a diner and turning to my waitress Tina and asking her for tomatoes for my coffee. The thought that I would know that my mouth no longer obeyed me, scared me.
My grandmother drove her self to the ER.
I have never been close to my family.
Not that I didn’t love them, and not that I didn’t care for them. But for the simple fact that I didn’t understand them. I didn’t really try to. I would hear all that I want to know or need to know from my brother.
He had told my mother that he had a stroke to, a woman had been yelling at him at his work and half his face had gone numb.
My brother was 22.
My grand father had been 64.
I don’t know how old my grand mother is.
Most cream comes form Jersey Cattle. A brown heifer known to like the weather hot and sticky. They are bread in the hottest parts of Brazil. There milk is high in butter fat and that is why they are the queens of cream. The goddess of dairy. The worlds cream pie.
The cow is my mother. The bull is my sire.
I must hove been five or six. My mother had taken my brother and my self to a friend’s house with her. Her friend Barbara, who died when I was fifteen, lived out side the city. She had cows. And she had land. Land that they would graze. I had ran away form my mother and ran into that land, ran through the juniper trees and pinyon tree, the pine nuts dieing under my feet. Then there it was. A cow.
Nothing more then a cow.
To a six year old, this cow would be a monster. Huge and evil. I hadn’t screamed or ran away. Not taking my eyes away I walk back wards into a pinyon tree. Lowering myself I slipped under the breaches. Hiding there. I ate pine nuts when I got hungry. Creamy pine nuts.
This is where they would find me. with cream on my breath.
