Sable Monroe

By the time my grandmother was living with us in Glen Oaks, I already knew what my home was like.

 

She didn’t.

 

She tried to help out around the house.

 

That’s the kind of woman she was. She liked doing chores. It made her feel useful.

 

But things were different in America.

 

The dishwasher. The washing machine. The way everything worked.

 

Sometimes she didn’t load things the “right” way.

 

And they would lose patience with her.

 

Mostly my stepfather.

 

He would get irritated. Disrespectful. Loud.

 

I watched it happen.

 

I didn’t say anything.

 

I was the one who took her to her clinic appointments.

 

That’s how I found out what was going on.

 

High blood pressure. Diabetes.

 

And then a word I didn’t understand at the time:

 

Dementia.

 

I didn’t know what it meant.

 

I just knew something wasn’t right.

 

She wasn’t happy there.

 

Not in that apartment. Not in that environment.

 

Not with him.

 

You could feel it.

 

Even when nothing was happening, you could feel it.

 

For a long time, I thought—

 

maybe if I had told her what it was really like, she wouldn’t have come.

 

Maybe she would have stayed where she was comfortable.

 

But that wasn’t my responsibility.

 

That was my mother’s.

 

And she was only honest when it was convenient.

 

There were good moments too.

 

We had cable. We would watch MTV.

 

That was around the time Snoop Doggy Dogg was getting popular.

 

My grandmother heard some of his music—not even the explicit parts, just what made it onto TV.

 

She came out of her room, walked into the living room, and looked at us.

 

Then she said:

 

“I don’t like Doggy Doggy.”

 

Even now, I think about that.

 

She wasn’t happy there.

 

But she was still herself.

 

And somehow, that mattered.