Alana: In my grandmother's house

Alana’s grandmother was a 50 year old woman who lived a couple of streets down main street from her school. Her house was the blue wooden one with a zinc ceiling. It was fun to hear the light rain hit the zinc in a melodic way, but it would get annoying when a heavy rain would hit it making a lot of noise. The house had one small black and white tv with no cable and an old vinyl disc player with cassette player. In contrast was Aunt Lucy's house, a couple of houses down the street, in cement, colored in earth tones matching her small garden, with a home theater system that the siblings would just die to have.

That was not to say they couldn’t have fun at their grandmother’s house, where they spent most of their after school time. They would rock it old style in the living room when their grandmother was away. Lord forbid her vinyl gets scratched! They would push the brown couch and the flowery loveseat against the walls and dance around the carpet. At least he would dance, she would try to dance by twirling around and jumping. He would try to teach her the latest dance moves, but she had no sense of rhythm. The only move they would do right was the “I run into his arm and he would raise me over his head” move. They would do this until they grew tired and hungry.

The house had a small kitchen with an ugly wall paper starting to fall off. The siblings would try to pull out pieces but their grandma would yell at them when they did.

“If you can’t fix it, don’t make it worst,” she would say.

“How can we make it worst? It’s an ugly clown wall paper in a kitchen!” Alana pointed at the fading circus clown.

“Your grandaddy did love the circus,” she would say, cracking a smile when she remembered
and her grandkids just couldn’t get it. Their grandfather was a jerk, a cheat, and a whiner, yet here was their grandmother smiling at the mere mention of him.

Even now she would gather the old pots and pans hanging on the wall, light up the gas stove and cook his favorite meals which are, coincidentally Allan’s, and even Alana’s, least favorites. Alana was all for a diet filled with vegetables, just don’t add yams and batatas into the mix, Allan just hated all vegetables as a rule. But she would open her yellow cabinets and do just that for nostalgia’s sake.

But even so their grandmother was an excellent cook. Her turkey was so delicious that it will knock you out until Christmas Eve in time for a second round. She was the oldest of 14 kids and had to learn to cook delicious meals the early age nine. Both her grandkids would help her cook at times, even work together to hide the yams when it needed to be done.

And as cute as the siblings would be at times, they could also be the siblings from hell, beating each other merciless and yelling until they were tired or separated. They behaved at grandmother's house because she had a stick and she was a pretty good runner. Their grandma was very old school when it came to raising children, spoil them when they’re good, stick when they are choking each other, ignore them in the middle. So they grew to understand the meaning of “there’s a place for everything" at the early age of 9 and 8.


“I can’t believe you read my story notebook in class!” Alana said arriving from school. Her grandmother was out of ear. “When I get home I am so kicking your ass.”

“Who writes about having adventures with bunnies anyway?” He went straight for the tv.

“I do. Now the whole school is laughing at me.” Her fists were clenching her uniform. “That isn’t even your school anymore.”

“Nah. More like second and third grade. Nobody else really cares about you. I thought it would be something fun to share with my old friends.” He was cruising the local channels. Finding the right 80’s cartoon was very important to him.

She had half a mind to beat him up right there and then. Instead, she waited until they were home at the table. No use getting chased by the stick here. That was the daily dynamic between them growing up. Sometimes she wanted to kill him, sometimes he wanted to kill her, neither wanted to get beaten by a third party.

As the siblings grew up their grandmother became closer to Alana than to Allan. She taught her how to cook, how to garden and first aid with aloe vera. At times Alana would sit down and read to her as she lay on the sofa. When the fighting got really bad between the siblings, Alana would stay at her grandmother’s house.

When Alana was 11 their grandmother was starting to lose what was left of her eyesight, which worried the family immensely. Ever since the siblings were born their grandmother had been partially blind, so it was natural for them. She could still see enough to catch them in the act of their latest schemes.

At the age of forty she stopped looking clearly at the world, which would explain how she thought her husband was handsome according to everyone else. She was stuck on an impressionist’s painting. But she could still see what was around her. She could see a car coming down the street or that chair that is on her path trying to trip her.

Now she was going completely blind. Her eyes were in constant pain, crying arond the clock and her sight was gone. According to her current doctor, she needed a new cornea.

Alana: My home

One of the biggest characteristics of Alana’s family was that when they love they love hard and the wrong person. Her grandmother loved her husband until he died of old age, no matter how many times he cheated on her. Her mother, Linda, had the innate ability to find the biggest loser around and date him until it finally reaches her brain that he might be wrong for her, it usually involved a kitchen fire. As for her older brother, Allan, he gets obsessed with girls, promising the moon for them, until he gets bored and moves on... followed by the girl’s psychosis making his life hell. The only one who has had a normal relationship so far was her dear aunt with her husband. This was her whole family on her maternal side.

She didn’t know much about her dad. He comes, he goes and comes again. Her other grandma was a chain smoker who doesn’t seem to like her as far as she’s concerned. She also had uncles and aunts on this side that she never got to see so, in her reality, she only had 4 people she loves in her life.

She was born and raised in a small town, in a small island on the Carebbean. With only 2,000 people around, chances are nobody outside of that place knows it exist. The streets were in great shape, for lack of use. Unlike other places with big malls and movie theaters, they had old buildings with need of paint, most of them abandoned. There was a clothing store, a supermarket, a small movie renting place, a post office and a music store, yet they had 6 drug stores.

You could say the town was the retire home of the country. There was a lack of children and people under 50 in general, most of them being on the outer part of the town. You could find them as long as you knew where to look. Where Alana lived, there were nine kids around her age, counting her brother. Her mother hated it because of this, but they got the house as a present from grandma and they couldn’t afford another place yet.


Alana didn’t mind the place. Her hobbies were: reading, writing, and hearing music through her headphones; all of them hobbies that don’t require other people. The house was in a quiet street and her neighbors were a nice old lady and an old lady with a pretty granddaughter, as her brother quickly pointed out when the morning they moved in.

But one perk of the place she lived was the public transportation system. Being 12 years old, you couldn’t just take a car and go somewhere so Alana and Allan would just use the public transportation system to go where they pleased. They had buses, small vans, taxis, ferris, and so forth. You named a means of transportation and Alana could show you where to find it in town, except planes and helicopters of course. Plus, most kids in town had a nice bike that could take them around. On the afternoon you could see most of the kids of the town running around in the boardwalk with a beautiful view of the sea and the capital of the country full of lights and music.

Eight-year-old Alana would usually go to the boardwalk and watch the setting sun with her brother and their mutual friend Daniel. This was against the rules, kids alone at night was not something their mothers approved of, but it was one of the few rules Alana didn’t always followed. It was such a quiet uneventful town that any feeling of danger seemed imaginary, even if the world wasn’t like that.

Also, Alana’s grandmother, at this stage of my life, had filled her with all sorts of stories from her youth. How many trees she climbed, how she dived into the sea, even once jumped off the ferry and swam back shore! She didn’t think I could do all of that, but going to the boardwalk was something her grandma enjoyed that Alana had come to appreciate too.