1.11.2009

La Piedra Del Relámpago

My mother's brother was visiting from Florida. The two of us were sitting on a plush green couch in the living room of my mom's condo on either side of my grandmother. Catching up never took too long; neither one of us changed much: Uncle Tony was still a suave car salesman with bright narrow eyes under puffy lids, I was still a closet nerd trapped in a construction worker's rapidly aging body. We tended to move the conversation to funny family stories to avoid the tension brought about by rigid social stratification. This time was no different. We were still just as stuck on the same topic as we were stuck in the same respective walks of life. We hated both equally, but wouldn't admit it to the other.

"Has she ever told you the story about that rock on the coffee table?" Uncle Tony asked as he pointed to, well, that rock on the coffee table.

"No, I can't say I've heard that one yet."

My grandmother sat there innocently with her hands folded in her lap. It was not uncommon for people to talk about her like she wasn't in the room due to her hearing loss, senile dementia, and inability to speak anything other than Spanish. The smile on her face put there by the fact that she was in the company of her two favorite men was sincere so I can't say she was staring blankly ahead, but she was definitely staring. Those eighty-eight-year-old eyes were shining marbles, though one was dead and the other didn't work, and as long as they continued to sparkle as they always had we all knew she was still in there somewhere, trapped in her own body. It was a frightening fate, one that we'd all rather avoid with death, but we played it off masterfully like the myth of one's Golden Years was true.

"Mom, remember how you acquired that stone?" he asked her in her native tongue.

"No. I found that?" she asked, as shocked as if someone had accused her of inciting the Holocaust. Small things surprised her anymore, like someone telling her what she'd had for lunch that day. This new bit of information was certain to be a stunner.

Tony commenced the tale and Grandma zoned back out since she couldn't understand a word of it.

"It was five or six years ago, when she still lived on her own in her apartment. There was a bad storm, torrential rain and high winds. She was in her bedroom reading the Bible when all of a sudden a bolt of lightning came crashing down right outside her window. It scared her so much that she instantly leapt backwards in her bed and dropped her Bible to the floor, which she repented for vehemently later." This was where Uncle Tony inserted his first trademark smirk. Like me, he was not the most religious person, and therefore found it funny that someone would beg God's forgiveness for accidentally dropping a book written by mere men.

"I thought this story was about a rock." I was confused, but he wanted it that way. It made for a better telling.

"Oh, it is," he answered in that sly salesman voice of his. Enter trademark smirk number two, right before taking a sip from the glass of scotch that he'd been hiding from the Old Lady behind his leg despite his age. Old habits die hard, and no one wants to let his mother down.

"So then what happened?" I had to know, the mild suspense was killing me as I glanced at the perfectly round stone sitting on my mother's coffee table and wondered about its mysterious origin.

"Well, she put on her raincoat and walked around her building to the woods behind her apartment. She'd seen exactly where the lightning had hit, she wanted to find the rock." Sip number two, grin number three. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to drool in anticipation or ask if it came with power windows. He was good at his craft.

"The rock?"

"Yeah, you know...The rock inside a lightning bolt. That's what causes the damage to trees and whatever else the Lightning Rock happens to hit; at least that's what they told her when she was growing up Puerto Rico."

Grandma's eyes lit up momentarily at the mention of her precious island, but soon dulled back into oblivion when she realized she'd never see it again in this lifetime.

"Man, that's pretty funny." I didn't know what else to say. Back at the age of eighty-two she still believed in childhood myths; by eighty-eight she probably had some even more outrageous theories, though no one would pay enough mind to listen to a crazy old woman who repeated herself incessantly. No wonder she'd threatened to throw herself down the stairs during stubborn fits of helpless rage before. Losing ones mind seemed a cruel way to end a hard-won life, but at least she was being taken care of by my mother and not thrown into some nursing home. The whole experience had led my mom to ask me to kindly Old Yeller her out back if she ever got that bad when her turn came to grow gray. I promised her a spot in my shed, no euthanasia.

"Sure, it's funny, except for the part about an old woman crawling around on her hands and knees in the rain. She didn't give up until she found it, or what she designated to be the Lightning Rock. Back when she first told me the story she said it took her ten minutes."

"At least she found it." I reached for a cocktail that wasn't there.

"Yes. Yes she did."

Uncle Tony let that infectious chuckle slip out from under his thick moustache. I joined in a-fraction-of-a-second later when it had been established that it was safe to laugh at the ordeal. Hell, even the Old Lady giggled a bit, though that might have been due to whatever was or wasn't racing through her head.

Tony wet his lips with the slowly diminishing contents of the tumbler and proceeded to tell her the story, her story, so she could know what she was laughing at with us.

For some reason it didn't take as long to tell in Spanish.
It never does.

She spread her lips and showed me those spotless dentures as she nodded her head in affirmation.

The three of us turned our heads towards the table simultaneously and looked at that smooth gray stone as if responding to some silent cue. At least one of us swore that the Lightning Rock was looking right back. That's how I'll choose to remember her.

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