Living With Grandmother

Brenda lived with her maternal grandmother for several years until 1950 when the old woman died. As I have noted in other posts, I am not sure why Brenda was sent there. By this time Brenda's parents had moved into the house on Blanton Street. Maybe there was a lot of partying and they didn't want a seven-year old around. Maybe her grandmother asked for her, wanting the company. Or maybe (and this has just occurred to me) Brenda's oppositional sense had already kicked in and her parents thought her grandmother might have better luck controlling her. Maye it was a mix of all that. However, I do know that Brenda regarded it as the best time of her life.

As before, these are impressions of her impressions.

Brenda had a little room with sloping ceilings, maybe under the eaves. But it was no attic garret. She loved the little room.

At night her grandmother sequestered them both behind a series of locked doors (which might mean that the little room was associated with the grandmother's bedroom). Brenda said if there had been a fire they would have never been able to get out past all the locked doors.

Her grandmother kept a pretty little shiny pistol (a nickle plated revolver?) in her beside table. Brenda played with it before she learned that the gun was always loaded. In later life Brenda expressed an interest in pistols and said something about going to the shooting range.

Brenda liked to slide down the long banister from the second to the first floor of the big old house. Her grandmother would wait at bottom to pinch Brenda's fanny as punishment.

Although there were servant's quarters over the garage I don't think anyone lived there at the time. However Perry, an imperious black man did don livery to drive them around in a black Cadillac - probably a limousine. Brenda said that he and her grandmother often argued. He would sometimes chauffeur Brenda to school. I always had an imagine of a little waif of a girl being dropped off at Washington school by a stern but kindly black man. In reality I expect that the grandmother made sure that Brenda was well dressed. I think Perry also did some of the cooking.

The upstairs hallway was huge open space, a room unto itself with a sofa and other furnishings. This is where Brenda liked to play.

Her grandmother's skin was soft and unlined. Her dresser was covered with vials, bottles and jars of exotic cosmetics. In Brenda's later years, her one indulgence (aside from cats) was her Clinque lotions and skin preparations.

The grandmother died in 1950. I think she had been sick for some time. I believe she had a heart attack. Brenda says she saw them roll the body out. I don't know if Brenda had been living there until the end and if so if anybody was with her. It's an obvious question now. I don't know why I never asked.

In my parsing of these events, this was the second Fall in her life. The first was when they moved back to Shelby from Charlotte, the third was when her father's business went under, and the fourth (two years after marrying me) was when her father died.