The Matriarch

            Yesterday we went to see M’s grandmother, or Big Tayta as we call her (“Tayta” meaning grandmother in Arabic). She’s almost ninety years old but has a core of solid iron. She is such a bright spark of a person that every time I see her I think she seems somehow more alive than everyone else in the room.

            She’s had a busy life, full of hard work. At the age of sixteen she married M’s grandfather who was himself only fourteen years old and, apparently, quite the hottie of the village.  I’ve never quite been able to picture the two teenagers setting up house together, discussing mortgage payments and saving up for a car.  Our son Dude is now almost the age his great-grandfather was when he married but with no gravity-defying stretch of the imagination can I imagine Dude getting married next year.  His idea of a good time is splattering virtual guts on Black Ops 2 or, if no video game console is available, bouncing a ball off the ceiling for as long as takes to drive his mother to the cooking sherry.  This is a person who would have to ask his father how to knot his tie at his own wedding.

            Big Tayta had her first child two years after marrying. That was my father-in-law.  Following his birth there were two sets of identical twins who died in infancy, all of them from diarrheal illnesses.  One pair were boys, and lived eight or nine months, and the other were girls who lived about a year. Nine other births followed and up until last year all of these ten children were alive and well.

            As the eldest of those children, my father-in-law had a lot of responsibility placed on his shoulders. It continues today. He feels compelled to look after all his younger brothers and sisters (though they are all competent, self-sufficient adults) and his mother, too. It is his responsibilities towards her that affect him most because in this culture the eldest son specifically is charged with the care of his parents.

            When M’s grandfather died late last winter Big Tayta found herself alone after seventy-one years of marriage.  Instead of moving in with one of her children she chose to remain alone with a live-in employee, a Bangladeshi girl named Shaheena who cleans, cooks and nurses the old woman. Shaheena also nursed M’s grandfather until his death and he required pretty serious care towards the end. I think Shaheena must be a saint, but that is a story for another day.

            As we drove out to Big Tayta’s apartment I wondered what kind of state we would find her in.  I hadn’t seen her since the funeral of her husband and that funeral, hard as it would have been anyway, was the third in a row for her.  A month before that she had lost a son, and before that, tragically, a grandson. M’s dad had said she was showing signs of dementia lately, a sad development in one who had always been as shrewd as a fox.

            Half-way along the road to Big Tayta's my father-in-law’s phone rang.  It was my mother-in-law calling to tell him that he had forgotten the pot of wheat stew he had been going to take to his mother.  The wheat stew had been the reason we were going in the first place.  M and his dad took a moment to discuss whether or not to turn around and go back and get it.  

            We didn’t turn around. “There’s a chicken place up ahead,” M’s dad said. “I’ll run in and buy her a barbequed chicken.  She likes barbecued chicken.”

            We pulled abruptly off the highway – there is no service road – into the small, busy parking lot of the take-away chicken restaurant where cars were double and triple parked and an attendant waved and shouted directions.  M’s dad went in and emerged four minutes later with several paper bags which he put in the back of the car.  As the smell of chicken filled the interior M manoeuvred us around so we were poised on the edge of the highway and, pausing to choose the right moment, stomped on the gas pedal and shot out into traffic. 

            After parking outside Big Tayta’s building we walked past the Syrian natoor (caretaker) sitting outside with his wife and five or six children.  The children were all boys and – I did a double take – like chronologically arranged photos of the same child growing older.

            One of the older boys followed us to the elevator and told us to wait a moment.  He ran off.  My father-in-law explained that the building does not have its own generator but shares one with two other buildings, and that the boy had gone to switch the power over so that we could use the elevator. In a moment the lights in the elevator came on and we squeezed inside. 

            On the sixth floor we spilled out onto the landing and rang the doorbell. Shaheena opened the door, wiping her hands on an apron, and smilingly shook hands with each of us in turn.  She told us that Big Tayta was resting in bed and then, excusing herself, dashed into the kitchen where we could hear and smell onions sizzling energetically in a pan. M wanted to go out onto the balcony straight away to escape the cooking smells so we made our way through the salon to the sliding doors while my father-in-law went in to see if his mother was asleep.

            We had just sat down on the balcony, arranging our chairs under the subdued November sun and commenting to one another on the fine sea view, when from deep within the apartment came an angry outburst.  It was Big Tayta’s voice: loud, harsh and furious.

            “What’s happening?” I said, startled.

            “I think,” said M with a pained look, “she’s giving my dad heck.”

            “What for?”           

            “For not coming to see her more frequently.”

            “But he comes pretty often.”

            “Not enough to suit her, apparently.”

            “Will she yell at you like that?”

            “I don’t think so,” M smiled. “It seems she reserves the yelling for her children.  Grandchildren are off the hook.”             

            The tirade from within continued as the kids and I exchanged expressions of disbelief.  Though I couldn’t make out the words, the tone was unambiguously wrathful.

            “Imagine being seventy years old and still getting in trouble by your mother,” I mused.

            After a few minutes my father-in-law appeared at the balcony doors looking frazzled. “Okay, you can come and see her now,” he said.

            We followed him into the bedroom. It was, like the rest of the house, barely furnished. There were no rugs on the tiled floor or even a light fixture over the bare bulb which hung down on a wire from the ceiling.  The apartment actually belongs to one of my father-in-law’s brothers who has lived abroad for many years. When the parents began to age and were moved to Beirut from their own home in the ancestral village they were “temporarily” housed at this brother’s new and vacant flat.  Years later the flat, apart from the kitchen and a tv room, still looks as if no one lives there.

            The metal shutters were down and in the dimness we saw Big Tayta lying on her side in a small bed.  She looked up at us as we came in and I saw immediately in her eyes the sharp intelligence that had always been there.

            She greeted us and asked M to help her sit up and turn on the light.  He gave her his hand and propped her up with cushions.  She is not a frail, wispy sort of grandmother but tall and big-boned with a legendary appetite.

            As soon as she was sitting comfortably she picked up where she had left off with my father-in-law, demanding to know what she had done to deserve such neglect by her children. She turned to M and me.

            “How many children ought I to have had to ensure that I would be looked in on enough?” she asked. “I had ten but apparently it’s not enough. Maybe I should have had only two, like you. Maybe two would visit me more often than ten.”

             I could hardly believe the old woman could be so sarcastic or so shamelessly exploitive.  I had to hold back a guffaw. There  was no evidence whatsoever of dementia in the two bright eyes which fixed on me and I composed my face immediately into an expression of gentle sympathy.  

            M tried to placate her. “Come on, what is this talk?” he said. “All your children come to see you all the time.”

            Shaheena, who had arrived in the doorway, nodded vigorously.  “Yes, yes, they are coming every day, sir.  Always one of her children coming to see her every day.”

            “There, you see?” said my father-in-law with a foolishly premature note of triumph in his voice.  “What are you complaining about?  One of us comes every day.”

            “You don’t come every day,” returned his mother, quick as a cat. “What have you got going on in your life that’s so important you can’t drive a quarter of an hour to see your own mother?”

            My father-in-law didn’t answer but his false bravado visibly crumbled.  He rubbed both hands up and down his brow with great force, as if he was trying to reshape his facial bones.

            Big Tayta pressed home her attack. “All day long I’m here all alone, I can’t sleep at night, I’m in despair.  I lost a husband, a son, and a grandson this year. Why did they have to die? It’s too much for me to bear.  It’s too much for anyone to bear. Probably I don’t have long to live myself.”

            Then she started to cry.  Or at least she made noises like she was crying but I didn’t see any tears.

            M murmured some unintelligible words of comfort to her but nobody else said anything.  We all just sat there looking at her. I learned a long time ago that when a Lebanese woman cries she does not wish to be left alone.  She not only doesn’t mind if you stare at her while she cries, she actually seems to appreciate it as a sign of your concern. So we stared while she wailed and moaned.  Then she piped down a bit and started talking about everyday things and small bits of news in the family. Presently she made herself sad again and wailed some more, eventually recovered, and started the cycle over again.

            Some time ago I had asked M why Big Tayta chooses to live alone when she could move in with one of her children. Unlike in present-day Canada, it’s the normal course of things in Lebanon for an elderly parent to move in with a child. M said that all of her children had invited her to live with them but that she didn’t want to. At the time that answer didn’t make sense to me and I felt I was missing a crucial piece of information.  But seeing her like an empress in (what amounted to) her own place, playing her home court advantage to the fullest, I began to understand.  If she went to live with one of her children she would have to live by their rules.  She would no longer be top dog.

            My father-in-law suddenly pointed to a pile of clothes and towels on the desk beside the bed and said, “What’s that?” 

            It looked like a folded load of laundry to me but Big Tayta said that they were her things to take to the new house.

            “What new house?”

            “The new house your sisters said I was going to move into. They took me and showed me a new apartment and said that your brother had bought it and that I was going to live there.”

            I looked carefully at her, wondering if this was the dementia showing itself. 

            “I know they took you to look at his new apartment,” said my father-in-law, “but they wouldn’t have told you that you were going to live there.  That was never an idea.”

            “Well, that’s what they told me,” she said, sounding and looking about as lucid as a person can. “Anyway, I don’t want to live there, I want to go back to the village.”

            “You can’t go back to the village,” my father-in-law said tiredly. “It’s freezing cold in that house in winter and there’s no one there to help you.” He paused and regarded her. “You wouldn’t think about trying to go there on your own, would you?”

            “Of course not. Why would you say that?”

            “I say that because they told me that you threatened to take your suitcase and go down to the highway and catch a taxi to the village.”

            “Rubbish, I never said that.”

            My father-in-law began rubbing his face again.  I pitied him. He looked like he could have used with a shot of whiskey.

            I understood another thing then, too.  M had told me that Big Tayta deliberately caused misunderstandings between her children to increase concern and frequency of visits to her. She wasn’t confused at all about going to live in the new apartment any more than she really intended to take a taxi to the village.

            M began to take his leave of Big Tayta and the rest of us stood up to go.  We all bent and kissed her, one by one, and it seemed to me that her notoriously wet kisses were dryer than usual.  Well, the kids would be grateful for that.

            She began to get up out of the bed and M and his dad protested that she should sit back down again. 

            “No, no, I want to get up,” she said. “I’m hungry, I want to try some of that chicken.”

            So the men took her arms and she shuffled along the corridor with us.  Shaheena came to the door to see us out and I saw M slip her a bit of money. She doesn’t get a large salary. “Good bye,” she said with her sweet smile. 

            The power to the elevator was out again, and as we turned to go down the stairs we caught a last glimpse of the two woman as the door closed.  Behind Shaheena, looming like a indomitable queen, Big Tayta called out a sarcastic parting shot.  “Come back and see me again next year!”