Aiden lives with his grandmother, Nanna, while his mother is in a psychiatric hospital. Nanna is broke. Over one long day she tells her friends that Aiden has leukemia, sends him upstairs to take a friend’s jewelry, collects a check for his “medical expenses,” and leaves a healing service at Mission Church with a gold chalice in her handbag, hoping it might cure her daughter. That evening, at home, Aiden asks her two questions.
My grandmother sat on the toilet seat and brushed my curly brown hair until my scalp hurt. I was on the floor just in front of her.
“You got your grandfather’s hair. Stand up and look at yourself in the mirror. Much better, don’t you think?”
I touched my scalp. “It hurts.”
“You gotta toughen up, Aiden. Weak people get nowhere in this world. Your grandfather was weak. Addicted to the bottle. Your mother has an impaired mind. Now she’s in a nuthouse.” She bent down and stared into my face. Her hazel eyes seemed enormous. I smelled coffee on her breath. There were blackheads on her nose. “And your father, he couldn’t handle the responsibility of a child. People gotta be strong. Do you understand me?” She pinched my cheeks.
I reflexively pushed her hands away.
“Life is full of pain, sweetheart. And I don’t mean just the physical kind.” She took a cigarette from her case on the back of the toilet, lit it, and inhaled. “You’ll be hurt a lot, but you got to carry on. You know what the British people used to say when the Germans bombed London during World War II?”
“No.”
“Keep calm and carry on.” She hit my backside. “Run along and put some clothes on.” I was wearing just my underwear and t-shirt. “We have a busy day.”
I dressed in the blue jeans and a yellow short-sleeve shirt she had bought me. She stood in front of the mirror by the front door of the living room, holding a picture of my mother. She kissed the glass and placed it on the end table next to the couch. Then she looked at herself in the mirror and arranged her pearl necklace, put on bright red lipstick, and fingered her gray hair, trying to hide a thinning spot at the top of her forehead. She turned and smoothed her green cotton dress, glancing at herself from behind. “Not bad for an old broad.” She looked me over. “Come here.” She tucked my shirt in, licked her hand, and smoothed my hair. “You’d think I never brushed it.”
Just as she opened the front door, she said, “Hold on,” and walked to the kitchen counter, where she put her hand in a glass jar full of bills. She took out what must have been at least thirty dollars.
“Give this money to the kiddos next door.”
When we were outside, she pushed me towards their house. On the front lawn of the broken-down house, empty axles of an old bicycle poked out of the weedy grass. They were playing on the swing set. The young pale girl with stringy hair looked at me suspiciously as I approached the fence. She walked toward me. Her brother stood behind her, arms folded. He had a mean look on his face and spit.
“This is for you.” I shoved the money through the chain links. The girl reached out, but most of the bills fell onto the dirt.
“Thank you,” she said.
As I walked away, her brother yelled, “We don’t need no charity from you.”
From The Weight of Small Mercies. The changes discussed below appear on this page and, in the last pair, at the church later in the story.
My grandmother sat on the toilet seat. I was on the floor just in front of her. She brushed my brown curly hair until my scalp hurt.
My grandmother sat on the toilet seat and brushed my curly brown hair until my scalp hurt. I was on the floor just in front of her.
They were playing on their swing set in the fenced-in yard. In front of the broken-down house was a yard of weeds. A rusted bicycle with no wheels lay on the ground.
On the front lawn of the broken-down house, empty axles of an old bicycle poked out of the weedy grass. They were playing on the swing set.
“This is for you,” I said, shoving the money through the chain links. The girl reached out to grab it, but most of the bills fell onto the dirt.
“This is for you.” I shoved the money through the chain links. The girl reached out, but most of the bills fell onto the dirt.
“Shouldn’t you go to the end of the line?” she whispered kindly, smiling down at me.
“I’m sorry. We’re in a hurry. We have to help a sick neighbor after this. I just want my grandson to get a cure.”
“Shouldn’t you go to the end?” she whispered.
“I’m sorry. We’re in a hurry. My grandson needs a cure.”
The story was first printed in Fiction on the Web in 2016. When it was reprinted in Impspired in 2021, many of its sentences had been tightened, and The Weight of Small Mercies keeps that wording with small changes of punctuation. None of the changes above alters what happens. Each one changes how quickly the reader sees it.
At the opening, two short sentences become one, so the grandmother and the hairbrush arrive together. The yard of weeds and the rusted bicycle, two general statements, become a single picture: “empty axles” that “poked out of the weedy grass.” Where a line of speech was followed by “I said, shoving,” the revision lets the action stand as its own sentence, “I shoved,” and the reader knows who is speaking without being told. At the altar, the grandmother’s excuse shrinks from four sentences to three, and the shortest one, “My grandson needs a cure,” is the one that does the persuading.
A suggestion. You might read one page of a draft aloud and circle every “said” followed by an “-ing” verb. In some of those places, the action could become its own sentence.
Read the story whole in its 2016 printing and its 2021 printing.