Where do I start with this? I want to tell a story about visiting with the family for Thanksgiving, and also to introduce a name for a character I've mentioned before. She's dead, but "only in the technical sense." And as I give her a name, I also want to give her a cinematic face. So many things to do.
My cousin and her mother-in-law
Let's start with today and work backwards. A month ago, Mother and Brother and SIL and I all drove to where my aunts and uncles (and all their children) have settled. It's in another state, but reachable in a day's driving. I mention this year's trip here, and I've talked about making the same trip before, around other Thanksgivings (for example here or here or here).
Anyway, while I was there I stayed with one aunt and my uncle. Some of that time was spent cooking for The Big Day. Some of it was spent in silence, or just reading placidly. And occasionally we visited with other members of the family.
But I remembered what she said. And a few days later, when the whole family was out to dinner one evening, I motioned C over so I could talk to her for a few minutes. What I told her was something like this:
I heard you talking to your mom a few days ago, about your mother-in-law. Now I don't know your mother-in-law, so I can't speak to that relationship. But let me tell you a story about my own mother-in-law, Wife's mother. Then you decide if that story helps you any.
Wife's mother complained all the time, about everyone. After a while I came to the conclusion that in some perverse way she felt it was a requirement of polite conversation to complain: "If you can't say something nasty, don't say anything at all." But what was interesting is that sometimes she did say positive things about others—provided that they weren't in the room at the time. She could tell me she was proud of Wife [her daughter], but only when Wife wasn't there. If Wife was in the room, all she could pronounce were criticisms. In fact, when Wife was growing up she was about the same age as her niece D-. Wife's mother would tell Wife, "Why can't you be thin and pretty and popular, like D-?" Then later she would tell D- [her granddaughter] "Why can't you be smart and get good grades, like [Wife]?" Each one heard the message, "You are no good, and I wish you were like that other girl" … even while the "other girl" was getting the same message in reverse! It was crazy.
My mother-in-law even recognized that there was something wrong with this picture. She told me that a friend had once asked her, "Look, you're as proud as punch of your daughter! [She meant Wife.] Everyone knows it but her. Why can't you just tell her that?" And my mother-in-law told her friend, "No, you don't understand. It doesn't work like that. I can't …."
I don't know why she couldn't. Maybe something she got from her mother, for all I know. The point is just that people like her exist, and I bet there are others too. I don't know if this story is any use to you. But if you get any help from it, you are welcome to it.
Of course I have no idea whether C's mother-in-law is really that much like mine. But sometimes history rhymes, even when it doesn't repeat.
Introducing Lily
What can I tell you about her? Well, in some ways she was a cantankerous old battle-axe: that's pretty much the story I told you directly above.
But underneath that surface she could be idealistic, sometimes in impractical ways. She used to complain about how politics in this country had degraded from when she was young, and offered that old folks like herself would be perfect as assassins to kill of the worst of modern politicians (from both parties). Her reasoning was that no one would suspect someone like her, so she could wander up close to the target looking vaguely lost and carrying her huge little-old-lady-purse with a weapon in it. And she'd get a free pass from the security folks.
Now that I think about it, maybe that's a bad example of "idealism," though it is crazy enough that maybe it helps to understand this is the kind of mindset Wife grew up with. But let's try another story. This one comes from this post.
Early in our marriage, Wife came home to our apartment in the mid-afternoon to interrupt a burglar, who was carrying off our neighbor’s television set. She later identified him and filed a report with the police. For various reasons this became a big, divisive issue in the little community where we lived (never mind the details right now) and it caused Wife a lot of grief. Most everybody we knew congratulated her on her courage, but soon added, “Don’t you know better than to confront a burglar?” But Wife stuck to her guns. At one point I was talking with Wife’s mother, who was still alive back then, about how very difficult the whole situation had been for Wife, and how she refused to make things easier by just backing away from it. Her mother sighed ruefully, but with obvious pride in her voice, and said, “You know, Hosea, it’s that righteous indignation. The whole family suffers from it sumthin’ terrible.”
Lily had been poor all her life. This affected her views on everything, and it contributed to Wife's determination to leave the ghetto behind her once and for all, no matter what she had to do. (See, for example, this post.)
At the same time, Lily accepted the supernatural with an uncanny casualness, as if telepathy or precognition were no more unusual than cars and trucks, or infidelity and unemployment, or crime and taxes. One evening she was feeling chatty (and Wife was somewhere else), so she told me some stories. Here's one that I remember: years before, she had been living in a different house from the one she was in then, and one evening she was gossiping over the back fence with a neighbor. They started to talk about old Mr. Jones down the street, and Lily casually mentioned that he'd died that morning. Her neighbor was shocked: "Who told you that? I saw him yesterday and he was just fine!" Lily realized that nobody had told her any such thing, so she tried to patch it up: "Oh, there I go again. You know, sometimes I just run off at the mouth and I don't even know what I'm saying. Don't you pay it no mind." Well, within a day or so the news began to spread around the neighborhood that poor old Mr. Jones really had died, and he died the very morning Lily said he had. Her neighbor was too frightened ever to speak to Lily again: "She's a witch! If she says you're gonna die, you die!" Lily told me she didn't think there was anything witchly about it … or, well, not exactly … but that sometimes these things just happen. When Wife became a Wiccan (shortly before I met her), she considered it a logical next step from the kinds of experiences that Lily had lived with all along.
Movie meme 9
So, if I'm going to give her a name then how about identifying an actress to play her? Well, sure. How about Lorna Raver, playing Mrs. Ganush, in the movie "Drag Me to Hell"? Strictly speaking I haven't actually seen the movie. But I've read about it, and I watched half the trailer—until it got too scary. 😀 And, in some ways at least, she seems like a good pick. The character is poor, desperate, and not really clued into the way that middle-class society works. She's also very comfortable with the supernatural. I never saw Lily put a curse on anyone—well, not unless you count the whole way she raised Wife as one long, ongoing curse—but I wouldn't put it past her. Except that Lily was so pragmatically-minded (and so used to working on a narrow budget) that she would have skipped the candles and blue chalk and amulets. I'm pretty sure she would have known how to get the same results using nothing more exotic than peanut butter, WD-40, and duct tape.
She was very practical, like that.
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