Turn It Off Good

“Did you turn off the TV?”

“Yes, Grandma, I turned it off before you even told me to.”

“Did you turn it off good?”

“Well of course. It’s either on or off.”

“Don’t be smart. Go back and check.”

And of course I did. We were standing in the hallway of my grandparents’ house on Lewiston Road as we were putting our coats to go out.

“Make sure it’s all the way off. Now.”

My grandma checked everything.

“Mail these letters for me,” she might say, “and make sure you check to see if they went in right.”

And even though she wasn’t there to see, I would check.

I would re-open the mailbox lid and look to make sure the letter had gone in.

When I got home she would be sure to ask and if I hadn’t checked she would know in a minute. She could read me like a book. I just wasn’t good enough at lying—yet. So why risk a trip all the way back to the mailbox two long blocks away? Better just check and make her happy.

Everyone in my family was subject to her scrutiny. We called it her scrupulousness. Nowadays she would be diagnosed as OCD and we would be warned not to enable her.

But what did we know in the 1950s when she was the towering giant of our lives, ruling by high and implacable standards of comportment. Her disapproval was a powerful punishment. Her look of disgust at the merest dereliction of what she perceived to be my duty paralyzed me. After all, she was my grandmother and I owed her respect. She had a hard life, Mama reminded me whenever I complained. I should be charitable and just do what Grandma asked.

Even though my parents and I had moved to our own home, we were at Lewiston Road so much, I felt like I lived there. Mama more than helped with the cleaning.

Among my duties was going to the grocery for her. This had its rewards as well as its hazards. There was always an ice cream cone or a nickel to sweeten the task. But boy oh boy when I arrived home with the shopping bag I had better be ready for the grilling. I would open the bag and display the items as I read them off the list. Then the receipt would have to be produced and the change proffered for her inspection. Read it to me, she would say. There was milk at 23 cents, butter at 59, say a bar of Palmolive that sold for 3 for a dollar so that I paid the extra cent making that item 34 cents, and my nickel. Never forget the nickel. 

Anyway I would add it for her. Show the total, the change and subtract the change from the total. “Thank you, Polly, but could you please do that one more time?” It would seldom be just one more time. On a bad day this could be repeated 5 or 10 times. Some grownup in the family might step in and try to save me. Or not, they had there own lists and computations to face Grandma with.

The worst of these was the list of her sins. This list was compiled with the aid of my mother before she went to confession. My poor mother. She was the only girl in her family, which meant she bore the brunt of caring for her parents.

Every time Grandma went to confession Mama had to take her to a new parish where the priest hadn’t dealt with her before. This particular nightmare began when Grandpa decided to convert to Catholicism. Grandma discovered that all his sins would be wiped away by Baptism. He would have a clean slate, whereas she who had been a Catholic all her life was stuck with her backlog of sins. To say this set her off is an understatement.

The sad thing was she believed that her living with my Grandpa was a sin. A priest had told her so years ago when she discovered, after 15 years of marriage and 5 children, that she had married a divorced man. The Church did not permit this. It was a Mortal Sin.

She would never have consented to a marriage outside the Church. But Grandpa was crazy about her and not being Catholic didn’t see the problem. He was free in his own eyes. So somehow he never informed her.

Mama remembered the day when the doorbell rang and a stepsister appeared on the stoop. That was when the whole family learned about Grandpa’s Other Marriage. He had been quietly sending child support for years but I suppose when Myrtle, her name really was Myrtle, became a teenager she wanted to know more about her father. Or, since it was during the Depression maybe her needs were greater. But the bomb went off for my grandmother.

She went to a priest and asked what to do. He told her if she didn’t leave her husband, she would be excommunicated.  She had five kids and no skills. She stayed and banished Grandpa to the attic. And even though he was upstairs, and she was down, she still considered herself to be ‘living in sin’.

He was sleeping in the attic when I entered the picture during WWII. I remember that it was a big, old iron bed and there was a baseball bat next to it.

He was still sleeping in the attic a few years later when he decided to convert to Catholicism. She believed she would go to hell for staying and if Grandpa converted, he wouldn’t go with her. So she decided to go to confession for the first time since the day she found out.

The ordeal of going from priest to priest for confession lasted for several years. She agonized over each visit. Mama lived through this ordeal alone.  No one else was permitted to participate. They sat for hours in the bedroom while the list of Grandma’s sins was re written and repeated endlessly Always in private. These were her sins. She could never get the list quite right.

I didn’t really understand what was going on. But I saw Mama return from a day of dealing with my grandmother looking exhausted and distraught. I saw her crying on my father’s shoulder. I saw her turn into a nervous wreck herself.

And then seemingly overnight the whole thing evaporated.

Maybe they found the right, compassionate priest who could ease my Grandma’s troubled mind. Maybe she forgave my Grandpa and herself. Maybe she forgave priests.  But one day it was all over. No more lists of any kind. No more recitations of sins or items on grocery lists.

But Grandpa remained in the attic and she still continued to demand that I turn the TV off “good.”