The Birthday of Grandmonster Isis

They named her Ilia Rain Dancing Flower Sugarbaum.  But “they” were not anyone’s definition of conventional.  The Sugarbaums were a full-blooded Cherokee and the world’s youngest hippie, respectively.  Ilia was raised with moccasins on her feet and dandelions in her hair; she could eat cotton candy for breakfast but not turkey on Thanksgiving.  She was only permitted to use organic glue in kindergarten, and, as a teenager, when all her friends were buying jeans with carefully manufactured shreds, she shredded her own.  Her parents were proud.  And they lived happily ever after.1

Not really.  Does anyone really live happily ever after?2

Grandma Isis’ birthday was July 4th.  Grandma Isis was already 66 and 7/8 years old and had purpley-tinged old-lady-hair, but she wore leather and drove a Harley that was a slightly darker hue than her hair and that she referred to lovingly as “Myrna”.  She’d cough, the 50 years of chain-smoking impairing her speech, then say, “C’mon, Myrna.  Let’s have us an adventure.”  And she’d putter off into the sunset, like a cock-eyed accolade to Thelma and Louise.  Grandma Isis was a far cry from her self-proclaimed vegan-hippie daughter:  she ate red meat, and lots of it.  She didn’t like flowers; she stepped on them.  Except Venus Fly-traps, which she bred in her spare bedroom and fussed over when visitors came.  Anti-social and crass, Isis Dubois was unlikely to be found at a family picnic.3

However, that is exactly what self-named Firefly Rainbow-Moon had planned for the fourth of July:  a family picnic, with tofu and jello-salad, fireworks and green tea.  Ilia was less than ecstatic at the prospect of watching her grouchy, hacking grandmonster lose a lung over a birthday cake when she could be eating popsicles and soaking her hot feet in pond water at her friend’s house.  Firefly wouldn’t hear of it.  Her mother would not be alone on her birthday!  Drinking beer, watching boxing, and smoking box after box of Turkish Jades.  4

Ilia watched her mother frost a cake that looked like an unfurled paper towel roll, thin as cardboard and stretching across the counter.  She knew well this family recipe: granola and dried bananas, compressed and rolled out flat, slathered in Duncan Hines frosting.  It was a Sugarbaum holiday standby.  5

“You know Gramma doesn’t really want us there.”6

“Ilia, I don’t want to hear it.”7

“She’d rather spend her birthday with Rufus.”8

“Ilia…”9

“She’s just going to get wasted and pass out before we start the sparklers.”10

“Ilia Rain!”11

Sighing, Ilia jumped down from her wicker stool by the kitchen counter and went to sit in the living room.  Ray Greenfield Sugarbaum was sitting in his Lay-Z-Boy watching Jeopardy and eating Cheez Doodles.  12

“Where is Mongolia?” he asked the television.13

“Where is Pakistan?”14

“Correct!”15

Ilia sat on the couch with her feet on the coffee table.16

“Alex Trebek hates me,” Ray explained as he turned to look at his daughter.  “Why so glum, chickpea?”17

She narrowed her eyes at her father.  “Grandmonster.”18

Ray chuckled.  “She’s not a grandmonster.  She’s just…well…she’s your mother’s mother."  He paused to yell, "Who is Romeo?"  19

"Who is Hamlet?"20

"Correct!"21

Ray grumbled, then continued, "No one that made that,” he gestured to the kitchen, “could be normal.”22

Ilia smiled.  “But she’s just going to insult Mam and refuse to eat her birthday cake and try to get me to drink beer.  She doesn’t even like fireworks.”23

Ray reached out to twirl his daughter’s pigtail.  “But it makes your Mam happy.”  He pulled Ilia to him and kissed her neck.  “Don’t worry.  I won’t let Gramma get you drunk.”  And he winked.24

* * * * *                      25

Isis reapplied her Christmas Red lipstick and puckered at the television.  That Alex Trebek made her think sinful thoughts.  She giggled to herself, a giggle that turned into a hacking cough, and she lit another cigarette.  Rufus, her English bulldog, was curled on the cracked brown couch next to her.  She scratched his head with one long pink finger.  26

“It’s nice to have a birthday to ourselves, isn’t it, lovey?”  She made a smacking kissy noise in his general direction.  Rufus licked his chops in approval before settling his head back on the stuffing sticking out of the cushion.  27

Then the doorbell rang.  Rufus barked.  Isis fought the urge to do the same.  The doorbell rang again.  She unstuck the back of her legs from the couch, hobbled to the door, and hesitantly pulled it open. 28

“Happy Birthday, Momma!”  Firefly threw herself at her mother and gave her a jovial, one-armed hug.  With the other arm, she balanced a foot-long tin that could only contain the dreaded birthday granola cake.  Isis snarled.  “Sixty-seven!  How does it feel?”  Firefly let herself into the house, followed by her husband and her daughter, each carrying Tupperware dishes.  29

“I thought we weren’t celebrating my birthday this year,” Isis growled.30

Firefly smiled.  “If I would have told you we were coming, it wouldn’t be a surprise party!”  Rufus barked.  31

Isis plopped back down on the couch and popped open a Budweiser can with a long red fingernail.  32

“Happy Birthday, Mama Isis.”  Ray kissed her on the top of her lilac head.  Isis batted him away. 33

“Happy Birthday Gramma.”  Ilia leaned to kiss her on her crumpled leathery cheek.  34

“Scarecrow!”  Isis brightened a bit.  She was determined that her scrawny, vegetarian, moccasin-wearing, hippie granddaughter would not turn out like her mother.  Isis couldn’t even remember what name was on Firefly’s birth certificate.  She gestured for Ilia to sit between her and Rufus.  The leather barely dimpled under Ilia’s weight.  “What you been up…to?” Isis coughed.35

Ilia looked past her grandmonster into the kitchen for backup but only saw her parents laying out the picnic food on the counter.  She saw no alternative; she had to answer.  “Just…school.”  Her eyes darted to the tattooed hieroglyph on her grandmonster’s bicep that supposedly stood for her name.  “We’re reading Shakespeare.”  Isis made a noise like a deflating balloon. 36

“Shakespeare?  Ha!  Shakespeare won’t get you nowhere.”  She took another swig of her Budweiser, her cigarette in her other hand.  Ilia sighed.  From the corner of her eye she watched her mother insert sixty-eight candles into the granola cake; one for each year, and one to grow on.  Apparently sixty-seven year-olds still needed growth.  Isis leaned into Ilia’s view.  She held out her Budweiser.37

“Wanna sip?”38