My mum’s key hits the front door lock.
‘No it’s not,’ I say. ‘It’s a box. Let’s go. Out the back. Now.’
‘You gotta believe.’
The front door opens.
‘Hello-o, I’m ho-ome,’ Mum says from the hall.
I want to run but what am I supposed to do? I can’t believe Jack is doing this. Is he insane? If I try to run out back now she’ll see me for sure. There’s only one thing to do.
I dive into the teleporter and start punching letters on the keypad.
‘Where’re we going?’ Jack asks.
‘Anywhere that’s safer than here,’ I say. ‘Afghanistan, maybe.’
‘Oh. My. Goodness,’ says Mum from the lounge room doorway. I can imagine her standing there, mouth open. I know what’s coming.
‘Tom!’ she screams.
‘Ten, nine, eight, seven, six …’ Jack whispers quickly.
‘Tom!’
I’m not coming back for a long, long time.
‘Five, four, three, two, one.’
‘T-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-m!’
WARNING: Adults should not read this story under any circumstances.
‘My nan’s tougher than yours.’
‘No she’s not.’
‘Yes she is.’
Whenever we walk home from school Jack always goes on about how tough his nan is. I’m sick of it.
‘My nan’s so tough,’ he says, ‘she bakes big chunks of glass into her cookies rather than choc chips. When she chews them you can hear the glass crunching in her teeth.’
I climb up on to the sandstone fence that runs around the park in the middle of town. I balance like a tightrope walker. ‘Well, my nan’s so tough that when I arrive at her place she hugs me and my guts nearly squeeze out of my eyeballs.’
‘My nan has this motorised rocking chair,’ Jack says, looking up at me. ‘It rocks back and forth twice as fast as a normal one. It rocks so fast that her head smashes against the chair thousands of times a day, and she thinks it’s a nice head massage.’
‘The other day me and my nan had a cherry-spitting contest, and she spat the seeds so far that the New Zealand Prime Minister made a formal complaint,’ I tell him. I jump down off the fence and continue on up the main street towards the shops.
‘My nan’s so tough she’s a cat-burglar. She steals people’s cats, brings them back to the nursing home and makes cat soup out of them. She tells the other inmates that it’s chicken.’
‘My nan’s teeth are so dirty she has to use a toilet brush to clean them,’ I say.
‘My nan’s breath smells like a warm tuna smoothie,’ Jack fires back.
‘My nan uses sandpaper instead of toilet paper.’
‘Mine uses her hand.’
‘My nan plants weeds in her front garden and sprays the flowers with poison.’
‘We gave my nan chrysanthemums on Mother’s Day – and she ate them.’
‘Mine knits chain-mail jumpers.’
‘Mine gave up knitting to pursue her other interest – kickboxing.’
‘My nan has a Great Dane as big as a horse,’ I say. ‘Its poo is bigger than an elephant’s.’
‘My nan’s dog has two mouths: one at the front of its head and one at the back. If you pat its neck it bites you with its back-mouth.’
‘The fruitcake my nan makes is so full of dog fur,’ I say, ‘that it’s like eating an actual dog.’
‘Mine rolls her lamingtons in maggots rather than coconut.’
‘My nan’s –’
‘Alright!’ Jack snaps, stopping and turning to me. ‘If your nan’s so tough, I dare her to fight my nan.’
‘What?’ I laugh.
‘I’m serious.’
He really is serious. I laugh again, nervously this time.
‘Well?’ he says.
‘Um. Well …’
‘Chicken,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘I said you’re chicken.’
‘Don’t call me chicken. Name the place – my nan’ll be there and she’ll mash your nan like a potato.’
‘Saturday. 6 am. In the alley down near my nan’s nursing home.’
‘Deal,’ I say.
‘Make sure she’s there.’
‘She’ll be there.’
‘Good.’
‘Good.’
Saturday, 5.54 am. I ride up to the mouth of the alleyway. It runs off the main street, down near the industrial estate. It’s pretty dark and grimy. Brown brick walls run all the way to a dead end, where there’s a door. I think it’s the back of the old spaghetti factory. Bottles and rubbish lie everywhere.
‘You came,’ says a voice.
I peer through the semi-darkness. Jack is sitting, legs hanging over the edge of a dirty green dumpster about halfway down the alley.
‘Thought you wouldn’t show,’ he says.
‘And miss out on the greatest day of my life?’
Jack burps. He jumps down and walks to the opening of the alley to meet me.
‘Here she comes,’ he says.
I listen. There is a tiny hum-buzzing. It seems to be coming closer.
‘Does she drive a granny cart?’ I ask.
Jack doesn’t say anything. I’ve never met Jack’s nan, but if she has to ride a motorised cart around the corner from the nursing home it must mean she’s really frail. Maybe he’s been lying about her the whole time. I’m going to feel terrible if my nan beats up a woman who can’t even walk.
I hear a faint click-clack, click-clack coming from the other end of the street. I’d know that sound anywhere. My nan’s walking frame. Two of the rubber feet are missing so it always makes this click-clack of metal on tar.
The hum-buzz gets much louder as the granny cart rounds a nearby corner onto the main street. My jaw hangs open. This is not like any granny cart I’ve ever seen. It’s hot pink. The wheels are like monster-truck wheels. The numberplate reads, ‘SUE’. Jack’s nan is sitting about two metres above the road in this hotted-up beast. There’s a screech of rubber on tar as the cart pulls up on the footpath next to us. The engine cuts. The wheel rims have little silver skulls around the edge. I look up at Jack’s nan. She is not frail. She is very not frail.
Click-clack, click-clack.
I give Jack a frown that says, Why didn’t you tell me?
He grins and shrugs his shoulders.
Jack’s nan is the largest woman I have ever seen outside the Guinness Book of Records. She is like a wrecking ball designed to bring down skyscrapers. You know those American people you see on the news who haven’t left their bed in ten years and need the roof to be removed from their house so that a crane can lift them into an ambulance? Well, she’s not quite that big, but I reckon she’s about ten of me stuck together.
Click-clack, click-clack.
I turn. My nan is about 30 metres away, coming past the motor wrecker’s gate. Her white poodle, Ponka, is on a red lead at her side. I want to bolt down the street and tell Nan to run for her life, to head for the hills, that this woman will peel her like a banana.
I hear the suspension on the cart squeak loudly as Jack’s nan clambers down. An overweight black-and-white dog drops off the cart after her. It pants loudly like it has something caught in its throat. I try to see if it has an extra mouth on its neck, but I don’t want to get too close.
My nan comes to a stop and the street is silent.
‘Hi, Nan.’ I give her a kiss on her soft cheek.
‘Hello, Love,’ she says. ‘Is this the lady who wants to punch my lights out?’
‘Yeah, this is her.’
‘Lovely to meet you,’ she says.
Nan’s not wearing her glasses. She squints. I can tell that she can’t see Jack’s nan at all. They stand about five metres apart at the opening of the alley, each with a dog at their side.
In the blue corner: my nan, Nancy, 75-years old, hunched over her walking frame, light blue shirt with dark blue flowers and a knee-leng
th dress. Lipstick on her teeth, clutching a large handbag. She is a frail biscuit of a woman. In the red corner: Jack’s nan, Sue, maybe 65, wearing a yellow shirt the size of a two-man tent and a pair of jeans. Dark brown hair tied in a bun. Gold rope chain around her neck like a rapper. A tattoo of a lizard on her arm. She grins, showing a wide, black slot where her front teeth once were.
Jack and I look at each other. Can we really make these women fight? Aren’t there laws against this? Or is that just roosters?
‘You ready?’ Jack says.
‘Um.’
‘You ready, Nanna?’ Jack asks.
Jack’s nan spits on the ground in front of her. ‘Let’s do this.’
‘Can you give me a minute?’ I say to Jack, taking my nan aside, walking her into the alley. ‘You don’t have to do this. I didn’t know that –’
‘No. In my day if you said you were going to do something, you did it. Now where is she?’
‘You need your glasses,’ I tell her.
‘No I do not. They’re at home. They pinch me behind the ears.’
‘There are things you should know about Jack’s grandma.’
‘Don’t try to talk me out of this, Thomas.’
‘But she’s –’
‘Don’t you worry,’ she says, parking her walking frame against the green dumpster. ‘I’m looking forward to this. I haven’t had a good catfight since I was in Fifth Form.’
She turns and puts up her dooks, old-skool style. She rotates her fists in circles in front of her.
Sue laughs. ‘This’ll be good,’ she mumbles, waddling into the alley. She turns her head to the right and then to the left. It pops like bubble wrap being twisted. She strides forward and I swear I feel the ground quake.
My heart is banging. What will I tell Mum if Nan gets a black eye? Or worse.
‘Okay, ladies,’ Jack says in his best referee’s voice. ‘Two-minute rounds. Best of three. May the best nan win.’
Round One
For the first minute they just circle each other. The clock ticks down. My nan twists her head slightly, straining to hear where Sue is because she can’t see her.
‘Come on, you!’ Nan says. ‘Let’s dance.’
Jack’s nan smiles, waits, then runs at my nan. Well, not exactly runs. It’s more of a slow-motion bounding, like a hairy mammoth in a stampede. My nan seems totally unaware that she’s about to be cleaned up.
‘STOOOOOPPPPP!’ I shout, but it’s too late. Jack’s nan leaps off one foot and dives through the air.
‘Where are you?’ my nan calls out. ‘You can run but you can’t –’
BAM! Sue nails her. The two women hit the footpath, hard. Nan disappears beneath Sue. She’s been Flat Stanleyed, turned into a pancake. Rather than walking through doors, she’ll be able to slip under them from now on. When she goes on holidays, we’ll post her rather than send her on a plane.
Even Jack looks worried. I want to go and roll Sue off, but I’m scared of what I’ll find. I don’t want a rice cracker for a grandmother.
Then I hear, ‘Get off me or I’ll sock you one in the kisser.’
I’m so relieved to hear Nan’s voice. Sue rolls aside and my nan emerges. She gives Sue a kick in the knee. ‘You try that again, you Heffalump, and I’ll give you the ol’ Nancy Weekly one-two.’
I race over. ‘Are you alright?’
Her hair looks crazy, her lipstick is smeared all over one cheek and her dress is torn – but she seems okay.
‘Ding-ding,’ says Jack. ‘That’s two minutes. End of round one.’
‘Let’s just stop this now,’ I say to Nan as she heads back to the corner where her walking frame sits.
‘Why?’ she asks.
‘Why? Because you nearly died about ten seconds ago.’
‘Oh, don’t exaggerate. That’s the problem with you kids. You make mountains out of molehills.’
‘We don’t. You just –’
‘When’s round two?’ she says, squinting into the distance.
Round Two
The next round goes just as badly as the first. Sue pulls out every lowdown, old-lady trick in the book. She rubs a tube of cream for crusty feet into my nan’s eyes. Nan squeals loudly. She rips off my nan’s wig and throws it into the dumpster. I didn’t even know Nan wore a wig.
Sue grabs a cookbook out of the back of her cart, a thick one by Margaret somebody, and thumps my nan over the head. She whips a pair of knitting needles out of the back of her jeans and jabs Nan all over.
Nan says, ‘Ooo,’ every time she gets poked.
‘Stop it, you dreadful woman!’
With 20 seconds to go in the round, Sue walks back to her cart and hoists herself up into the seat.
‘Hey!’ I say. ‘What are you doing?’
She turns the key, hits the accelerator and starts ripping down the alley. I can’t believe that this woman is going to run my grandmother over.
‘Nan, get out of the way!’ I rush towards her but she has this strange look in her eye.
She holds up a hand to stop me. Sue is about five metres away now and moving in fast. Well, granny-cart fast. Nan’s going to get creamed. She grabs her handbag off me and reaches into it with both hands.
‘What are you doing?’ I take her arm and start pulling, but she wriggles out of my hold, slips on some oven mitts and brings out a container with a lid. It’s a casserole dish. She rips off the lid and I see that it’s steaming. Sue is only a metre away when Nan lifts the dish and hurls the contents all over the hot-pink cart. Vegetables, meat and a ton of yellow sauce fly through the air and hit Jack’s nan.
Sue lets out a bloodcurdler. The cart screeches to a stop, centimetres from my nan. Sue throws herself off the cart and onto the ground. She has sauce all over her head and shoulders. She wipes madly, screaming, ‘Get it off me!’ Then her dog runs in and starts licking her face and hair. Ponka, my nan’s poodle, laps up the food off her shoes.
‘Get away from me, you disgusting animals,’ she shouts, but the casserole is too delicious and the dogs keep eating. Jack runs in and grabs Sue’s dog by the collar but, sure enough, its neck-mouth opens and bites Jack on the hand.
‘Yowww!’ He pulls his hand back.
Ponka is frightened and runs away.
‘Ding-ding,’ I say. ‘End of round two.’
With his unbitten hand, Jack pulls a sweat towel out of his jeans pocket and wipes sauce off Sue’s face.
Nan puts the lid on her dish and places it back in her handbag.
‘That was awesome!’ I say. ‘How did you think of that?’
‘Always prepared,’ she says.
Sue stands and leans against her monster-truck granny cart, her hair and eyebrows thick with sauce. She has bits of carrot and potato on her shoulders and chest. Jack pats at her but she growls at him.
Nan pulls a thermos and two teacups out of her bag and hands the cups to me. She pours the tea and we sip.
I notice the sky is getting lighter. The sun is rising over the bus depot on the other side of the main street.
‘I can win this,’ Nan says. ‘I’m quite enjoying myself now. But we should get it over with before The Fuzz get here.’
‘The Fuzz?’ I ask.
‘The cops, the heat, the boys in blue,’ she says.
‘I’ve never heard you talk like this.’
‘There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Tom Weekly,’ she replies with a wink.
Round Three
Sue is wearing a pair of large, red boxing gloves and matching headgear. She shoves a mouthguard in, shadow-boxing and dancing her way towards Nan.
‘I want you!’ she says, pointing a glove. Her dog gives a low growl. Ponka hides behind me, shaking.
‘Bring it,’ Nan says.
Where does she even hear things like, ‘bring it’? I wonder.
Sue weaves forward and lands a jab on my nan’s chin.
‘Oooo,’ Nan says, clutching at her jaw.
Then Sue gives her
a couple of uppercuts, a right hook and another six or seven quick jabs. She’s using my nan’s head as a speedbag.
Nan looks over to me, dazed. ‘Is that you, Neville?’ Neville is my uncle.
‘No, it’s Tom.’
‘Who?’
Sue unleashes another storm of punches.
‘Stop it!’ I scream. This has gone too far. I don’t care if Jack wins.
‘S’okay,’ my Nan says, groggily stumbling to her right.
‘No, it’s not.’
Sue gets Nan in a headlock, cutting off her windpipe.
‘You rotter!’ Nan gasps.
‘Say “mercy”,’ Sue says, ‘and it’s all over. I won’t let you go until I hear it.’
Nan is starting to go blue. Her shirt is pulled up, and the colostomy bag attached to her stomach is showing. Nan’s bowels have been on the skids for years, but last year she had to have this plastic bag attached to her belly to collect her poo. I know more than I want to: I had to empty it for her last Sunday before we sat down for roast.
‘Say “mercy”,’ I scream at Nan. ‘Say it now!’
But I see something sparkle in my nan’s eyes. She reaches into her mouth and pulls out her false teeth. Then she ‘bites’ Jack’s nan on the arm, right on the lizard tattoo. She has the set of teeth chattering on the ends of her fingers.
‘Argh,’ Jack’s nan says. ‘Argh, you can’t do that! It hurts.
Stop it.’
Nan bites Sue on the fingers, then reaches up and bites her on the neck, the cheek, working those teeth like a pair of castanets.
Sue lets go, clutching at her own neck, screeching, ‘You can’t do that!’
‘Who says?’ Nan calls, grinning and jamming her teeth back in. ‘And, by the way, your blouse looks disgusting. Don’t you own an iron?’
Sue looks down at herself, then up at Nan. She looks upset. She looks angry. I guess you don’t tell an old woman that her ironing stinks. Sue pulls back her fist, winding up for the haymaker, a punch that will lift Nan off her feet. I want to do something, but it all happens too quickly.
Sue’s fist drives forward and hits Nan in the stomach – right in her colostomy bag. When the punch lands there is an almost deafening POP! that echoes off the alley walls. The bag has burst, and you don’t even want to know what comes out.
My Life and Other Stuff I Made Up Page 3
