- I'm not going to Grandma's anymore, Mum dear, send Ion this time!
- Now, Little Red, says my mum, come on, Mum's begging you, and afterwards I'll make you pancakes! Come on, or I'll tell your dad, and if I do...
- Hmmm, I think to myself, let me work out a little scheme right now, so I don't have to go to Grandma's, I still get to eat the pancakes with Nutella, and I don't get a hiding from Dad either.
He was a good man, in fear of my mum, like any man, but it only took her giving him a slightly harder look, bang, and he'd articulate just what a man has to articulate to keep the woman at peace. Because I don't know how it is for others, but at our place the woman was the neck of the family, and as for the head, nobody dared say a word.
- Come on, Mum, put it in a bag, don't give me a basket, it's hard to carry.
Proud that she'd talked me into visiting the old lady, my mum arranges everything in there nicely; I don't even quite know what she packed me, all I caught was that the bag was one of those from Kaufland, the kind that holds plenty of kilos. Anyway, she told me a few things there, mind you don't stray, blah, blah, but with all my gum-chewing, I didn't really hear her.
What can I say, I didn't walk very far, to be honest, I hid behind a block of flats, I was only in the Țiglina area, between stairwells 3 and 4 of the A-blocks, and I stood there and worked it all out in my head, like: "Now I'm there, now I'm there, now I'm crossing that road, now I'm at the Profi shop, now I'm walking through Grandma's gate, now I've opened the door, now the conversation with the wolf who ate Grandma, now he's grabbing me too...", and so on, until I finally made it back to the A-blocks in Țiglina.
Maybe you're wondering what I did with the Kaufland bag. Well, whatever was in there smelled so good that, at one point, as I was standing where no neighbor would spot me, a poooor old maaan walked past me... and he was dragging along a dog too, a wolf-dog, black, a beautiful dog, but a bit dirty, and since I couldn't go back home with the bag, I gave it to them, the poooor maaan, poor thing. He was overjoyed, he said bless you, and I said: "May it be for Grandpa's soul, what a good man he was, gone now, poor thing, died of stress, the stress from the old lady, but, oh well."
I get home around the time I was supposed to, I was a little late anyway so it wouldn't look suspicious.
- You're back, Mummy's girl?
- Yes, I say, putting on my good, obedient little girl's face, and a touch tired after such a long walk. Even my legs seemed to ache a bit in the muscles, well, of course they were going to ache.
- How's Grandma? she asks me.
- Fine, fine... she was in bed, a little under the weather, but I brought her... I waited for her to eat... I sat and chatted with her a while.
- Goooood, good...
Riiiing, suddenly the phone rings; well, in reality it was the ringtone of Jerusalema.
- Hello? What? When? I'm coming right now! Children, Ion, Little Red, quick, get dressed, we're going, the old lady's died!
Now I was feeling a bit lousy...
- Come on, Little Red, hurry, that's it, she's gone, at last, gone, poor thing...
Just so you understand exactly, it was my grandma on my father's side, because my grandma on my mother's side lived with us in the house...