Renovate or Conflagrate

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Biddy Betty's Baubles & Fortune Emporium

(short story writing contest, 2019, round 1)
Note: I entered a short story writing contest in January 2019. I was given a genre, theme, and character and had 7 days to write a story that had less than 2500 words. My categories: comedy, power-struggle, great-grandmother. Each heat (there were ~150 heats) was judged by independent judges. The top five from each heat moves on to the next round. I made the top 5 in my heat! The next round I will be assigned new categories and will have 3 days to complete a story. -g

 

Biddy Betty’s Baubles and Fortune Emporium

 

Grammy decides to clean house before she dies.
But despite her good intentions, her family just can’t seem to let it all go.

 

Some kids grow up hearing fairy tales and learning some moralistic teaching that may or may not indicate how much therapy they are going to need later in life. I grew up learning fortune telling from my Grammy Betty. I suppose there would be some who would say it’s the same thing, but I think I’ll discuss it with my therapist later.

Someone once asked Grammy, “Can you really see the future?”

She responded, “I’ve lived in so much of the past I can extrapolate where the future is headed.” I also learned the importance of interesting vocabulary from her. Another thing I learned from Grammy was the power of observation.

When I was a kid, I was playing with a set of runes while she was busy doing some old lady thing that I wasn’t interested in. “Sis,” she said. She always called the girls in our family “Sis”. She called the boys “Brother”.  “Sis, you can tell a lot about someone based on their choices. For example, someone who chooses runes for their tool of future-telling is looking for simplicity. They want brief lines that lay out a fairly specific path. Tarot, on the other hand, is chosen by people who need complexity—sometimes to the detriment of finding any path.”

She often spoke what she was thinking, even when it might upset someone. Once, some old man that was flustered at her bluntness blurted, “Betty! Why are you such an old biddy?” It was meant to be an insult, but she took it on as her own. She wore it with a sense of stubborn pride and would state, “Because I’m Biddy Betty, that’s why.” If we ever got to that point in a conversation with her, though, we knew to just walk away…slowly.

I would visit with her at least once a week. I’d water all the plants in her house (especially the ones in the loft). “I’m 83-and-a-half years old,” Grammy would say. “I have to be careful to not get hurt at my age. At my age things take a lot longer to heal. And if I’m not careful, I’ll have a hard time getting back into shape.” She said that at least once a week and I chuckled every time. She walked 3.5 miles every day except Wednesday. Wednesday she had to rest up for Mahjong. She was definitely in better shape than two-thirds of her family, who were all younger than her.

Every time I visited her, we chatted about the state of the world, my lack of a love life, the latest trend in tidying up. “Grammy, what do you think about this KonMari method of purging your belongings?”

She looked at me blankly and glanced around the room that was filled—neatly—with knick-knacks, souvenirs, bits and baubles from various suitors and spouses over the years, her special china, shelves upon shelves of books, literally a treasure trove of trinkets. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Well, it’s a way of cleaning and organizing your stuff to always have what you need and nothing more—to put it simply. You get rid of things that don’t make you joyful.”

She snorted. “If I threw out everything that didn’t bring me joy, I wouldn’t have a single thing. None of this stuff brings me joy. What brings me joy are the memories that are connected to the items. The people I was with when I got them, or gifts that were given to me by someone special. Those memories are what’s special. Things are just…THINGS.”

She ran her finger along the line of knick-knacks on the mantle.

“But, look at all of these things! What’s going to happen to them when I’m gone?” This caught my ear. Grammy didn’t often dwell on dying. Even though she now had three great-grandchildren, she hadn’t ever talked about what life would be for the rest of us once she was gone.

“Denise from Mahjong just got back from taking care of her mom’s funeral and cleaning out the house. It took her two solid weeks of going through the entire house. She gave away so much stuff. She threw away even more. I don’t want that for my family. And her mom was only 72!”

“Ok, Grammy. What are you going to do about it then?”

She paused and tipped her head to the side. “I guess I should start getting rid of stuff. I know you grandkids have all been eye-balling my things. And then there’s my kids. Oh, dear! How can I make sure things are fair?”

I hugged her good-bye and went home for the day. Two days later there was an announcement sent to the entire family. Grammy had something to share and wanted everyone there.

All 18 of her direct lineage (4 children, 11 grandchildren, 3 great-grandchildren) were there. It was a tight fit inside the “880 square feet of castle” as she liked to call it, but we made it work. It was fascinating to watch everyone gravitate to the possession of hers that they liked the best. Uncle Pat sat next to the grandfather clock, Cousin Shelly stood next to one of the hutches filled with souvenir dolls from around the world. I realized even I was sitting on my favorite chair.  The only ones not focused on stuff were the 3 great-grandkids. They were all under the age of five, after all.

“Thank you all for coming today,” she started. “As you know I will most likely be dying soon.” Everyone immediately chimed in. “What are you talking about? You’re healthier than I am! You’re fine. Stop being so dramatic!” She held up her hand and we stopped talking.

“I have decided that I don’t want any of you to have to go through all of my crap. I’m not begging to go, but I don’t want to go with my drawers full. So, over the next several months, my house is basically going to be one large, ongoing rummage sale.” A brief pause stretched into a full-blown awkward silence. Grammy peered around at all of us gathered around her. It was suddenly as if we were all a part of some odd family class and no one did the homework. “Did you all hear what I said?”

“Mom…” started my mom. “We heard the words. We don’t quite understand what you mean by it.”

“It is what I am going to do with 83 years of accumulation. I don’t want all of you to have to go through all of this junk after I’m gone. So, I am going to have a big sale and get rid of my stuff so you don’t have to.”

Needless to say, there was pandemonium and chaos after that proclamation. None of her children thought that was a good idea. The grandkids all had ideas on better ways to sell the items online. But she was set in what she wanted to do.

The first few months actually went really well. The extended garage sale concept gave all the family a chance to come over regularly. We helped sort, clean, and catalogue the items. The grandkids were tasked with finding price ranges. The parents all met outside of Grammy’s to discuss a way to possibly have her declared incompetent and gain power of attorney. It always devolved into discussion of other family members and eventually wended its way back to family affairs.

Grammy loved every minute of it. She had different people coming in, talking with her, giving her money for this thing or that. And she always took time to give a little back story to the purchase and would usually take time to tell someone’s fortune. Sometimes it was as simple as “your wife is going to love this”. Sometimes it was much more complex and detailed. It all depended on the person and which item they were interested in.

Time kept moving forward. The healthy, right-minded genes in our family are strong, so all of her kids’ efforts to wrest control of her affairs fizzled out. There was still grumbling at various levels since they thought they deserved some portion of their inheritance that was going out the door and leaving an increasingly empty house, but overall things progressed smoothly.

Then, 3-months, 2-days, 10-hours after her proclamation, things began to change. It started small. After Mahjong one day, her friend Denise stopped by the house.

“Betty, I know you have been getting rid of all of your things. You just sold your China set two days ago. You only have a few pots and pans. I would like to give you this everyday dish set from my mother. She would be happy for you to have it!”

Betty blinked and looked around the kitchen. It was rather bare. “Okay,” she said.

The next day, someone pulled up in front of her house in a pickup truck. In the back of the truck was a beautiful table.

“Miss Betty!” called the young man getting out of the cab. “My grandma said I should bring this table over to your house. We were going to take it to Goodwill for her but she said we should bring it here instead.” With that, he and his friend bustled into the house carrying the table. They set it in the still mostly empty kitchen and turned to go.

“Now wait one second!” Grammy walked up to the boys and stared furiously at them. “I don’t want a table! Please take it back to your grandmother!” The boys chuckled.

“No need to thank us! We’ve always wanted to meet you in person!” The first one hugged her briefly and said, “And grandma said to give you a hug from her! Hope you have a great day!”

Then they got into their truck and drove away.

“Wait…Who is your grandmother?” Grammy stood on the sidewalk in front of her house looking completely baffled. Before she could go inside, another car pulled up.

A woman got out of the car. “Are you Biddy Betty?”

“…Yes…?” Grammy wasn’t quite sure what was going to happen if she answered in the affirmative.

“Oh! Wonderful! I have a box with my great-grandmother’s tea service in my car. I have the hutch she used to keep it in back in my garage. They have been there for the last 10 years. I don’t really need them and there’s no one else in my family to share them with. And I don’t have time to dedicate to selling it. Could I give them to you to sell? I’d be willing to split the money with you, if you’d like.”

It started as a trickle like that then grew to a never-ending influx of new items that others were getting rid of. For each one thing Grammy sold, three, four, even five other items were brought to her. Some were things people had sitting in storage for the last how-ever-many-years. Others were items that were part of purge-cleaning projects and no longer brought their owners joy…but the owners found a lot of joy in giving it to “Biddy Betty”.

I stopped by her house one Wednesday to take her to Mahjong. I walked in to find her sitting on the floor in the middle of her living room.

“Grammy!” I rushed to her side, fearing the inevitable. “Grammy, are you ok? What’s the matter?”

She looked at me as I knelt beside her. She had a bewildered air about her. “Look! Look around you. How did this happen?” I looked around at the room. It was twice as full as when she had told us her grand plan just a few short months ago. “And it’s not just the living room, you know.” I did know. I’d spent all of my outside of work time for the last three months at the house.  Most of the family had been there, too. Now, the sorting, cataloguing, and cleaning was for incoming items.

“I have more now than I did before. And none of these things spark joy in me. I don’t even know all of their stories.” She was genuinely distressed about that.

Another family meeting was called. This one was even more awkward than the last one. Everyone sat, almost uncomfortably, on new-to-us furniture. None of the items in the room were Grammy’s.

Grammy had a resolute look on her face. “You all are going to have to start taking some of these things. I can’t fit any more in my house. Even with everything I sell. I think I may have to have the rummage sale more often than not.” She looked at each of us in turn. “I know you each wanted something of mine. And I’m sorry I did not give them to you. This seemed like a good idea at the time.”

A silence filled the room. Mom’s older brother, who had been helping Grammy keep her books said, “Why don’t we make it official. The money that Grammy has from selling all of her things, and the appraisals of the new things…well, there’s more than enough to purchase the old Smith house around the corner. We could move everything in there and start a full-fledged family business.”

Everyone stared at him. He continued, “I’m serious. There’s a fortune to be made. The last few months we’ve made a nice chunk of change. That’s just by dinking around. What do you think would happen if we were actively focused on it?”

That was 8 years ago. Grammy died four years after we had our grand opening. She got to see her family thrive. She watched us track down and learn the stories of the various treasures that came through our doors. She celebrated with us when a favorite item was sold.

We moved into the old Smith place. Hanging on the front porch, a tasteful sign states who we are: Biddy Betty’s Baubles and Fortune Emporium.

We kept the original white board sign from the grand opening on which she printed:

Hours: Thursday-Tuesday

Open: when the door is unlocked and the “OPEN” sign is turned on.

Closed: when we’re done for the day.

Special Fortune with purchase of any item.

Closed Wednesdays for Mahjong.

It sits on the shelf behind the cash register, right next to her urn and her favorite Tarot deck and rune stones. There’s no promises that we won’t sell those things, they are just things, after all. But for now, they guard the shop while we’re not there. And when we are there, they remind us that our future can be extrapolated from our past.