‘A Visit To Grandmother’ by William Melvin Kelley

A Visit To Grandmother by William Melvin Kelley, 1964

The magic trick:

A plot that comments on the thing that might be annoying you early in the story

You might get fooled by this story.

A man is visiting his mother for the first time in a long time. He’s brought his son with him, and it’s the son who narrates the story for us.

The mother is a big character – equal parts cantankerous and loving. She’s funny. She’s familiar.

When she starts telling her story about a crazy memory involving riding a horse with her younger son, you’ll think, OK, so this is a big, funny, semi-cheesy family story. Got it.

Well, if you’re a little annoyed by the cartoonish, performative way about this family and story, don’t worry, you’re not alone.

It turns out, so is the man at the heart of the story – the narrator’s father.

He doesn’t have the appropriately amused reaction to the horse story. He’s not enjoying the mother’s charms.

Now – the reader realizes – this might still be a story about this family. But it’s a layer deeper than maybe we previously thought. It’s a story about the family’s facade. It’s a story about the complicated ways family members help and hurt each other.

And that’s quite a trick on Kelley’s part.

The selection:

“GL, where’d you get that thing?” I says, “I swapped him for that old chair, Mama,” he says. “And made myself a bargain. This is even better than Papa’s horse.”

Well, I’m a-looking at this horse and noticing how he be looking more and more wide awake every minute, sort of warming up like a teakettle until, I swears to you, that horse is blowing steam out its nose.

“Come on, Mama,” GL says, “come on and I’ll take you for a ride.” Now George, my husband, God rest his tired soul, he’d brung home this white folks’ which had a busted wheel and fixed it and was to take it back that day and GL says: “Come on, Mama, we’ll use this fine buggy and take us a ride.”

“GL,” I says, “no, we ain’t. Them white folks’ll burn us alive if we use their buggy. You just take that horse right on back.” You see, I was sure that boy’d come by that animal ungainly.

“Mama, I can’t take him back,” GL says, “Why not?” I says.

“Because I don’t know rightly where that man is at,” GL says.

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