Rules for Being a Girl

Gram smirks. “Here,” she says, handing me the paper and sitting back against the throw pillows. “Help me with this. I’m useless at the pop culture clues.”

I glance down at the puzzle, surprised to see it’s almost all the way filled in already. “Looks like you’ve been doing fine without me.”

Gram waves her hand. “The Globe puzzle is easy,” she demurs, though I can tell she’s a little bit pleased with herself. “They say it keeps your brain sharp, for all the good that’ll do me.”

“No, it will!” I say, smiling a little awkwardly. I never know exactly how to react when Gram mentions being sick. The reality is that Alzheimer’s is progressive; she isn’t ever going to get better, or move out of Sunrise and back into her own place. The trick, my mom always says, is to enjoy her while we have her—which, I remind myself, is exactly what I came here to do.

I open the tub of granola bars—Gram’s right, they do taste a little on the healthy side—and grab the pitcher of iced tea from the fridge. We fill in the rest of the crossword while I tell her about my Brown interview.

“She basically said I was a shoo-in,” I finish with a grin.

“Damn right you are,” Gram says, raising her glass in an iced tea cheers. “I’d expect nothing less from you, Marin-girl.”

“What were you like back in college?” I ask, remembering suddenly what she told me about not having been such a good girl when she was my age. “Were you really a hell-raiser?”

“I had my moments.” She glances at me over the tops of her glasses. “I got arrested in Boston once, protesting the Vietnam War.”

“What?” My jaw drops. “You did not.”

“Why is that so difficult to believe?” Gram looks openly delighted with herself now, her blue eyes bright and canny. “Oh, I swore to your grandpa I’d never tell anyone. I don’t even think your mother knows.”

“No, I don’t think she does either.” I try to imagine it—Gram with her pearl stud earrings and sensible slacks from Eileen Fisher. “You were a badass.”

“Well.” Gram breaks a granola bar in half. “I suppose I was. But it didn’t feel like that at the time. It just felt necessary, that’s all. Doing what I could to right what was wrong.”

“Did you burn your bra too?” I laugh.

Gram raises her eyebrows.

I clap a hand over my mouth. “Gram!”

“Oh, it was the sixties,” she says, waving her hand with a shrug. “No one was wearing a bra to begin with.”

I laugh at that. “Anything else you want to tell me about this secret life you’ve been hiding for the last, oh, seventeen years?”

Gram considers that for a moment. “Well, my first protests were during the civil rights movement,” she tells me. “I went down to Washington for Dr. King’s speech, with my church group, but you knew that.”

“Grandma, I most certainly did not know that.” I gawk at her, dumbfounded.

“Well,” she says, brushing crumbs off her lap. “I suppose I always felt I could have done more—I know I could have done more, actually—so it didn’t seem right to go around flying my own flag about it.”

I nod slowly, thinking of one of the essays in Bad Feminist—the one about the movie The Help and how it was a work of science fiction, not historical fiction. I remember watching it with my mom when I was home sick once; I’m embarrassed to admit I thought it was really inspiring, not realizing there was this whole racist narrative about a white lady swooping in to heroically combat inequality, when in reality of course the black women had been fighting their own battles for years and years. The more I read and learn lately, the more work I know I have to do.

“So what happened?” I ask now, tucking one leg under me. “How come I never knew about any of this?”

She shrugs, like she’s never really considered it. “Well, Grandpa and I got married. It’s a pretty common story, I think. Your mom and her brothers needed me, and the rest of it . . .” She trails off. “Or that could just be excuses, of course. I guess there’s no way to say for sure.”

“Did you miss it?” I ask, picking the chocolate chips and cherries out of my granola bar before setting the rest of it down on a napkin. “Like, protesting?”

“Well, I suppose I was just protesting in different ways,” she says thoughtfully. “Calling my senators, writing letters, donating money to causes I believed in. I was on a first-name basis with the staffers at Senator Kennedy’s office back in the nineties.” She looks at me meaningfully. “I like to think there are different ways of being a rebel. Doing what you can with what you have, and all of that.”

“Wow,” I say, shaking my head. “I had no idea.”

“Well,” she teases, “maybe you’re not asking your old gram enough questions.” She smiles. “Better do it now, while I can still remember the answers.”

I frown. The idea that Gram won’t always be here burns behind my ribs

. “Gram,” I start, but I think she can see that she rattled me, because she holds up one elegant hand.