Grandma Got Ran Over By A Reindeer

The holidays are always something special, maybe it’s just capitalistic bliss or the rush of materialist needs being met all at once. Growing up Jamaican, the holidays were something my mom really wanted to show me and my sister.

Something she never had or experienced as a kid, except for in a foreign land. In her hometown, “Buru” and “Grand Market” was how the community celebrated Christmas.

Buru was a festival, kind of like Junkanoo, with goat pelt drums and the crowd following the parade. I specifically remember getting ice cream with my god cousin and grandma. I also remember a grown man trying to take me away from the crowd, but after I asked him what my grandmother’s name was-

He froze.

When my grandmother appeared and confirmed she didn’t know him, she removed me from the situation immediately. I could see the look on her face process danger, just like it does when my mom sees something uncanny. I would later learn from my aunt that my grandma wasn’t a stranger to predators, she too was a victim.

I didn’t attend Grand Market that night, I fell asleep. Grandma didn’t wake me up, probably because she thought it was dangerous- but my friend Georgia got me a pink phone that we played on religiously until I left for the states.

The generic pink phone was something you’d probably get at a dollar store , but it being in Jamaica made it more fun than a plastic pink phone in the states.

Leaving my grandmother to go back to the states was always so bitter sweet, but if I knew that would be my last Christmas with Grandma Betsy I would have cherished it a lot more. I would have clung to her like a Starfish and never let her go.

I would have taken a whiff of her Avon lotion and her sweat, that tasted like seawater and the tears that fall from my eyes. Her big curious eyes, and that grumpy look my mother and my uncle have that make them kind of look like Scottish Folds.

I watched Grandma Got Ran Over By a Reindeer every Christmas, from as early as I could remember to my late teens.

I never thought I’d lose my grandmother the same way- not by a Reindeer, but by a van. Instead of hooves on her chest, she was flattened, kinda like Flat Stanley.

When we got the call about the accident from my aunt that one night in September, I already knew she was going to die. Not many people can live after being run over and then backed up on. And my mom was so gullible, but I couldn’t act like the main character and exclaim,

“Santa’s Reindeer ran over grandma!”

Or say, the thing my mother didn’t want to hear.

“She’s gonna die.”

My aunt confirmed my grandmother was okay, my mom did too- she claimed Grandma had said she was ,”Alright.”

Not a damn thing was ‘alright’ about getting hit by a van, or slowly ran over by a van in the middle of the road.

Hearing my mother’s cries at almost 12AM and being rejected whilst trying to comfort her, showed my first initiation into being a woman of the family. Then I stopped being a child, no one except for my other grandmother asked me if I was okay (She would later pass and also bring my world down too.).

I had lost my grandmother and one of my best friends too. She always kept me safe, despite the community she lived in. She always protected me, and we had our own body language and our own code. When my mom came- she was so jealous that I wanted to stay in the slums with my grandmother and reject AC and running hot water.

Devastated wasn’t the word when I came back to Jamaica and realized everyone had grown up faster than me.

Georgia had changed completely- from my best friend who’d come with me everywhere and play with plastic phones that had one recording- to a PICK-ME GIRL who only gave a shit about the newly initiated officers that come to mooch off the death celebration that was my grandmother’s funeral.

I witnessed a police officer kick my grandmother’s dog, the dog who’d witnessed my grandmother’s ultimate death and followed us everywhere. When I told the man that was my grandmother’s dog and it’s the last thing I had left of her, Georgia laughed.

I can’t remember what she said exactly, but she claimed ‘foolishness’ and the officers laughed too. Everyone laughed at me, and my grandmother was dead.

That was that last time I’d ever see Georgia, because how dare she kick my grandmother’s dog when that dog was the last thing to see my grandmother alive. How dare she laugh at such cruelty and my suffering, when I thought she was my best friend. Satima, my other friend, fished me a lobster from the sea, and cousin Qualisha let me hold her baby-

I think that was the first heart break I received in Jamaica, when my grandma got ran over by a Reindeer.

Grandma got ran over by a van, walking home from the market in September, you can say it was just an accident but as for me and my mother, we believe it was murder.