A video short story: Boil The Combs
I always knew when my grandfather had come home too boozed, or sometimes it was even on a night when he’d just drift in his chair. The whiskey had done a number on him again. There’d be some noise and then my grandmother would shout out, “Boil the combs!”Grandad was a good sort otherwise. He made me a go-kart out of old boxes, but when the other kids could go much faster, he took the engine from his leaf-blower and hid it under the hood. He said, “put your foot on this button and just ease off if you’re going around a corner because there are no breaks”. He also said, “the other kids are stupid anyway”. And we laughed together for a long time after he said things like that. Grandma and Granddad liked to say that they ‘took me in’ and I never knew what that meant, at least not for ages. My dad wasn’t really into being a dad, they said. My mum could not cope alone. She moved up north to ‘better herself’, and that hurt the first few times I heard it, because I always wondered what was better than having a son. But it turned out she was going to go back to school to get some qualifications. She started writing letters, and as I got a bit older, I reckon the letters improved a bit too, so school was obviously working pretty good for her the second time around. Granny and Grandpa were good sorts, but I know she didn’t like it much when he went out drinking, or just had too much in his chair at home. But he seemed to have his reasons, reckoned sometimes she went out late alone without him when I was asleep, but also that I really didn’t need to know much more about that. We were quite a funny wee gang. I got teased a bit in school sometimes by people saying who is that old man or that old lady, or just who are those stupid old people that pick you up. But I just ignored that. Like a lot of what I am saying here, and a lot more I’m choosing not to say, it hurt a bit at the time. And then it didn’t. But I had good times with them both, and it felt like I was just living in a different world. Helping to pickle beetroot and lemons in the kitchen with Grandma. Helping to grow vegetables in the hydroponic greenhouse out back in the yard with Granddad. All of it completely normal to me, at least until we talked about what we did in the weekends first period Monday. I certainly never mentioned the combs. I knew that would take some explaining. One time, Granddad stumbled into my room and I thought he was lost, but he said to just shove over, and he pushed me close to the wall and he just fell asleep in the bed behind me. But pressed right up against me. It was fine, I guess. I felt safe. I just thought it was weird. And his breath smelled a bit like if someone had been sick in a cup of tea. So I hugged the wall instead of him. And another time, Grandma came in, but she was not going to let me sleep in the bed with her and told me to get on the floor. I tried to say that I was comfortable, but I was also pretty sleepy, so must have just crawled into place on the floor. I woke up and I was curled into a ball like a cat, under a huge rug, and also on top of a fluffy rug too. So it was actually really comfortable, and a little bit funny. I didn’t remember being there, like how I got there at all, until Granny said. And it was actually really weird because she was already up and making breakfast, so I thought at first I’d done some silly sleepwalking or something. But Granny believed in telling the truth. Most of the time anyway. And definitely whenever I asked. Which is why I had to find out why she would yell, “boil the combs”, and what did that even mean? She said it was a throwback to when she’d be woken up by her mum yelling the same thing whenever her dad came home drunk. Her mum would shout “boil the combs”, and the kids in the house would get up, put a pot of water on, and with the cast iron pot cooling off the fire, they’d then place two hair combs in, so as to be sure no lice were trapped, and the combs were nice and clean. They would then help their mum tie their dad into bed, so he didn’t fall out. He’d come home drunk and want to do one of two things that started with ‘F’ apparently. I didn’t really understand that part. But that’s what Granny said. She reckoned the plan her mum had worked out was that if they tied him into bed he couldn’t move, nor be a danger to anyone, and also he wouldn’t fall out and end up on his face on the cold wooden floor too. But the genius part of the plan was that once tied into bed, they would all have a go at doing his hair, combing it back and tidying it while he snored. The two combs were so that it was a game, Granny reckoned. And her and her two sisters and brother would take turns. They thought it was so much fun. And got a real giggle she said. The idea was that when her father woke, he had no idea what had happened but could tell by his hair that it must have been a trouble-free night. That all made so much sense, and sounded funny, and a little bit sweet, but also a little bit weird, and even quite scary, but Granny said that they all knew what they were doing and had fun, and it wasn’t until quite long after her father had died that her mother explained a bit more about how serious it was sometimes, and how the “boil the combs” scream wasn’t quite a code, or a password, but then again it also almost was. Her mum couldn’t always get out of bed straight away, and sometimes the kids had to do all of the boiling and even get some rope to bring in to their mum in the bedroom. Sometimes she was standing up in her nightgown, and was in the corner of the room and their father was yelling a bit about how he was angry at the world for so many things. “Kids can be clever”, I said to my Granny after all that. And she agreed that they can, and reckoned that’s why I didn’t need to know too much more about anything else related to why she still yelled out “boil the combs”. She just said it was some sort of throwback to her childhood, and definitely nothing to with Granddad at all. She also said it was smart of me to not come in when I heard it. To just do my best to get back to sleep. Things were different these days, she said. And she hadn’t married her father. She definitely hadn’t, no matter what Mrs. Waters across the road said. Things were fine most of the time she also said. And I wondered why she had said those last two things.Sounds Good! is a reader-supported publication. 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New Zealand