Introduction
I first encountered the work of the startlingly-talented Ivy Grimes in the anthology Odd Jobs (a sort of demented fictional version of Studs Terkel’s nonfiction classic Working). Her contribution, “Rags to Riches,” follows the humorous, perplexing adventures of Penny, who works in an eleven-storied Bookstore. Though this store’s subject categorization is somewhat unusual—the Costumes and Radiation sections stand side-by-side on the first floor—no off-beat detail seems to faze wide-eyed, enthusiastic Penny.
The narrator of “Three Plagues” navigates (though more skeptically) another dream-like setting, where her mother insists on living on the roof of the house, and her grandmother, though alive, is “dead”—or perhaps grandmother is truly dead, though “alive.” Meanwhile, a mystery man and those three plagues add a haunting menace, and Grimes skillfully, quietly, draws us into the logic of every this odd world she has created. And we believe, we believe.
—Philip Graham, Editor-at-Large
Three Plagues
by Ivy Grimes
“I can see everything you do,” she often told me. I would test her. “I waved at you today on my drive home. Did you see me?” Of course, I’d done no such thing.
“Yes, you were returning from Mrs. Stanton’s place. She ordered seven bags of frozen peas. Wonder what she’s going to do with them.”
“Make pea soup, I guess.”
“Sounds terrible.”
She was right about the peas, but I suspected her of going inside when I was out so she could use the internet. If she logged into my work account, she could see details of all the deliveries I had to make.
“Remember when we used to shell peas on the porch in the summertime?” She looked down hopefully, like she was trying to convince herself she’d had some good times at ground-level.
“No.”
“Oh. That must have been me and my mother.”
One important thing she did not know was that her mother (who was of course my grandmother) was still alive. Mother was under the impression that Grandmother had died in the earthquake, and nothing I said could change her mind.
I visited with Grandmother once a week when I delivered her groceries. The thing was, Grandmother also believed she’d died in the earthquake.
“Then why do you need to eat if you’re dead?” I asked her whenever the subject arose.
“I don’t need to, but I like to.”
When I found Grandmother alive after the quake, I begged her for months to write Mother a letter or call her on the phone to show she was all right.
“That would give her false hope, dear,” she said.
It was my lot in life to care for both of them, which involved not only feeding but humoring them. I had to pretend that all the dangers Mother anticipated were real, or at least possible. She was up there on the roof in the first place to better perceive dangers, which ranged from the weather (though who was more exposed than she?) to a mystery man she swore was stalking me.
It was always the same man she saw, but she couldn’t make out his features, and she didn’t see him every day. Some days he hid, she said, though she didn’t say where.
“Tell me when he’s out and about!” I’d say. I kept my tone pleasant all the time. The last thing I wanted was an argument about something that couldn’t be proven or disproven. What a waste of time!
For months, the mystery man had been in hiding, according to Mother, so during that time she’d warn me about icy patches in the supermarket parking lot and bad traffic on the highway.
What I didn’t know then was that someone can be very wrong and very right at the same time. When Mother told me the mystery man had emerged from hiding, I acted afraid and said I’d be extra careful. I’d carry pepper spray. Her advice? Not to leave the house at all. Join her on the roof where she could protect me while the mystery man was after me.
“What does he want with me specifically?”
“I don’t understand that part,” she said. “What makes a person want to destroy another, to break their bones and cut their flesh?”
It wasn’t surprising for a paranoid woman of her generation to be so afraid of random violence. When my aunts were alive, they’d gather in the kitchen with Mother and only talk about murders. Our town was safe from crime, though, and everyone knew and liked me because I did an excellent job delivering their groceries. Besides, I thought I could see more from my vantage point moving all along the ground, seeing things up close. Mother only had binoculars to overcome the distance. The kind of terror that drove her up to the roof had altered her perspective, lengthening her list of enemies unnecessarily.
I went to Grandmother’s to talk it over with her, ignoring Mother’s shouted pleas as I drove away. As was often the case, I found Grandmother crying under her bed.
“Are you okay?” I said, hoping she wouldn’t tell me.
“I miss everyone so much.” She’d ripped off her bedskirt years before so she could lie under the bed wrapped in blankets while still seeing the sun and streetlight through the blinds.
“I’ll drive you anywhere to see anyone,” I said. “You can see Mother anytime.” My words only made her sobs louder.
I told her I needed her advice, explaining the whole situation with the mystery man. It gave her something to think about, and she stopped crying and became very quiet. After several silent minutes, she reached out her pale hand from her hiding spot and passed a folded-up note into my hand.
“What’s this?”
Grandmother’s eyes glittered from the gloom of her underbed. “A ransom note. A man gave it to me long ago. He might be the mystery man.”
Even Grandmother couldn’t be trusted, perhaps. She usually just told me to be nice to my mother but not to listen to her. She had never handed me a single thing in the entire time I’d gone to visit her since the quake.
The note was typed on computer paper, revealing no handwriting clues. It said:
Deliver your granddaughter to me when the time comes, when she is of age. It is necessary, not only for me, but for everyone. Because of her, we will all endure three curses: an earthquake, a windstorm, and a famine.
“A bunch of nonsense,” I said.
“He gave me this long before the earthquake. I’m only awaiting the windstorm now. It’s probably my fault somehow, all tied back to me. Some seed of something I put in your mother, who passed it on to you.”
“Like what?”
“Probably some unforgiveness in my heart. Some hatred.”
She was tired after all that divulging, and she drifted off to sleep. I left and went to the grocery store to prepare an order for Felix Smith, and for the first time in my life, someone called to complain about my work. It was Mrs. Barron, one of my favorite customers, who always invited me in for a cup of tea. My boss told me she’d apologized for calling, but that I’d forgotten her bag of carrots, and she really did need them to add color to her soup and fortify her with vitamins. He told me to swing by her place after Mr. Smith’s to deliver the bag of carrots.
No one seemed to care that much, but I did. I tried to hide my tears as I completed my orders, refusing Mrs. Barron’s offer of tea when I swung by with her carrots. I felt as pathetic as Grandmother, crying over nothing. I tried to pull myself together on the way home, putting on some loud talk radio and slapping myself in the face.
“You don’t have to do a perfect job to justify your existence!” I told myself.
And yet, some mystery man had given us an earthquake, and it was my fault. He had two other plagues waiting for us because Grandmother had never surrendered me to him. Why me? I was the normal one in the family, the one who went to work and did a good job. It would have made sense if I’d made a mistake after reading that ransom note, but I’d already made my delivery to Mrs. Barron early that morning, before my meeting with Grandmother. I’d made a mistake before I had any excuse to make one.
As I pulled into the driveway, I looked up and saw Mother with her binoculars pointed towards the distant East. She didn’t acknowledge me as I trudged inside, where I heated up a couple of frozen dinners and joined her to eat on the roof.
“You left in spite of my commands,” Mother said. She was mad, but not so mad that she didn’t eat her microwaved meatloaf.
“I went to see Grandmother.”
I rarely told her about my visits to Grandmother since any mention of her mother made her sad, and she didn’t believe me anyway.
“Poor dear,” she said. “You really believe that.”
I pulled the crumpled ransom note from my pocket and handed it to Mother.
“She gave me this,” I said, and I was glad when she turned white. The shock served her right for not believing me.
“How did you find this?” she said.
“I already told you.”
She stared at the message, soft from many crumplings. “I should have killed this man when I had the chance.”
I started to cry, and it shocked Mother. She rarely saw me cry.
“Is this about Mrs. Barron?” she said. “Because really, you can’t go all to pieces because of some carrots.”
“It’s the earthquake, Mother! It killed so many people, and it was my fault. Or, it was because of me. That’s what the note says.”
She acted like she was going to speak, but no words came out. We sat up there in silence, the evening sun sinking past the lower lip of the horizon. We were in the mouth of life, being swallowed all the time.
“I’m going to go to bed,” I told her, but she grabbed my head.
“Stay with me,” she said. “For the end draweth nigh.”
I heard a little static in the distance, as though everyone in town had switched their TVs to no station and turned the volume up as loud as it would go.
“If there are two more plagues, then it isn’t the end,” I said.
“Just remember that I love you, dear. Whatever pain I caused you, whatever strangeness you saw in me, I did it because I loved you. I wouldn’t have given you up to the mystery man for anything. Not while I had breath to breathe.”
I didn’t say it, but it seemed wrong not to make a sacrifice when the whole town was at stake.
The trees began to toss in the wind, swaying back and forth like dancers who knew where they were going. There must be some understanding between the wind and the trees, so that the trees don’t resent it too much. I wondered if all the trees rose up, whether they could destroy the wind that had destroyed so many of them.
I stood up and shouted. “Take me, mystery man!” But the wind seemed to swallow my offer. Not even Mother heard what I said.
“We need some wind,” Mother said. But she couldn’t explain to me why we needed wind, not scientifically.
Neither of us mentioned going inside, though that would have been prudent. We were hypnotized by the swirling sounds and the fresh breath in our faces, I guess. Once the wind really picked up, I didn’t feel scared or sad anymore, and Mother didn’t seem to mind either. It should have lifted us off the roof. We saw some of our neighbors fly by, and we tried to catch them, but the wind took them just beyond our reach. Finally, we saw Grandmother, clinging to the post of her bed, whipped into our lives again. Her bed settled on the roof beside us, and then her body. At last, I could see. She was dead.
She embraced me and Mother, though, and Mother cried throughout the rest of the storm. She and Grandmother were so happy to see each other, they didn’t notice at first when Mrs. Barron landed on our roof, clutching her carrots like they might save her.
“I told you I needed them.” That was the first thing she said to me. “I wasn’t being petty.”
I understood her, too. At last. The windstorm had knocked all the old women in town loose from their pedestals, and their nonsense made some sense to me. By the time the winds died down, it was morning, and I went inside to microwave four frozen sausage biscuits. One for each of us.
“He was trying to destroy us, but he merely brought us closer together,” Grandmother said, happily chewing. Mother smiled. All was well between them again, and I hoped that together they’d be more forthcoming with me. Neither of them would tell me about the mystery man, though, and neither would Mrs. Barron.
“Some things are better left unknown until you have to know,” Mrs. Barron said.
I went inside and took a nap and showered. I threw them a bag of chips and some candy before I left. As I drove away, they all waved, happy enough. They would be waiting for me at the end of the day.
Now I wait for the next big thing. The third promise, which is famine. The ransom note didn’t say I could offer myself. It said Grandmother had to turn me over. She is so happy now, though. All three women are so happy up there, taking turns with the binoculars. I doubt they’ll ever speak to me about the mystery man again. They’ll decide among themselves what’s to be done. For the present, we enjoy our hot meals, knowing the famine will arrive eventually.
All I can do is my job. Now that Grandmother, Mother, and Mrs. Barron are in the same place, it saves me some time, at least. I haven’t made a mistake since the windstorm.
Ivy Grimes writes dreamlike fiction, which has been published in The Baffler, F&SF, Vastarien, ergot., hex, and elsewhere. She is the author of Glass Stories (Grimscribe Press, 2024). She has an MFA from The University of Alabama, and she currently lives in Georgia.
