My mother was a true smoker of cigarettes. She smoked approximately 4 packs a day- no exaggeration. Ruby was also excellent at money management in order to afford this habit as well as having family members that would send her money from time to time.

Every day, she lay in bed and smoked. During my childhood, she would have these fits of laughing and crying between puffs of cigarettes. If I have not mentioned it in prior post I will reiterate here. Our white walls were brown with sticky tar. The tar was so thick you could draw in it. And no, I’m not writing this for effect or hyperbole, it was bad. And, even though she confined her activity to her bedroom, there was no way it would not affect the rest of the household.

As a child, I smelled of nicotine. It permeated everything I wore including the hair on my head. I am surprised that I did not contract asthma or any other lung related disease. She would not empty her ashtray until the last pack was smoked. I was breathless watching her do this.

I snuck a cigarette to try on my own. She knew it because she was a natural accountant at knowing how much she smoked. Needless to say, I truly hated it and quickly put out the cigarette and snuck it back into her carton as if she would not figure it out. Next to beer, it was the nastiest taste I had known. I wanted her to stop and decided that the best way to do this was to destroy her cigarettes.

Somehow, I snuck a pack of her cigarettes from bedside and took them out of the package and took them outside. I stared and stared until my resolve stood firm and I began to smash them. When I close my eyes, I still feel the tobacco under my fingers which only fed my despise of the dammed things. After I was done, I quietly stuffed them back in the package, and placed them in the carton.

Like most children, I had long forgotten about the wrong I committed less than an hour ago. But it caught up to me in the worst way.

My grandmother was someone who did not spare the rod so I was not unfamiliar them down-home-south-ass-whoopings. But, this was not one of them.

Ruby went off on me like two grown women fighting on a street corner over a man. She lit into my 9 year old self like she didn’t know me. I couldn’t fight back. I couldn’t protect myself. My grandmother couldn’t protect me either and was helpless in trying to stop it. When she was done, she went back into her room as if the beat down was cathartic to her.

Years later whenever I brought up that incident, Ruby claimed that she never remembered it. I believe her. She was not the one who dispensed punishment in our house. She wasn’t a proponent of spanking as the first cure for bad behavior. But that day, my mother let me know exactly where she stood on her addiction to cigarettes.