She Loves Me

She Loves You, Ya Ya

It was the first time all of my cousins were together at my grandfather’s farm. The Beatles were the national craze. Someone was making money off selling Beatle wigs. So we bought four wigs.
My grandfather, my father, my brother, and I wore the wigs, pretending to be the Beatles. We even had toy guitars we pretended to play. We played the song “She Loves You.”

My grandmother hated the devil’s music. Then again, she thought the devil created all music including the ones in churches. She even suspected some religions of devil worship. She hid under her apron, tried to keep her ears sacred. I doubted that it would work.

She thought the Beatle wigs were sinfully long. She thought wigs in general were made by the devil and she banned any pictures of George Washington in her house because he wore a sinful wig. She snorted, he probably snorted snuff too.

She thought the radio had the devil inside it and the devil was trying to get people buying stuff they never needed. She had a list of sinful things not to buy. She posted it on the walls. She was up to seven long lists.

She believed that cameras cast an evil eye. She broke one in a store for that very reason. There were no photographs in her house. She would clip out pictures from the newspaper so she would not have to see all the pictures of cursed people. She did not even want to know which pit of hell developed the pictures either.

During the pretend concert, she stood up, had more than enough, and smashed the radio. She yanked the wig off grandfather, and took some of his hair too. She took a switch to the rest of us. She spent the rest of the night making us recite the Lord’s Prayer. Then for irony, she sang, “she loves you, ya ya.”