Bianca Grant
Bio
I’m a 33 year old mother of three miracles who survives the day by creating art, poetry, and writing my way through life. I lost myself for a long time and would love to share my daily fight to live faithfully and love honestly. I love you.
Stories (8)
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Hooch & Holler
Astrid woke with a start. The sun was just barely peering through the 1 inch slit in her drawn black out curtains. The sliver of light gave no indication of time but her stomach angrily grumbled for food, so she guessed it must be afternoon. Stretching long, taut legs, Astrid unfurled like a spider and glided along the edge of her room searching for her phone. She found it dead and discarded by the bathroom. “Of course,” she muttered to herself, frustrated at her own laziness. The clock read 3:00 pm and she had nowhere to be. She had quit her job at the Hooch & Holler out on Eden Rd at the end of a final straw in a stack of straws of abuse. Tim Jaffrey had brushed up against her for the last time. She was not a toy to be played with but a person to be respected. She had practiced saying that in the mirror thirty times while clenching her fists so tight, her nails made little half moons in her palms.
By Bianca Grant4 years ago in Horror
Four A.M. Chronicles
I don’t work traditional hours. I am often up at four am because the creative juices are flowing and I don’t want to stop. My children have a routine. They sneak into my room while I sleep and turn on their current favorite show, Scooby-Doo or Bread Barbershop. When my alarm goes off, I pull out my phone, my iPad, and my MacBook to start checking my dashboards to see how my stories are doing, check my email for freelance contracts, and make my to-do list for the day. I am a writer. I create worlds, paint pictures with words, and express the emotions everyone has. “Are you done typing mommy?” my son asks while peering into my screen. I pause to feed my toddlers' breakfast and breastfeed my newborn. We switch over to YouTube preschool videos. “What day is it? What day is it? What’s the day of the week?” I sing as I share on my socials and scroll for challenges and competitions to enter. I lament the bartending job I left and the cash I counted every night. It can become tedious building a following and troll for likes. Then I get that like or share or subscription that every artist craves and it fuels my next post.
By Bianca Grant4 years ago in Humans
The Pear Tree
“Who are you?” The question took me by surprise. I had never been asked before and this was the first time I ever had to think about it. Was I my job? The retail position at the mall folding up behind rummaging browsers. Was I my hobbies? The charcoal under my fingernails and the smears of paint on my jeans from the weekend painting. Was I my family? My mom and my two sisters suffocating me with their neediness. Or was I my memories? The shot that rang out in the night out by the old pear tree, the night I went to bed with a father and woke up without one.
By Bianca Grant4 years ago in Fiction
The Secret Place
I hadn’t seen the rusted gate behind the old warehouse in ten years. Ivy had begun to claim it for its own, wild and wiry. The path was overgrown as well with weeds that snagged my jeans as I brushed by them on my way to the secret place. It was cold and my footsteps crunched loudly on hard-packed earth in the silent morning. I didn’t want to meet this way but I had no choice. My brother was going to keep calling until I gave him the audience he wanted and I didn’t have the energy to keep pretending he didn’t exist. When the warehouse shut down fifteen years ago I thought the town would survive it. I thought our family would survive it. I was wrong.
By Bianca Grant4 years ago in Fiction
From Bottles to Bottles
"Mommy, will you take our order?" my four- year old yells from her chair. She smiles broadly as I run off to the kitchen to prepare her peach slices, my two- year old son's Frosted Flakes, and check on the biscuits I have in the oven. As I explain to an insistent and angry toddler that the biscuits have to cook and I can only bring them so fast, my 15 years in the Bar and Restaurant industry serve me well. I might as well be back at Waffle House denying a tipsy clubber his biscuits and sausage gravy at 3 am. Somehow my sober son manages to be more belligerent, but he is no match for me, who has distracted and calmed him by the time he realizes he has a biscuit in front of him. With the pandemic, illness, and baby number three forcing my hand into full restaurant and bar retirement, I thought embracing my stay-at-home mom persona would change me and found it was not much different than managing the bar on a busy night. I break up fights, people fall over a lot, and I'm cleaning up more vomit than anybody is paying me for. I'm still up at three am, I have to cut people off because they will drink chocolate milk until they throw up, and the newborn gets really handsy.
By Bianca Grant4 years ago in Families
Pandemic Parenting
My daughter shrieks in excitement, "Look, mommy! Look!" A notebook is shoved in my face where tiny green C's march down the margins amid the various other scribbles and scratches. There it is. The letter C is clear and cascading victoriously and my four- year old is proudly dancing around like a prima ballerina at center stage. I high-five her while also reaching for the binky that has fallen out of my newborn son's mouth before his whimpers become full-blown shrieks. His warm body is pressed against my chest in a quickly tied together carrying wrap and I can feel my shirt strangling me underneath it. He has been so suffocating with his constant need to be so close to me that they might as well put him back inside. Behind me, my two- year old son has scooted his highchair to the counter to reach the fruit snacks I told him he couldn't have. He has a determination and stubbornness I don't know whether to blame on his father or take credit for but it makes him a formidable opponent when it comes to saying no. I'm trying not to yell but it's hard day 513 of this pandemic. It is easy to become overwhelmed this far in when I have lost my part-time bartending job to become a full- time stay- at -home mom and I have added a child to the mix. Not to mention, my Facebook friends have taken the time to turn their living rooms into Montessori classrooms or have their children in every play gym and art class activity. In the face of this, I could almost convince myself I am failing as a mother on the days my children watch CSI: NY and Forensic Files all day. We are well into the second year of this thing and the excitement of learning how to bake bread has faded into forcing me to stream an exercise video to the tv and work out with my toddlers crawling around me saying, "Mommy, can we work out with you?" I am grateful to be exercising at all after having two strokes, being unable to move half my body, and being in a wheelchair for the Summer and Fall of 2020. Wrapping up 2021, I am grateful for a lot of things, big and small.
By Bianca Grant4 years ago in Families
