Alecia McKenzie’s short story ”Full Stop” tells about Carmen and her grandmother’s correspondence. These main characters write letters to each other. At the beginning of the short story Carmen tells that her grandmother writes without commas or full stops, and then there’s one letter from the grandmother. And then comes Carmen’s reply where she writes ”Grandma what do you mean by God Bless And whats this about weak knees You know youre fit as a fiddle”; the same way her grandma writes. But unexpectedly her grandmother baffles her writing. This gives the reader a feeling that the grandmother might not be all sane.
Carmen is in her thirties and lives in New York. She has seen her real mother only once because the mother lives in London. Carmen and her two years younger brother, Richard, are raised by their Grandma Scottie. The grandmother is a quite peculiar character: she starts every letter with ”Dear Carmen”, and she’s total Holy Roller (she often writes about God, and believes that God will protect her from evil, like burglars and she often writes ”God bless”) and like said, writes without punctuation. What comes to the grandmother’s Christianity, she seems a bit hypocritical sometimes. Or she just really is a truly Holy Roller… Either way, Carmen doesn’t seem to like it so much: she usually just overlooks it. Carmen and the grandmother are very close and they have regularly been writing to each other, giving the fact that the grandma has been like a mother to Carmen. Carmen’s biological mother has sometimes written a letter or two to Carmen, but Carmen hasn’t been able to answer her because she feels like she’s writing to a stranger.
Alongside the correspondence Carmen sends her grandmother money every now and then. Usually the money is meant to a specific purpose. E.g. Carmen sent Scottie money so that she could hire a painter that would paint her house. Although the money usually goes to something way more different that it should go. So when Carmen sent money for the painter, Scottie put the money in the bank because she thinks that the island’s, where the grandma lives, painters are thieves. The grandma is very stubborn with some things, maybe because of her age…
It’s been transpired that Grandma Scottie is one of a kind person. Carmen doesn’t seem to care about Scottie’s weird behavior, but obviously her brother Richard is aware of grandmother’s situation. That can be the reason why he hasn’t kept touch with his grandmother. The story won’t tell the reason so we can only speculate.