The story is mainly exchange of letters between woman named Carmen and her grandmother Scottie. Carmen lives in New York with her husband Normy, and her grandmother lives on some island. Grandma often asks Carmen to come visit her back home, but Carmen doesn’t have so much holidays that she could go. Carmen sends money to her Grandma almost every time she sends a letter to her but usually Grandma doesn’t use the money for the purpose it was intended to. For example Carmen sends her money to put burglar bars up to her windows but Grandma buys a new mattress instead because God will protect her from evil. The second time Carmen sends the money for burglar bars Grandma buys a dress for her neighbor’s funeral because she didn’t have anything else to wear. In the end of the short story Grandma finally agrees to put up the burglar bars maybe because there had been a robbery on her friend’s house or because she wants to please Carmen.
Grandma wants Carmen to contact with her mother but she refuses to do that because she doesn’t know what to say to her since Carmen has only seen her mother once. In Carmen’s opinion her Grandma is her mother because she raised her and her brother Richard. Their real mother lives in London but she comes to New York for a surgery and sees Carmen and acts like she is her long lost baby. Carmen’s mother tells that when she came to pick up Carmen and Richard their Grandma didn’t let them go but Grandma disclaims that. I think that when their mother came to pick them up Grandma was already so devoted for the kids that she couldn’t let them go. Maybe she as well thought that they were better whit her than with their real mother who was in her opinion “snake in the grass”. Grandma also says that “The Good Lord appointed me guardian—and look how fine you’ve turned out”. I got the idea that Grandma was really stubborn and she is very religious and thinks that God will save him no matter what. She tells Carmen to pray for God and she often quotes the Bible. Grandma also asks Carmen to come and visit her and she appeals that she doesn’t live much longer on this earth before “He gathers her onto his bosom”.
Grandma asks often from Carmen that why hasn’t Richard sent a letter to her. And when he finally writes to Grandma he tells a lot of excuses why hasn’t he written and Grandma doesn’t believe those excuses. I think that Richard may have been busy and that’s why he hasn’t written to Grandma. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to read about church and God’s blessing etc.
Text was partly quite difficult to read because there were no commas or full stops on Grandma’s letters and that is probably the reason why the title of the short story is “Full stop”.