stopped by here to see me this morning,” she said, worrying a bean as she talked. “He'd like to be friends with you, Benny.”
Her fingers were just blurs. Benny had always been fascinated by his grandmother’s quickness, that and the fact that her hands were always so busy, always doing something. When he was little she had told him they were “Grandma's helpers.”
“Russell rubs me the wrong way. I don't trust him. Can't help it.”
“He's my grandson, same as you, Benny. I see him different than you do. Now, tell me, what are you going to do about Ruth and Billy? It's time you did something.”
He reached for another handful of beans, but his grandmother intercepted him. She took his hand, squeezing it with surprising force.
“Benny?”
Her hand was cool and dry, as if made from pale marble. His were the same slender shape as hers, a fact that had caused the older boys at school to tease him and say he had girl's hands.
She held him fast, waiting.
“Benny?”
“I don't know what I'm going to do,” he said finally, looking her in the eye for the first time. “Things keep changing so fast, I can't keep up with them. Seems like yesterday I was making $40,000 a year and people were comin' to the house almost begging me to quit my job and work for them. Now, Charlie's gone. Ruth and Billy are gone. The jobs are gone. There's nobody to ask for a job now, even if I wanted one.”
“Don't you want a job, Benny?”
“Not if it's in Columbus, I don't.”
“You could try it, couldn't you?”
“Grandma, you know as well as I do what they think of us in Columbus. Up there, we're all just a bunch of dumb hillbillies. We’re white niggers as far as they're concerned. I like it here. I know everybody and everybody knows me.”
She withdrew her hand from his.
“You're a stubborn man, Benny. Prideful, too. And you know what the Bible says about that.”
Benny wanted to get up and move around, but his grandmother's gaze nailed him to the chair.
“Billy needs you up there, Benny. A man's place is with his family. A big city is no place for a woman and child to be alone.”
“Look, Grandma, Ruth's doing just fine. I send her money almost every week, and she does have a job, you know.”
“Benny, I'm not talking about money. Your little boy needs a father.”
“Well, far as I can tell, Billy's doing okay. Whenever I call him, he's so busy watching TV he hardly even hears what I'm saying. It's almost like I'm talking to myself. And he's never called me once the whole time they've been up there. Not once.”
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