grand crystal chandelier, the red upholstered chairs, the Oriental rugs over the mahogany floors, the paintings of her ancestors, their thin lips pressed together.
In his room, he sets his backpack down. Just to the side of his four-poster bed, a window looks out to the driveway where our beat-up white Camry seems out of place. The bed is the height of his waist. I remember at our apartment, he’d flop on his old one after school and here he has to climb on top.
“I told you the house was big,” I say.
“Too big,” he says back. “Too nice. I don’t even feel comfortable touching anything.”
I almost tell him he’s right, that he shouldn’t touch a thing, but I want him to feel at home here.
“You’re careful enough,” I say.
I hear a voice behind me.
“You don’t need to worry about this old stuff.” Grandma Martha. I turn to greet her. And she is how she always is: bracelets clanging and perfume wafting and ironed white button-down shirt and colored pants and smart sandals with her toes painted a mild shade of pink. She is seventy-eight and her wrinkles are fine; her hair clings to her scalp before it’s clipped at the base of her head into a winding bun. But I can still glimpse who she was when I graduated from college, when she wore a cream St. John suit with a matching hat, and even when I was four and she fed me squares of baker’s chocolate on the balcony, not too sweet because I wouldn’t want to lose my waistline.
“Oh,” I say, and a shot of relief flows through me because she has that way of putting me at ease. We didn’t see each other much growing up. My daddy went on to have a gang of blond-haired children and I’d only know their ages through the Christmas cards each year. Still Grandma Martha sought me out every summer, offered to pay for tennis and math and science camps. She’d arrange for my mother to drop me at her house, and there’d be a frilly Janie and Jack dress in my size waiting on the daybed in the guest room. I’d change into it, then we’d drive her olive-green Mercedes to lunch at Mr. B’s in the Quarter. For holidays, she’d mail me envelopes addressed to Miss Ava Jackson with a crisp $100 bill and pink barrettes enclosed. Anytime I’d meet her, my mother would preach on the way over, remind me of what I already knew: not to put my elbows on the table, to take slow, small bites, to say Yes ma’am, to never force my grandmother’s hand, and I obliged even though I knew Grandma didn’t care about that stuff. I told my mother that, but she never responded.
Once Grandma’s husband passed, the attention ramped up—Grandma bought prom dresses and makeup tutorials at Lakeside’s Stila counter. And when I had King, and my own husband started to drift, she’d watch the baby for me while I slept or got my nails done. She’d sit on the sofa in my modest two-bedroom and fold his onesies like she hadn’t had a housekeeper her entire life. Now she has more, a chef named Binh, a part-time nurse named Juanita, who even walks her up and down the streetcar tracks when the weather permits. Still, she’d called me one Saturday crying. She was lonely. I’d settled her down, then I’d confessed I wasn’t faring much better, laid off from my paralegal job, and she’d proposed I move in. A win-win, she’d said. A win-win, though at seventy-eight, she is not who she has been. She walks with a limp; she wears Depends and not just at night, but she’s always seemed mentally sound. She dresses and feeds herself, and she still has that softness to her that makes me want to tell her my secrets. She still makes me feel welcome here, and finally, like I made the right decision.
She reaches for King.
“It’s so good to have you,” she says, and she pulls him into her. I can see him still clenched up in his back, but he is polite like I’ve taught him and he thanks her.
“No, thank you,” she says. “I haven’t had children with me for I don’t know how long. It’s welcome, I can tell you. It will lighten up the place.”
“And you, my granddaughter,” she reaches out for me next. It is nice to hear her call me that, granddaughter. Growing up, I don’t think I ever heard her acknowledge the bloodline. The omission didn’t occur to me until I was older, but once I noticed it, I started offering her subtle chances to say aloud what we were to each other, but she wouldn’t.
“I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you would uproot your life like this,” she says now.
I don’t bother to say we didn’t have that many other options. I could have gone to my mother’s, sure, but there was her mouth to consider, and I couldn’t bear the cost. Besides, where would it land us? In a year’s time I’d still be in the same predicament. Grandma Martha on the other hand offered to pay me my other salary just to sit with her during the day. King will start tomorrow at the best public middle school in New Orleans. At the end of the year, I’d have enough for my own place, maybe just a townhome and probably one in the hood at that, but still, we could lay down some roots. I made good money with Mr. Jeff, and I got my bartending license to supplement once King’s daddy left, but I had to drag myself into Vincent’s every night, then back to Mr. Jeff’s in the morning. I’m not stupid, I know I should be grateful to have had a job at all, but from where I’m standing, with the antique writing table at my hip, and the signed oil paintings on the walls above me, it might be okay to start to ask for more.
“Well, I’ll leave you two to settle in,” Grandma says, and she hobbles off down the stairs, taking longer on each one than I remember.
She turns back and catches me looking.
“Maybe I’ll see you for dinner. Of course we don’t have to sit down every night, but since it’s our first one together, we’ll want to commemorate it, won’t we?”
I look at King the same time he looks at me. We had heard stories about the chef, whom Grandma has always called Bee-Bee, about the made-to-order meals, bread pudding, pastries with chocolate ganache. He smiles.
“That’ll be lovely,” I say.
I get up with Binh before dinner to tour the bar. As much as I complained about the schedule, I miss my bartending days, and out of respect, I still make a cocktail every night, pour a little bit out for my former self. Tonight it’s a gin and tonic, two parts gin, five parts tonic. I chill the glasses, then add the ice, pour the gin over the large cubes, squeeze the first lime before the tonic hits; the second lime is just the cherry on top really. I lean against the counter, take a sip, and set the glass down. It’s perfect.
Binh serves fried chicken and waffles with a side of sweet potato biscuits and rosemary jam. I’m supposed to be on a plan, but I have a weakness for breakfast food. I reach for two waffles and a biscuit, and I’m not shy with the syrup either. King eyes his plate with suspicion, Grandma’s old wedding china.
“I thought this menu might be more modern,” Grandma says, pleased with herself. She watches King eat with what seems to be fascination. He’s wearing his uniform: a Nike hoodie and athletic shorts with basketball tights underneath. At twelve, he is a head taller than I am, a chocolate boy with dredlocks that touch his shoulders. I married his father because I couldn’t deny the first boy who called me when he said he would, who told me he loved me before I fell asleep at night, but if I’m honest, there were other things. King’s daddy couldn’t have been blacker, and I was still lamenting my light skin, my checked-out father at the root of it. Even the Seventh Ward girls at school read oppressor in my face. I was a heavy child, still do shop in the plus-size section of most stores; I have more hair than most families combined, and I wear it out in a curly brown fro that almost touches my shoulders. It’s the style now, but it wasn’t back then. My mama didn’t let me straighten it, and the unoriginal children would call me Chia Pet and Free Willy, or sing He’s got jungle fever, she’s got
