by Jeff Zentner
“But you might have known all that,” she says quietly.
Still frozen, in my weak voice, I say, “My lawyer told me the only way they could get me is if I confessed. And they can’t make me do that. But if I confess to someone else, that’s how they’ll get me.” I’ve just roundly boned myself. And it’s bizarrely satisfying. Like peeling off a scab. Sticking a Q-tip too far into your ear. That inexplicable desire to jump off high places or swerve into oncoming traffic. Weird how we’re programmed to get pleasure from destroying ourselves.
Nana Betsy doesn’t say anything for a moment as she reaches into the oven, pulls out the skillet, swirls some bacon grease in it, pours in the cornbread batter, and returns it to the oven. She sits at the table with me. “Then I guess this conversation never happened.”
“You don’t need to lie for me. I deserve to be punished.”
“Lie about what?”
“This is why I didn’t feel I deserved to be here today.”
“What’s why?”
I put my face in my hands. “I’m so ashamed of myself. I hate myself for what I did.”
Nana Betsy pulls my hands from my face and grips both of them. I can’t look at her. My face is burning.
She waits and, when I won’t look at her, says, “You made a mistake. But this thing needs at least one survivor. You owe it to Blake to survive this.”
She lets go of my hands, stands, and carefully lifts the chicken out of the skillet, letting each golden piece drip before setting it on a plate covered with paper towels.
She lowers three more pieces into the oil and sits. “I tell you who really wouldn’t have blamed you,” she murmurs.
I shake my head slightly.
“Blake. He didn’t play the blame game. I never once heard him speak an ill word about Mitzi. And you wanna talk about someone who he could’ve blamed? Everything I know about his growing up, I learned watching him or hearing from somebody else. Never him.”
“He never told me anything bad about her.”
“He didn’t pity himself for the hand life dealt him. I don’t guess he’s sitting in heaven doing that now because he’s not growing up with you.”
The “not growing up with you” feels like I’m trying to digest a stomach full of cold nails.
Nana Betsy gets up to flip the chicken. “Speaking of growing up, how you doing these days? You been able to make some new friends?”
“Did you ever meet Jesmyn, Eli’s girlfriend?”
“The pretty Oriental girl?”
I blush. “Asian.”
Nana Betsy covers her mouth like she burped. “Sorry. Asian.”
“Yeah. She and I have gotten to be pretty close friends through all this. But she’s about it, friendwise. I used to be friends with Adair, Eli’s sister. Not so much anymore.”
“At least there’s someone.”
“I had my sister Georgia around and we still talk and text and stuff, but we can’t exactly go to a movie together with her in Knoxville for school.”
“What about your folks?”
I squirm inwardly. “I don’t really talk to them much about my life.”
“They seem nice.”
“They are. I thought you’re supposed to have your private life from your parents.”
Nana Betsy turns from the stove and puts her hand on her hip. “I can tell you that ain’t written anywhere.”
I stare at the beige linoleum floor. “I don’t know what my deal is.”
Nana Betsy, perhaps picking up on my reluctance to talk about this topic, blessedly allows it to die. She pulls out the rest of the chicken, sets it on the platter, opens the oven, and pulls out the steaming cornbread.
She comes to the table, balancing one of the plates she prepared us on her forearm while holding a pitcher of sweet tea. She returns to the refrigerator for a tub of homemade coleslaw.
She says grace over the food and we dig in.
“This was the exact meal I made him to celebrate him getting into Nashville Arts. I told him he could pick any restaurant, but this is what he picked.”
“I can see why,” I say through a mouthful. “I wasn’t even hungry.”
“Save room—there’s lemon chess pie in the fridge.”
We eat slowly, savoring each bite as we think Blake would, and talk for hours. We treat the meal like we’re taking Communion, which I guess we are, in a way. We settle into a comfortable back-and-forth of the small, ordinary things we remember about Blake.
She tells me he never killed spiders because they ate bugs he feared more.
I tell her about how Blake pronounced “library” as “liberry” all his life, as far as I knew.
She tells me Blake loved licking the eggbeater so much that if he wasn’t around, she’d put it in a bowl in the fridge for him for later.
I tell her Blake was never once mean to anyone at school.
She tells me he hated raisins.
I tell her how I would let him drive my car and how excited he always got; the novelty of driving never lost its luster.
She tells me he never learned how to swim or ride a bike.
I tell her about our first argument—over whether woolly mammoths could still be alive somewhere in Siberia.
She tells me how, until he was fourteen, she used to leave the hall light on for him after he went to bed.
I tell her how every time I said goodbye to him, it cast a faint shadow on my life—muting every color—until I saw him again.
It’s early evening when we’re done eating and talking and what remains of the lemon chess pie sits on the table in front of us. We both recline in our chairs to relieve the pressure on our diaphragms.
“Well, are you ready for the next part?” Nana Betsy sweeps some crumbs into her hand and deposits them on her plate.
“As long as it’s not more food. Not that this wasn’t excellent.”
She smiles and gets up. I hear her rummaging around. She returns holding a pink rubber bladder. There’s a mischievous glint in her eye. “Ever played with one of these?”
I shake my head.
“It’s a whoopee cushion,” she says. “Here.” She blows it up, sets it on her chair, and sits on it with a piercing, squalling fart noise. We laugh.
“I’ve read about those,” I say. “But I’ve never seen one.”
“I had to order this off the Internet.”
“You could probably download an app on your phone.”
Nana Betsy looks sheepish. “I’m too old-fashioned to have thought of that.”
“What’s it for?”
“We’re going to experience the world through Blake’s eyes. I contacted YouTube and I was able to get the login information for Blake’s site. I need you to help me make a farewell video for Blake.”
I hadn’t even thought of what had become of all of Blake’s YouTube followers. I wondered if they had any idea what had happened.
“I have plenty of experience as Blake’s cameraman.”
“Then we ought to be set. First things first, though: we need to record an introduction to the video. Might as well do that here.”
While I film, Nana Betsy stumbles and stammers her way through her message. “Hello, everybody. I’m Blake’s grandmother. Blake has passed on and we miss him. We wanted to thank all of you for supporting him. Thank you. This next video is our tribute to Blake.”
Nana Betsy picks up her keys and purse, which she empties out enough to accommodate the whoopee cushion. She inflates it and puts it inside. She does a test, squeezing it. It works. She inflates it again and replaces it. “Okay. Let’s go.”
We drive to a craft store. That was my idea. Blake loved the places with prim and proper employees, and a hobby store is sure to have a few who love flower arranging a lot more than fart noises.
“Whew,” Nana Betsy says as we sit in the parking lot. “My stomach is full of butterflies. How was Blake able to do this?”
“Blake didn’t come up with this, but he said comedy was a
bout controlling why people laugh at you.”
Nana Betsy nods firmly. Her face is more resolute. She takes a deep breath. “Then let’s go control why people laugh at us. For him.”
We walk into the potpourri-scented store. Nana Betsy clutches her purse at her side like it contains an explosive device—which I suppose it does. Her lips are tight. Her eyes move side to side quickly, seeking our target. I have my phone at the ready.
There are more girls in their twenties with pierced noses and purple hair than I expected. They’re no good to us. I scan the store. We wander to the fabric aisle.
“There,” I whisper, and nod slightly in the direction of a matronly-looking woman with short gray hair. She has her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, and she’s rolling up a bolt of flannel.
“Yep,” Nana Betsy whispers. She takes another deep breath. “Oh, Lord, what am I doing?” she mutters to herself.
We approach the woman. I slip my phone from my pocket and pretend to be engrossed in checking something, but I’m filming. Beside me, Nana Betsy swallows hard and steps forward.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” she says. Her voice sounds pinched; higher than usual. Like she has a whoopee cushion stuck in her throat, actually.
The woman looks up with a dour expression and raised eyebrows. Good choice of target.
“Can I help you?” she asks.
“Yes, we’re looking for—” Nana Betsy sets her purse on the table and reaches in, as if she’s about to pull out a sheet with measurements scribbled on it. Instead, she grips the whoopee cushion and squeezes, emitting a long, sonorous, flatulent squeal. And then there are a couple of moments of complete silence, which is the perfect cutoff point to stop filming. The woman’s mouth is slightly agape, and her eyes shift quickly between Nana Betsy and me.
Nana Betsy’s face looks like she fell asleep in the sun and woke up five hours later. She’s stammering an apology between nervous giggles and has her hand on the woman’s arm. “Ma’am, I am so, so sorry. I honestly did not mean to be rude. We had to—I—”
The woman looks at Nana Betsy like she’s actually ripped ass right in front of her. “I have a lot to do here, so if y’all don’t mind.”
Nana Betsy quickly composes herself. It reminds me of how she did at Blake’s funeral. She speaks more slowly and quietly. “I sincerely apologize, ma’am. I lost my grandson a few weeks ago. He was a prankster and loved stunts where he acted the fool in public.” She nods in my direction. “His best friend and I are out to have a last day to say goodbye to him. I needed to experience a little piece of his world through his eyes.”
The woman’s expression visibly relaxes. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Nana Betsy fumbles in her purse again and comes up with a twenty-dollar bill. She holds it out to the woman. “Please, take this. We were only trying to make ourselves look foolish, not you.”
The woman shakes her head and gently pushes the bill away. “No, ma’am. I lost a nephew in a motorcycle accident a few years ago. Grief makes fools of us all.”
Nana Betsy puts the bill back in her purse. “Yes it does. Anyway. I’m sorry again if I offended you.”
“No apology necessary. I hope you two have a lovely rest of your night.”
We walk to the car.
“That wasn’t bad,” I say. “The real thing works better than a whoopee cushion, though. Makes it easier to maintain the eye contact that Blake said was so essential.”
Nana Betsy smiles. “At my age, you don’t risk that sort of thing, even if I could manage the way Blake could.”
She unlocks the car and we get in.
“Did you take a good video?”
“Yeah. Do you want me to upload the videos for you?”
“Would you? Here.” She hands me a slip of paper with Blake’s YouTube login information. I log in from my phone and upload the two videos we recorded.
“That was tough. I’d never want to do it again. We go about our lives doing everything we can to keep from looking silly,” Nana Betsy says.
“It’s fear. We’re just afraid.”
“He lived for that rush of doing something ridiculous to brighten someone’s day. He did that over and over again—faced down the fear to make people laugh. I don’t know how he did it. I almost died in there.”
No one knows how anybody lives through anything. People just do.
The shadows are long and the light hazy and golden when we get back to Nana Betsy’s house.
She seems more somber and contemplative now. Maybe shooting the video broke one last wall inside her. “I’m about beat,” she says. “But there’s one more thing I had planned.”
We go to the kitchen, where she opens a bulging brown paper bag sitting on the counter. It’s filled with large ears of corn.
She fumbles in a cabinet for a pot and fills it with water. She doesn’t look at me. Something has descended upon her. “When Blake was eight, Mitzi forbade me from seeing him. She said she was tired of my getting in her business. They moved up to Johnson City, about an hour away, to make things harder.” Her voice is so hushed, I strain to hear.
She puts the pot on the stove and turns on the burner. She takes a piece of corn from the sack and begins shucking it.
“Can I help you with that?” I grab an ear and start shucking it beside her.
“Please. Anyway, I’m sitting at home one night and Blake calls. I’ll never forget how small and thin his voice was. He said, ‘Nana, Mama’s been gone for three days and I’m scared.’ I said, ‘Honey, enough’s enough. Nana’s coming for you.’ ”
She takes the ears of shucked corn and lowers them into the water. She sits down at the table, and I join her.
“So I load up Rolly’s shotgun and put it in the car. I’m ready to take my grandson home at gunpoint from my own daughter and whoever else if need be. Can you imagine?”
“No.” We laugh even though it’s not funny.
“So I drive as fast as I’ve ever driven. When I get there…the smell when I opened that trailer door. I still remember it.” She shudders with the sense memory. “Garbage mixed with cigarette smoke and filthy clothes and spoiled milk and rotten meat. Which is odd because I didn’t see a thing in the house to eat that came from nature. Old Mountain Dew bottles and empty Twinkies boxes and crumpled-up potato chip bags lying everywhere. You hear people talk about living in a dump? This was truly worse than the garbage dump. To this day, I can’t fathom how human beings lived there.”
“Jesu—jeez.”
“I call out to Blake, and I finally find him hiding under the bed. I put down the shotgun so’s I don’t frighten him. He comes out and he’s filthy. He looks and smells like he hasn’t bathed in a month. Which makes sense, because I try a faucet and nothing comes out. He’s covered in sores and bug bites. He has a hand-shaped bruise on his back and another that looks to be a shoe print.”
It feels wrong to speak now, so I don’t. Terrible things can be as holy as beautiful things, in their way. I have no words, besides. This story is as new to me as the news of Blake’s sexuality was to Nana Betsy, and I can only receive it.
She checks on the corn and returns.
“So we leave fast as can be. I left Rolly’s loaded shotgun for them as a little present. Just clean forgot it. They probably hawked it and used the money to buy meth before they even noticed Blake was gone. When we get home, it’s past midnight. The grocery store’s closed and I’m too exhausted to go anyway. But I want Blake to have something to eat. I don’t want him going to bed hungry even one more time. I want to feed him something that grew in the soil; that soaked up the sun. So I had this bag of corn that I’d bought the day before from a farm stand. It was beautiful. We ate it warm with butter and salt. It was sweet as candy. He ate three ears.”
My heart feels like it has a thin silver wire wrapped around it, cutting into it with every beat.
“So that’s how we’ll end this goodbye day. By eating this beautiful corn that tastes like the ni
ght Blake’s life began. I hope you have room.”
I do.
We butter and salt our corn and sit on the porch in rocking chairs, eating while the sun dips below the horizon and the sky dissolves to a pallid blue-pink gradient. All around, the smell of leaves and grass relinquishing their warmth.
“You wanna hear about when Blake made me laugh the hardest?” I ask this without even really knowing the answer, because sadness has so palpably seized Nana Betsy.
“Of course.” She gives me a smile that leaves her eyes behind.
“So I go with Blake to one of y’all’s church picnics. I don’t remember if you were there. Anyway, this little kid is saying grace and he’s up there with the microphone, and he’s going, ‘Lord, we just thank you for the grass and the trees and the oceans’ and he’s basically thanking God for every single thing on Earth. And of course, we’re both starving. So Blake says, in this way-loud voice: ‘Move it along kid. I have places to go and people to see.’ ” As I tell the story, I’m not certain that was the time Blake made me laugh the hardest—after all, that moment had a lot of stiff competition—but it did make me laugh very, very hard.
Nana Betsy chuckles softly but still exudes melancholy. “I wish I’d held on to every moment with him the way a drowning person holds a life preserver.”
For a time, we rummage through the drawers of our memories, pulling out the stories that are brightest and sharpest, like knives, and setting them in a row. Rekindling fires that had burned to embers. And then we are silent and still because merely listening to ourselves breathe feels like a holy rite in Death’s halls.
She looks as weary as I feel. I’m hesitant to be the one to end the day, but somebody has to do it.
“Not that I want to, but I should probably go,” I say, leaning forward in my rocker. “This was good. I’m glad I did this. I know Blake better now.”
“It’s past my bedtime, too.” She puts her hand on mine, and I can detect the tremor in it. “I can’t thank you enough. We did simple things today—the things Blake and I did in a normal week. But that’s how I’d have wanted to spend a last day with him.”