“She’s right here,” Dion says. It’s Churchy with him, looking even taller than usual. He could almost rest his chin on the top of Dion’s head. “He say there’s an emergency,” Dion adds, gathering up our mats. “You go ahead, I’ll wipe these down.”
“I could t-t-tell her m-myself.” Churchy glares at him.
Dion smiles, oblivious. “See you tomorrow, Indy.”
“What happened?” I ask as Dion disappears down the pathway.
“This your w-w-work?” Churchy’s still scowling.
“I finished my work for the day.”
“And this what you’s do?”
“What you mean?”
He shakes his head. “I got n-n-news for you. L-let’s go.” He hops back on his bicycle.
“What’s your problem?”
“An you was lookin for your grammy?”
“You found her?”
He doesn’t answer. “Wh-wh-where your bike?” His voice is hard. Who is this different Churchy? I turn away toward the office and come back pushing the purple bicycle, my bag hooked over the bars. When I wave bye to Dion, Churchy rolls his eyes, turning away. As we ride down the drive and onto the main road, I can’t shake a sick feeling that has nothing to do with his sulkiness. I’m about to find out what happened to Grammy. I imagine the worst.
“We goin to the graveyard?” I try to swallow down the fear collecting in my throat, thick as phlegm.
“N-no.” He laughs, at what I don’t know. “If it was that, I’d t-t-tell you straight.”
Something lies under those sarcastic words, but I can’t worry about that now. After everything, I’m going to see Grammy. She’s alive, and I’m going to see her. It’s been nine months since that day we said goodbye, standing on her porch while Mamma blew the car horn.
We ride for a long time, west, as if we’re heading for the airport. Churchy finally turns down a quiet road with a smattering of houses, then stops opposite a wide, run-down place. A fence runs around it, scraggly crabgrass scuttling up to the edge of the road.
“She in there.”
An old folks’ home. I’d never have found this place; there’s not even a sign, but there’s a collection of ancient men and women in beaten-down chairs scattered across the lawn. I peer at the building as I slide off the bike. Its white paint is peeling, the roof missing more than a few shingles. “In here? How you know?” He can’t have gone knocking door to door until someone answered and admitted they had an old Mariner’s Cay woman stored inside with a stack of books tall enough to build an extra wall and enough herbs to open a back-door shop.
“I kn-kn-know.” Churchy leans his bike against a tree, then joins it, making it clear he’s not coming in.
I take my bag with me, walking up to the gate. Unlatch it and try not to notice the squat woman blinking out at me through sun-squinted eyes, calling Daughter, you got dollar? in a strong, clear voice, or the three old men in the cool of the house’s shadow. The door is open, a screen letting breeze in and keeping flies out. It’s still stuffy as I step inside.
“Can I help you?” a younger woman asks. She pauses in the hallway, a pack of adult diapers under one arm. She’s big and frowning; she must work here, though she only looks a few years younger than some of the residents.
“I lookin for my grammy.” I can barely choke the words out. I’m not going to cry.
The worker frowns more, her lips pressed together like I’m being silly. “Grammy have a name?”
“Ms. Ferguson.”
“Eunice? She’s right in there. Down the hall.”
Eunice. People don’t call her Eunice. Even her friends—Ms. Munroe down the street who would come by with fresh eggs, Mr. Toote down at the store, Churchy’s grandmother—call her Ms. Ferguson, Ferguson, Miz Fergie. I’ve never heard anyone use her first name. The worker’s voice is inappropriately cheerful. “Miss Darlene, you see your niece dropped off some more Depends for you,” she sings out, like Miss Darlene might dance with joy that someone whose bottom she probably used to wipe is dropping off diapers for her, now. I tiptoe down the hallway, slow. Now that I’m here, something’s holding me back from going toward that room. Part of me doesn’t believe Grammy could be in this place with the daylight only half filtering through dusty screens and the windows that can’t open enough to air out the reek of Dettol and bleach and pee, of clothes that haven’t really been washed clean. As I force myself to keep going, I try not to look in the other rooms, try not to see the frail woman lying in bed, face turned to the wall, or the two men sitting beside a radio, leaning forward and listening to the obituaries as if hoping to hear their own names called.
Finally, I step into the doorway of that room. God, let her at least be out of bed. Let her not be crazy, let her remember who she is. Let her know who I am. “Who’s there?” I hear my grammy say, her voice croaky and fearful. What if she’s here because she’s sick? What if she can’t see? What if her mind’s slipping away?
She’s alone in a room with three beds pushed up against the walls. She sits on the edge of a plastic chair facing the window, her back turned. She’s in a pink housecoat that can’t be hers; she hates pink. Insipid color. Only a ninny would wear pink. Slippers on her feet and the sun not down yet, her body tense, hair twisted into childish braids.
“It’s me.”
“Who’s me?” She clears her throat, and when she speaks again, her voice is the Grammy I know. “Hold on, let me get my glasses.” Pushes herself up, fumbling for the nightstand. “That sound like—” She turns around. Grammy, same two deep wrinkles in her forehead, her eyes knowing behind her glasses. Wiry and built to last through the apocalypse. “Indira May Ferguson.” She gives a little puff of air through her nostrils. “Bring your tail here.” She opens her arms up and I step carefully into her embrace. I want to hurl myself against my grammy, to hug her close enough to make up for these long months, but I have to keep a space between us. She can’t feel my belly. She can’t. “Oh, Indy,” she says, hanging on, and she draws me in so tight the space disappears and she has to feel it, has to know, but I can’t bear to let go. She’s so right, so unchanged, so strong in that thin, stooped old woman way. “Let me feel you, make sure you real.” Her hands are firm as she slaps my back. “My baby girl. My Indy.” Even in here she smells of home: herbs and vinegar and Pears soap. “What a thing this is, ay?” she says, and I pull away. “Sit down, sit down.” She pats one of the beds and lowers herself back into the chair. “Look at me in here.”
The worn sheet and cheap blanket have been tucked to near perfection, but the Grammy I always knew would have put a good bedspread on top. I stay standing and look around the bare room. On the closest nightstand, I recognize the ceramic angel that used to sit on her bureau, and, faithfully, a pile of books: her Bible on the bottom, a romance novel above that, a dog-eared copy of Emma, an anthology of poetry. What happened to her other six dozen favorites? “Sit!” she orders again. The bed sags under me, squeaking miserably. I hold my bag on my lap, feel the weight of that one book I’ve been carrying around. But here, face-to-face, I’m not angry anymore. It’s Grammy.
“I would have come sooner. I only found out you were here today.”
“How you found me?” She mashes her lips together. “You think I want you to see where I am? Pushed way in the back of Nassau, here, and no good to nobody.”
“It ain your fault, Grammy. Mamma did it to you. I know.”
“And how you know that, now?” She tilts her head to the side, bracing for a long story laced with half-truths. “You’s woman now, ay?”
“No, but—”
“Matter of fact, I called the house for you several times. Bout three or four weeks ago, but I kept getting your aunt Patrice’s boy. Garvey or something.”
“Gary.”
“That’s it.”
“You could call my cell, Grammy. Mamma gave her old one to me. Uncle know you here?”
“I told him not to say. I wanted to tell you myself. I though
t that woman might have said something to you anyway. Patrice. Never had any sense in her head. I could only imagine how her children turned out.”
“Aunt Patrice know too?”
She leans close, looking me over. “Look here, it don’t matter. You tracked me down, Indira. Come here, let me look at you.”
It does matter, though. “Churchy found you for me.”
“Churchy?”
“Remember, from home? Mrs. Robinson’s grandson?”
“Oh, him. That little soft boy?” She chuckles. I don’t. He doesn’t seem any kind of soft to me right now. Grammy pats my face, my hair, her hands and fingers bent with arthritis. The flat parts of her fingernails are cool on my face, but gentle. Her frown lines deepen. “You different. You grown up since you been here. Stand up again, let me see.”
“Grammy, what happen?” I lean away, trying to redirect the conversation. “I saw Mamma, I saw the house . . .”
“Happened. What, you forgot how to speak your proper English? You got bigger. How tall you is now?”
“Five three. But—”
“You filling out, too.” She rubs my arm. “Gettin ya granny’s big bubbies.” She’s always been flat-chested, but I can’t laugh at the joke. Her hand moves up my arm, her fingers passing over the bottom edge of the new bra; the skin is still sore underneath, and I flinch. “What wrong with you?”
“Grammy—” I pull back.
She frowns. “What you pullin from me for?” Her hands at my stomach. I’m frozen. Her familiar hands, patting down, stop. “Indira? What is this?”
I stand up fast, backing toward the door.
“Don’t you yank back from me, child. You forget I bring you up, ay?” She stands up too, reaches out to pull my shirt taut against my belly. “No, no, no. No, Indira. No, no, no.” It’s like Churchy’s stuttering, trying to get the word out enough times to make it true. “No, no.” She slowly lifts my shirt. I look up; the ceiling seems too low, too close. I lower my eyes and meet my gaze, my own reflection in the dusty mirror over the bureau. Me, standing there. The shirt hoisted up to just under my chest. The edge of the new bra riding up over raw skin. Underneath, the belly. My stomach’s never been flat. But it’s firmer, my waist curved out. And I see what she’s staring at. Something I hadn’t noticed. Guess I hadn’t looked, guess I’ve been trying not to. A vertical line runs down the center of my stomach, from below my chest through my navel, disappearing into the waistband of the skirt. Dark and straight, like someone’s taken a crayon and divided me. Grammy lets my shirt go, steps back. “How far?”
I cover myself again. I look away from the mirror. I’ve been inspected and failed. I feel filthy.
“Let me ask you one more time. How you get this belly? You come over here and get yourself a little boyfriend? You been lettin somebody fool with you? It ain that Churchy boy, is it?”
“I don’t have no boyfriend. I never had any boyfriend.” I make my voice as hard as I can. Stop it, don’t ask me nothing more. I should go. I shouldn’t have come here.
“How you get that, then?” She points, looking me over. “Things don’t just happen. Even weed has to have a seed drop for it to grow.”
The room is getting smaller, the walls boxing me in. I have to get out.
“Who been droppin you?”
“Everything okay in here?” The same worker from before stops in the doorway, a gloved hand carrying a tied-up garbage bag.
“Miss Johnson, this my grandbaby,” Grammy says. “Indira.”
The woman extends a gloved hand. I stay where I am, staring out the doorway, beyond her. Past this woman who packages up used adult diapers, who helps these people in and out of the bath, who brings them to the table to eat, who’s been seeing and talking to Grammy all this time. Past Grammy’s disappointment, past her patting-down hands.
“She’s about to take me outside for some air.” Grammy slides the slippers off her feet and steps into a pair of worn-out loafers. “Pass me my cane.” The worker reaches beside the bed and pulls out a shabby brown cane I’ve never seen before. “Thank you,” Grammy says as the woman leaves, then turns to me, her voice low. “Come. All kind of ears in this place.”
She takes my arm, but her grip is strong, holding me up. I want to run out the way I came in and never look back, but Grammy pulls me past a few rooms and out a back door onto a tired lawn. A few chairs are scattered over a covered concrete area. A man dozes in a rocker. “Get two of those chairs they have,” she orders. “Set them down here.” Once we’re both settled, she leans in close. “Now. Tell me how you got this baby.”
“I have to go.”
She holds on to my wrist. “Wait.” Pulls me down till my face is level with hers. “Look at me, girl. Look at me.”
I look into Grammy’s face. I’ve always feared seeing disappointment in her eyes, and sadness. What I see now is even worse, something I never imagined I’d see: Grammy’s ashamed of me.
“Indy . . .”
A band of tightness starts to grip my chest. I want to close my eyes, to make this all fade away. But her eyes hold mine; she won’t let me escape.
“What happened? Somebody bothered with you?”
Breathe, breathe. Out here, I can suck in an inhale, though it feels like dragging a whole bedsheet through a buttonhole. A little breath out. Again. Again.
“Is it your uncle?” Her face close, eyes searching for an answer.
I want to tell her and I want to be running away, want the air moving around me as I fly on the bike, far from here.
“Not one of your teachers? Come. You could tell me.”
I try to pull in a deep breath, but it stops. My body won’t let the air in.
“Indy.” Hand on my face, gripping my chin. “Who do this to you? A neighbor? Somebody in the house with you?”
I yank my head back, away from her.
“Not Patrice’s boy. What’s his name? Garvey? Gary?”
Something in my expression must shift at hearing his name. “It’s him, isn’t it?” she says, and I pull my wrist out of her grasp. Grammy leans back in the chair, turning her head away. I look across the scrappy yard. No flowers are planted here, only patchy grass petering out over the concrete slab covering the cesspit.
“How long this been going on? Since you came? Your uncle tell me it was only him, Patrice, and their girl.” Grammy runs a hand over her forehead. “Lord, forgive me for this. If I woulda known . . . I thought you woulda been safe here. Living in the house with your uncle, I thought you would be in good hands. Your uncle keep to himself and he travel a lot, don’t hardly talk to me, don’t have the time of day for your ma, but I thought you woulda been safe.”
“It’s Mamma who sent me here.”
Grammy sighs. She says something, but her voice is so soft when she speaks, I almost think I don’t hear her right. And before her words have fully sunk in, the worker comes out, rousing the sleeping man and waving at Grammy.
“Okay, Miss Eunice, we’ll have your dinner soon. Time for your granddaughter to go.”
My mouth is too dry for words. I get up and reach into my bag, my fingers closing around the book. I pull it out and toss it onto the chair beside Grammy. It lands with an accusing flop.
In the silence that follows, I start walking. I don’t look back.
“You have a couple minutes, you could tell her bye,” the worker says, but I keep moving, around the house and straight through the front gate, keep breathing, in, out, but I can’t breathe past Grammy’s whispered words just like I can’t breathe past the feeling of having to throw up, past the memory of Grammy’s house, my old home, past Gary. Churchy calls out to me from across the street—I forgot he was even waiting there. I step out into the road. A car honks, slams on its brakes, the driver shouting as I cross a foot or two from its front bumper. On the other side, Churchy stutters out something; I see his lips moving but register no sound. I stand there, trying to breathe past those words. Let him help me onto the purple bike. The weight of m
y bag is lifted from my shoulders, but I still feel like I’m covered in wet sand.
“You w-w-want go home?” I hear him ask, and his voice is impatient and concerned as if he’s asked again and again, and I shake my head no. Balanced on the seat, trying to catch myself, trying to breathe. “Or you r-r-rather go by your boyfriend?”
Now he’s got my attention. “What boyfriend?”
“You know who I mean. At the retreat.”
“What you talkin about?” I get off the bicycle.
“I s-s-see him and you. With his hands on you. I s-s-see y’all when I ride in. I see y’all two in the back there alone. That’s what you get paid to do?”
“You serious?” I snatch my bag from him. “Hands all over me? For money? That’s what you think?”
“That’s h-him? That’s the daddy?”
Dion? It’s gotta be a sick joke. Looking at Churchy’s face, though, I see he’s serious. And angry. Furious. His jaw is clenched. The twig he’s fiddling with snaps.
“Go where you wanna go.” I shove the bicycle at him, walking away, fast.
“W-w-wait.” He comes riding up alongside me, his gangly frame upright as always. “L-l-let me follow you home.”
“Leave me alone. And take your bike.” I glance back at it, lying in the grass like a left-behind teddy bear. “I’ll catch the bus.”
“D-d-d-don’t b-be mad.”
“You think I do that? You think he actually touch me that way? You think I let people do stuff to me for money?”
“I s-s-see y’all holding h-hands—”
“You see him helping me learn to balance for yoga. You know what? Don’t matter. You ain no different from everybody else. If you even knew. You—” I can’t say anything more. The beginning of tears stings my eyes. I feel a wave of nausea threatening to surge. No, oh no, I am not doing that. I walk faster.
“I bring you here. I f-f-find your grammy for you.” His voice is pleading now. My feet hurt and I’m tired. I look around for a bus stop, if buses even run out here.
“Come on.” He’s stopped. The sun, hanging lower, bronzes him, warming his eyes. “I t-tryin to help. Y-y-you wouldn’t even tell me who is the daddy.” His face is calmer, anger gone as quickly as it appeared. “Y-y-you could forgive me?”
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