His For Keeps: (50 Loving States, Tennessee)

by Theodora Taylor

  When I finally finish, I can feel my grandma’s whole body shaking underneath my head. I sit up, ready to apologize for everything I’ve done. My mother’s caused her enough pain and I can’t stand the thought of my grandmother crying because of something I’ve done.

  But when I get a good look at her, the apology dies on my lips. She’s not crying, I realize. Her eyes are squeezed shut, and her thin shoulders are shaking, but not with sorrow.

  She’s laughing… at me!

  “Grandma, it’s not funny. I hurt a lot of people!”

  “I know it ain’t. I know you’re real cut up about all this, Grandbaby. I’m sorry! I’m sorry.” Grandma, tries to make her face serious, only to collapse into another fit of giggles.

  “Grandma!” I say, scolding her like she used to scold me the few times I tried to talk back to her.

  Grandma shakes her head, still cackling. “It’s just all this time I spent wondering if maybe I was holding you back from really living. But it looks like you went and got you your life. I mean, good gravy, Best Grandbaby, you done better than some of those characters in my stories! They should hire you to write for them on TV. I mean…”

  She slaps her knee and starts laughing again.

  And despite myself, my own lips starting twitching with something awfully close to laughter, even as I say, “Grandma, it’s really not funny. Colin thinks I’m a total psycho now—which he’s kind of right about. He told me he had trust issues going into all of this. And I went and lied to him anyway, and I hurt him so bad. Who does that? He’s never going to forgive me.”

  “Oh, he’ll get over it,” my grandma says, waving off Colin’s feelings like they’re a bunch of pesky flies. “Men don’t like to admit it, but they love themselves a crazy woman. Girls like your cousin, Bernice, all buttoned up and worried about being proper… men will praise them to the heavens while letting them dry up on the shelf. Girls like you and me? They’ll cuss six ways to Sunday right before they lock us down with a ring. I’m just glad you turned out to be like me and not like Bernice. Truth be told, I was getting a little worried with all this living like a nun you was doing before that country singer came along.”

  “What?” I say, unable to believe the words coming out of Grandma’s mouth. “I’m nothing like you! You’re good and sweet and honest. You’d never do something like this.”

  “Tell that to Bernice’s grandmama, Beulah Mae. When your Paw Paw came back from the Korean War, she had the nerve to approach my man at Lucky’s—that’s the juke joint we all used to go around to on Saturday nights so we’d have something to pray about on Sunday morning. She was the preacher’s daughter, but you should have seen her with your Paw Paw. Simpering and carrying on, messing with the top button on her blouse, like she was more than willing to open it if he said the word. You think I put up with that? No, ma’am. I undid three buttons on my blouse. Then I led him away to the dance floor, and showed him how a real woman do. And then the next time Beulah Mae tried to talk to him at Lucky’s, guess what I did?”

  “Told her nicely to stop,” I guess, with a picture in my head of my grandma making her cousin, Beulah Mae, her favorite peach cobbler every fifth of July and delivering it straight to her house down the road with a sweet “Happy Birthday!”

  “No, Grandbaby, that’s not what I did at all. What I did was go right up to them and very politely ask your Paw Paw for his lighter. Back then, I was known to smoke a cigarette or two, but only on Saturdays when we was out—which we was. So your Paw Paw handed me his lighter thinking nothing of it. Plus his eyes were glued to Beulah Mae’s top button, which you better believe she was fingering right in his face again.”

  “Grandma,” I say, my voice little more than a whisper. “What did you do?”

  “I snatched Beulah Mae’s wig, yes I did.” Grandma claws her hand into a fist, obviously right back in the memory. “Snatched it right off her greasy head and I lit it on fire. In front of your Paw Paw and every other eligible black man with all his teeth for four counties over. And I said, ‘That’s my man, heifer. You’d best step back.’”

  I gasp, covering my whole mouth with both hands. “You. Did. Not.”

  My grandma slaps her hands together with a big cackle that sounds like she bought it directly from a witch.

  “You better believe I ain’t lying! Your Paw Paw hauled me out of there. Called me fifty different kinds of crazy as he drove me home—let me tell you, Best Grandbaby, I didn’t even know there was that many different words for crazy. I was right impressed with your Paw Paw’s vocabulary on that ride home. I told him so, but he didn’t take that in the spirit it was intended. Just deposited me on my parents doorstep and screeched away in his Chevy Deluxe.”

  Grandma stops laughing then. “I’ll admit in the sober light of Sunday morning, I was a little embarrassed by all I done. I tried to apologize to him at church the next day, but he refused to speak to me.”

  “How did you get him to forgive you?” I asked, honestly seeing no possible solution to their situation, even though I’m here, so obviously the story had a happy ending.

  “I went crying to my mama, and she gave me some advice I’ll always remember, ‘leave a man alone for half a month of Sundays, and they’ll always come back around.’”

  “That worked?” I said, still unable to believe.

  “I gave him a half month of Sundays exactly, and then I walked up to him at church on the last Sunday and said, ‘You ready to thank me for saving you from boring old Beulah Mae yet?’”

  I laughed, just as I knew my Paw Paw must have back in the day. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one in this family who truly appreciated Grandma’s sense of humor.

  My grandma pats her thin grey braids, preening like a peacock.

  “Me and your Paw Paw was married two weeks later, and two months after that, Beulah Mae got herself engaged to the youth pastor at our church. He was maybe the only eligible man who didn’t see her get her wig snatched, and one of the few who actually cared about a woman being good and proper. So she learned her lesson about messing with another girl’s man.”

  “But—but you make her peach cobbler every year, rain or shine.”

  Grandma looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.

  “She’s still my favorite cousin.” A sly smile tugs at her lips. “And the one woman in this county I could be certain wouldn’t never dare to come after your Paw Paw. Anyway, the point is, give that white boy of yours half a month of Sundays. He’ll come around.”

  I knew he wouldn’t. My grandma didn’t understand how Colin had grown up. How hard it was for him to trust. How betrayed he must feel now by my lies. But despite knowing that, I find myself laughing, the tears drying up in my eyes.

  Grandma and I spend the rest of the night talking. For dinner we eat cold chicken leftovers from the last Sunday Dinner of the year. Just two days ago, even though it feels like years have passed. But it’s still good, still the perfect meal for two women who don’t feel like cooking.

  After dinner, we talk some more. About Grandma’s life, about my mother, and about my grandma’s theory that Valerie had gotten too much of her side of the family, and not enough of Paw Paw’s, which was made up of good factory workers who worked faithfully at their jobs until they retired.

  By the time I dragged myself to my room, I’d rethought everything I knew about my grandmother. Everything I knew about my family. I’d spent so much time obsessing over Beau, the last living symbol of the father who would never love or so much as acknowledge his half-black daughter, that I hadn’t learned enough about those who were closest to me.

  But Grandma, I discovered that night and over the next few weeks, had a rich history. One she was suddenly willing to share with me. Maybe because the Sunday Dinner was on hiatus until the spring. Maybe because she knew, like only the best grandmother in the entire world could, that I needed this kind of consoling, stories to fill up all the empty spaces Colin had left behind. Colin and my half-brother.


  I guess I had been wrong about not being able to bear life pretending I was my nephew or niece’s nanny when I was really their aunt. Finally having my brother in my life, even without him knowing who I really was, had been better than this. And I feel his absence, along with Josie’s, like a big gaping hole in my heart.

  But if all the stories my grandma tells me over those next few weeks don’t quite fill that hole, they do fill me up with songs.

  Suddenly, instead of producing one or two halfway decent songs a month, I’m producing at least one a day. All sorts of songs. First love songs, break up songs, fuck ‘em songs, life songs. I can’t write them down in my journal fast enough.

  At first I do what I used to. Take my guitar down to the creek every time I feel inspired, even if it’s in the middle of the night. But then one day I get inspired when it’s raining, so I use Colin’s trick of closing my eyes and work inside.

  That day, my grandma acts like I’ve done something unforgivable to her when I come out of my room for lunch.

  “All this time, you been hiding your light underneath a bush. You better not be going down to that creek no more, Best Grandbaby.”

  So I don’t. Instead I practice in my room, and try not to get embarrassed when my grandma compliments me.

  “You should take all those songs of yours into Nashville. Let somebody get them on the radio,” she says on Christmas night.

  I tell her the truth, that I had dreamed of doing just that in my secret heart, but Colin would never let it happen. Especially not now.

  “Even if I gave him my chicken for free?” my grandma asks.

  I smile, unable to love her more in that moment. “That would definitely sway me, but probably not Colin.”

  My grandma tuts. “Men can be stubborn. They sure can.” She then looks at the calendar. “Has it been half a month of Sundays yet? You two can get this all figured out when you go see him. Them songs of yours belong on the radio.”

  I don’t have the heart to tell her as much as I love her half a month of Sundays advice, I’m not going anywhere near Colin. The look on his face as he got into his truck told me all I needed to know about the likelihood of him ever agreeing to see me again. And I’m not nearly as much of a psycho as he and Beau accused me of being. I have no desire to play a game of restraining order chicken with either of them.

  A box with all my things arrived in the mail a few days ago. No note. And the shelter’s address was on the return label, like Josie was trying to tell me to forget their home address. Putting all my things back into my room, like I’d never left my grandma’s house at all, told me just as loudly as anything that I’d messed up everything beyond repair. And there was no going back.

  But it seems to make my grandma happy to talk about my possible reunion with Colin, so I just say, “Not yet, Grandma.” Which is the truth.

  That night in my room, thoughts of Colin keep me from falling asleep. That and my uncertain future. The truth is, I have no idea what I should do with myself now. I don’t think I can go back to being a home aide. My heart was never fully in it, and it had just been a way to make ends meet.

  But I saved up a lot of money during my months with Josie and Beau, and now that I was no longer planning to use that money for a demo…

  I suppose I should look into going to college or something, I think to myself. Look into training for another profession, since songwriting isn’t going to work out.

  At least not in Nashville. I could go to L.A., like my mother. Try to pursue success in a genre outside country music.

  The thought of moving to L.A. unsettles me though. I don’t like the idea of not being a few hours drive from my grandma. What if she needed me? What if…

  A surge of anger suddenly breaks through all the self-hate I’ve been feeling since what happened with Beau and Colin. My grandma’s right. I’ve been hiding my light for a really long time. And now it seems a little messed up that Colin gets to control what happens to my songs, make sure no one ever hears them. Like he still possesses me, even though he threw me away like a bag of trash back in Alabama.

  A dangerous thought comes into my head and I know then that my grandmother is right. I’m not nearly as boring as she or I thought I was.

  It takes about an hour of fiddling with the mic Colin sent me way back when our relationship was still sort of innocent, then figuring out the camera on my laptop, and last but not least, setting up an account on a popular site for uploading videos you want the world to see. But soon enough, I’m ready.

  And maybe because no one’s actually looking at me, my voice doesn’t shake as I sing the first line of the first song I wrote after moving back into my grandma’s house.

  “I’m an asshole. I’m an asshole. I’m an ass-hoooole,” I croon into the mic, then I grin and sing, “It’s a family curse.”

  A couple of hours later I’ve uploaded twelve songs, including the three I wrote before I went on my writing binge, onto the video site. My voice is raw, as are my emotions. But my mind… it’s finally at peace.

  Afterwards, I switch off the computer, sure I’ll never look at the site again. So many people upload videos there everyday, I can’t imagine anyone will ever bother with mine. But the point is that they’re there. My songs now have a place to live. Somewhere Colin can’t touch them.

  And it only kind of hurts when I glance at the time and date on my computer screen and realize it’s now the day after Christmas—the day of Beau and Josie’s wedding. I hope they’re happy now, without the shadow of what I kept from them hanging over their special day.

  Despite that realization, the peaceful feeling stays with me, and the sleep that’s mostly been dodging me for the past few weeks suddenly comes crashing down on my shoulders as I crawl into bed. Next month, I decide. Next month, I’ll go to the community college and get registered for something. Start looking for a new job, something easy enough that I can do it while taking classes.

  But tonight, I’m going to sleep, because it’s something I finally feel like I deserve.

  35

  “Has it been half a month of Sundays yet?” my grandma asks me as I leave out the front door the month after Beau and Josie’s wedding. Despite the temperature, she’s sitting out on the porch. She’s been doing this more and more lately, sitting on the porch, still as a wood dove, as she stares off into the tree-lined horizon.

  She misses the Sunday Dinners, I can tell. And she seems sad because she doesn’t have much to do. Seriously, I can’t wait for it to be spring again. Not just because I miss the fried chicken, but because she has less energy without it. Like a Duracell Rabbit that’s lost its drum and can’t be bothered to turn itself on without anything to beat.

  “I’ll be back in about an hour or two,” I tell her, ignoring her question. I drop a kiss on her papery brown cheek. “I’m just going over to the community college for a little bit.”

  “What you want with the community college?” she asks my back. “I thought you was supposed to be focusing on your music.”

  “Music won’t pay our bills, Grandma,” I answer without turning around.

  “It would if you got it on the radio!”

  This time I don’t answer. I just get in the car, because I know it’ll only open up a whole can of back and forth talk if I do. Grandma’s not one to let a subject rest if she hasn’t had the last word. There were a couple of reasons my mother took a job all the way down in Alabama. One was the opportunity to make better money than she would have here. The other was just plain ol’ wanting to get away from Grandma, who like all grandmas, was a different story to her daughter than she was to her grandbaby.

  But as it turns out, she might have a point about community college. I know from the moment I step out of the car that I don’t belong here. I feel no excitement as I walk through the halls, crowded with students in hoodies and jeans, laughing and talking about plans for the weekend. Plans that involve words like “kegger” and “bar” and “wasted.”

  Strange
, I hadn’t felt all that old before I stepped onto this campus. I’d thought it would be like an episode of that sitcom, Community… zany and fun. But walking down the hall toward the registrar’s office, I just feel washed up. And sad.

  I don’t want to do this. College is a fine choice for a lot of people, but my heart just isn’t in it. It feels like another delay. Another pause button hit in a lifetime spent not living my dreams.

  But then I think of my mother, who’d spent nearly her whole life and all of mine chasing after things she could never have. Like my already married father, then country music fame, then who knows what in L.A, before she finally settled on being a backup singer, most famous for being the star of a documentary about backup singers who’d settled for being backup singers.

  I don’t want to be like that.

  I get into the long line in front of the registrar’s office, ignoring the sad country guitar twanging in the back of my head.

  “You ain’t going to write that down?”

  Ugh! It’s Colin again. I’ve now become used to the fact that it’s his voice I hear in my head whenever I’m struggling with my music, but I can’t say it’s ever going to be anything less than completely unsettling.

  “Use it or lose it. Nice sad song like that, you don’t want to lose it. Better get out your journal, Blue.”

  I try to ignore him.

  “You know you could have done this on the computer,” Colin’s voice points out. “Nobody does it this way anymore.”

  That’s not true. There are like twenty plus students in front of me, so obviously I’m not the only one who decided to show up in person. Plus, this was the last day to register for classes for the winter semester, so it wasn’t like I had much of a choice.

  “Nobody but the idiots who missed the online registration deadline because they’re too busy smoking weed and the senior citizens who don’t like to be bothered with technology.”