Keegan stopped on the second step and reluctantly turned to face her grandmother. “Yes Nana,” she replied through gritted teeth.
“I am very glad to see you dear.” She sounded sincere. Thank you Yancy I said silently. Then she just had to continue. “I just pray for the day when I can see you with hair color that isn’t one of the colors of the rainbow.” Yancy couldn’t say something nice without making an equally negative statement.
“Thanks Nana. I’m glad to see you too.” Keegan disappeared up the stairs but she had a smile on her face this time.
“Yancy, did you get us here just to insult us. You can do that quite well enough over the phone.”
“I would never have spoken to your grandmother the way you girls talk to me,” Yancy declared slamming the heavy wooden front door.
I jumped with the bang of the door against the frame.
“Nana Gabrielle didn’t speak to you the way you speak to us,” I retorted. She was right. We had slowly started talking back about twenty-one. I was probably the worst. I had been allowed to get away with it the most but damn this woman could still be intimidating when she wanted to be.
The hardwood floors in the vestibule shone with polish. Yancy had been working hard on them. The uncarpeted stairs had creaked with the light weight of my daughter as she climbed to the third floor bedroom that had belonged to Adin when she had lived here. This was where Keegan always slept when we stayed at Yancy’s house. My old house, the home where I had grown up was so familiar, filled with so many memories.
How many times had my sisters or I slipped up the stairs knowing exactly which spot on the steps not to touch to avoid being detected? Inevitably, Yancy was always waiting for us where all our bedrooms were located. She would lurk in the shadows waiting to capture us. I believe she loved catching us when we were up to mischief. Her eyes were always gleaming when she switched on the lights, her arms crossed over her ample breasts.
“Caught you,” she would yell scaring the bejesus out of us. “When will you girls ever learn? You can’t get the best of me.” She enjoyed the game of catching us sneaking in and we never learned not to be so stupid as to stay out after curfew.
We would be grounded for the next two weeks. Not seeing our friends or talking with them on the phone was a nightmare when you lived in Yancy’s house. When grounded your time was spent in the den with Yancy and Jack watching their shows including the nightly news with Walter Conkrite. Grounding was the most boring time of our lives. They even watched The Lawrence Welk Show which was murder for a teenage girl even though I had loved the show as a small child.
Yancy asked me if I wanted to
freshen up and take my suitcase to my room before we sat down for hot chocolate, which drew me back from the past of my childhood memories. I missed those days when life was carefree and I didn’t have to make decisions for myself. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe, Yancy had made too many decisions for me so that I couldn’t seem to make the right ones for myself? Typical…blame the mother for the grown adult’s inability to be an adult, I told myself.
“I’ll take the suitcase up when I go to bed. I’ll help you make hot chocolate and we can talk,” I told Yancy following her into the kitchen hoping to make amends with her so that my time here would not be so unpleasant.
The familiar squeak between the kitchen and hallway caught my attention. I kept walking but looked over my shoulder at the floor because that squeak had alerted me and my sisters when to stop making out with our boyfriends unless you wanted to get caught necking by Yancy.
Nothing had changed about my mother’s kitchen in all the years that we had lived here. The lilac walls in the kitchen were freshly painted but in the same color. White dishtowels were draped casually over the stove door’s handle with lilac bushes embroidered on them. White appliances and a painted white breakfast table gave the room a soft warm feeling against the lavender walls. Silk lilacs adorned the table in a clear vase filled with purple marbles. I had always loved this room’s warmth. The room smelled of a lilac candle.
On the wall was a plaque, the only piece that decorated the walls. The plaque had belonged to Nana Gabrielle. It read, No matter where I serve my guests it seems they like my kitchen best. The motherly woman was bent over a stove that had an aroma wafting from the oven. Her ample bottom nearly blocked the view of the appliance she was bent over. That was Nana Gabrielle too, all ass. My mother fought hard to keep her weight down so she would not resemble her mother’s ample figure.
Over hot chocolate we talked about everything but Yancy’s cancer scare and her doctor’s appointment tomorrow.
“Why did you tell Pop that Keegan and I were coming to visit?” I asked.
“To get away from James,” she replied. “How’s the asshole?” She asked politely handing me one of her heavy ceramic purple coffee mugs. Purple, lavender all my mother’s favorite colors. I chuckled. My mother rarely used curse words but when she did they were for impact.
“He’s fine,” I replied continuing with the small talk that my mother had set as the tone of this conversation.
“Your sisters tell me he isn’t so fine,” she said glancing over her cup while she sipped the warm chocolate liquid.
She was gauging my reaction, which meant that one of them had said something to peak her interest but nothing too incriminating.
“Yancy, he’s fine,” I repeated sipping my own hot chocolate delicately as the liquid was scalding hot.
“Gabrielle, I just don’t understand why you don’t tell me anything anymore.” Yancy set the porcelain cup down on the tabletop with a thud.
I have never told you anything, I thought to myself. “Yancy, don’t worry about me,” I said instead.
“I can do nothing but worry about you when you live all the way in Kentucky. You should be with your mother.”
“I have a husband.”
“Have him move his company here.” I was sure that he would do that first thing tomorrow morning. “Your family is here. You need to be with them. Kentucky is just too far away.”
“You just think that way because you have never been out of Hell for longer than a weekend visit to Eden.”