Should Have Known Better

“Oh, we won’t be needing anything to eat, Mama,” I said loudly and my voice just echoed through the silent staleness of the house.

We wal

ked into the living room and I sat in the middle of the twins on my mother’s clumpy, floral-print couch that was so old it had sunk so close to the floor my backside nearly touched the heels of my shoes.

“That’s Grandma?” R. J. asked and Cheyenne nodded to him.

An old Girl Scouts picture of me with braces and tight pin curls sat on a wooden table beside the couch. There were pictures of the twins when they were just six months old on the mantel above the fireplace. No pictures of my father.

“Of course you can eat,” she said, her voice getting closer. “Long drive from Augusta.”

“We already stopped for lunch.”

“What? Fast food?”

She appeared in the hallway leading into the living room and stood right in front of the old closet door. Her eyes were saggy and stale. Her hair was all gray, all gray.

I told myself I wouldn’t do it—that I wouldn’t reach out for her unless she reached for me. But looking at her, seeing her standing in that old house, in that old place, I saw less of why I wanted to keep my distance and thought of how long it had actually been since I’d seen her. It had been a long time.

“Hey, Mama,” I called, getting up from the couch and walking toward her.

If this was some family reunion movie where the estranged daughter returns home to a loving family waiting with open arms, I would’ve been smiling and holding my arms up and out toward someone who was doing the same. But there was no family reunion here and all I had to act on was what I knew.

She stood frozen in front of the hallway closet as I kissed her on the cheek, held her hand like we were old classmates.

“Dawn,” she said, smiling a little. “You’re looking thin.”

I turned to the twins, who’d nervously moved in toward each another to fill my empty space on the couch.

“What ya’ll waiting for?” I asked. “Come say hello to your grandmother.”

R. J. looked to Cheyenne and she looked at me.

“It’s OK,” I mouthed to her.

She got up and walked slowly toward us as if she were approaching a stranger and really that was what my mother was to her, and probably more so to R. J. I tried quickly to remember the last time they’d seen her. I hadn’t taken them to my father’s funeral. That was the last time I’d seen her. It had been three years ago.

Cheyenne poked out her hand toward my mother.

“Hi, I’m—”

“Child, I know who you are,” my mother said so sweetly it sounded as if I was ten years old again. “You’re my grandbaby!”

Cheyenne’s face warmed so quickly. She smiled and R. J. came running up behind her.

“And I’m your grandbaby, too,” he said.

“You ain’t no baby,” my mother said. “You’re a big boy, a little man.”

She outstretched her arms and pulled both of the twins into her chest as I watched.

“Ya’ll so big,” she said and her eyes turned glassy and sad. “Grown up so fast. I don’t think your mama was this big when she was ten.”

The twins looked at me slyly.

“She wasn’t?” R. J. asked.

“No,” my mother answered. “She was a tiny thing. Bigger than a dime, but smaller than a penny.”