"There's onions in there. They look older than me. You got tomatoes and lettuce from the garden. My father must've put it in here recently. I never saw her make a salad. She eats tomatoes like apples and lets it drip down her clothes and all over the chairs, table, floor. I can't imagine what her salad will look like."
"I'11 make the salad," I said.
"You will?"
I nodded, She almost smiled before she started out. She stopped in the doorway and turned back to me. "I heard you went shopping today with that daughter of mine. She steal anything?"
"No," I said, shaking my head, shocked at the question.
"Because if she does and you're with her, they'll blame you, too, you know. Well?"
She didn't steal anything."
"Um," she said, her eyes dark and narrow with disbelief. "She smoke at the mall?"
I shook my head again. Alanis hadn't smoked at the mall. but I was sure I wasn't very convincing,
"She teach you how to lie already?" she asked me. "You don't need to answer, but I'm warning you. You get in trouble 'cause of her, it's still your own fault. I can't be looking after you. and I about gave up looking after her."
I felt my forehead scrunch up. How can a mother not like her own daughter so much? Maybe she saw the question in my face. She shook her head.
"I do all this work just to keep clothes on her back and food in her stomach because I don't have a man to take care of us anymore, and you think she would say thank you, just once? You think she would help on her own without being reminded and chased? You just watch out. That girl will lead you to the Devil himself." she said, waving her finger at me. Then she turned and walked out of the house.
How could a mother speak like that about her own daughter? I stood there looking after her. Maybe she was one of Ian's insects. I thought, and worried more about her being the one who had read his letters.
I started to prepare a salad, slicing the tomatoes, onions and the lettuce the way I remembered Nancy would. I didn't find anything to use as a salad dressing. so I just squeezed a lemon over it. I'd once seen her do that. I waited for Great-aunt Frances to come in to start making the spaghetti and meatballs, but she didn't. I heard the television set again and went to see what she was doing.
"I'll be right there," she said, glancing at me in the doorway. "I just love this movie."
I watched her watching the movie and thought if she could crawl into the television set, she would. She didn't look out the window as much as she looked at that set. I returned to the kitchen, where I waited and waited and began to nibble on the salad. Finally. I went to the pantry to find the box of spaghetti and read the directions to make it myself.
After that I wondered about the meatballs. When I looked in the freezer. I didn't see any meat. And what would be our spaghetti sauce?
Finally, she came to the kitchen, but she was crying, tears streaming down her face. She wiped her cheeks. I froze, waiting to hear the terrible news. Had someone come to tell her my mother had died or Grandmother Emma?
"I always cry when I see that movie," she said. "Why did he have to die? Why?"
I just stared at her. Never in my wildest imaginings could I envision Grandmother Emma crying over a movie. In fact. I never saw her cry over anything, even the terrible car accident that had crippled my father and put my mother in a coma.
"Oh," she said, flicking a tear off her face as if it had been a fly. "You're making the spaghetti?"
"Yes, but ther
e is no meat for meatballs, and what should we use as sauce?"
"No meat? I thought there was. Maybe that was last week. I usually use tomato soup for a sauce."
"Tomato soup?"
She smiled. "Isn't that all right?"
I shrugged. Was it? I went to the pantry and found a can of tomato soup. She took it, opened it and poured it into a pan.
"I have grape juice. don't I?" she asked me. I checked. There was.
"Good," she said when I told her. "We'll pretend it's wine. You set the table. dear,"
I did. and I put out our salad. Before she served the spaghetti, she went to the window,