Page 1 of Quiet as Kept

One

Xarielle

It was an unseasonably warm March day, and the moment that I stepped into my grandmother’s house, I was hit with the unmistakable smell of sweat, frying chicken, Pine Sol, and bleach. It was a combination I knew well from my childhood that I hated as an adult.

The living room was quiet, but that wasn’t unusual. Nobody ever really sat in Granny’s front room. That room was designated for guests. The only thing was the majority of guests that visited my grandmother were her children and grandchildren.

I barely took in the room with its plastic covered velvet sofa, threadbare rug, and ancient La-Z Boy. I followed the sound of the noise and chatter until I found myself in the kitchen. My aunt, Bobbie, and her daughter, Nisha, were at the stove and sink respectively overseeing the food that would later be served in celebration of my Granny’s seventy-fifth birthday.

I wanted to sit down, but with the majority of my family present in the small shot-gun house, there wasn’t a seat for me.Before I could decide which wall looked good for leaning, I was accosted by my aunt, Cassandra.

“There you are.” Her tone held exasperation. “What took you so long to get here?”

I eyed her. She was my grandmother’s oldest child, and she had the bossy personality to prove it.

“Uh, I was at work. I don’t get off until six, and I came straight here.”

“Where you work that you don’t get off until six?”

I didn’t need the stank attitude. I was already exhausted and had forced myself to show up out of respect for my grandmother. My mother was an absentee mom, who dropped me off at Granny’s house when I was seven and had only returned periodically. Granny wasn’t one of those warm and fuzzy grandmothers, but she had taken me in. She . . . sort of raised me. I mean, she didn’t check homework, attend school functions, or enroll me in activities, but she cooked every night, did laundry, and provided a roof over my head.

To be fair, my mother wasn’t the only one of her children to dump their children off on her, so my granny would be “raising” anywhere from two to seven of her grandchildren at any given time.

“At the same place I’ve been working for the last seven years.” I reminded her.

She waved me off. “Anyway, I had Jayda send out a text over a week ago to the family group chat. You never responded.”

One thing I didn’t really do was mess with my biological family. Collectively, they’d taught me over the years that they were toxic. They’d taught me with their behavior that they didn’t deserve my loyalty, my consideration, my time, my money, and most importantly, my heart. Collectively, they were mean, selfish, greedy, jealous-hearted, hedonistic, and had the crabs in a barrel mentality.

After years of trauma at their hands and wondering why my own family couldn’t love me, I threw in the towel. I distanced myself from each and every one of them with the exception of Granny, my Aunt Bobbie, and my cousin Nisha.

Aunt Bobbie and Nisha were nice, and they had sweet dispositions. They kept their distance though. So, I never got to have as many dealings with the two of them as I had with my more hateful family members.

I couldn’t really say how my granny was. I never felt like I really knew or understood her. Her disassociation game was so next level that she rarely commented on anything. But she was my grandmother, and even though she’d never told me that she loved me or that she was proud of me, even though she wasn’t a hugger or an encourager, I would come through for her. Only her. I didn’t care which of the rest of them had a birthday, a baby, a wedding, an anniversary or otherwise . . . I was busy that day, couldn’t make it, and my gift got lost in the mail.

“What text?” I questioned, preparing myself for the drama that I could just sense was about to unfold.

“The text about the money to get momma a birthday gift.”

“Oh, I got that text,” I admitted.

The text from my cousin requested that I send fifty dollars to Cassandra for a group gift. Apparently, Cassandra had some bright idea about a gift she wanted to get for Granny.

First of all, I didn’t trust any of my maternal family members with my money, least of all Cassandra. I already knew that she would pocket half the money and get Granny something really cheap, if she got her anything at all.

“I never got your money though.”

“I know. I wanted to get Granny something that was just from me,” I explained.

She rolled her eyes. “A lot of the grandchildren wanted to do that, but they still sent me the money, so they could be included in the group gift.”

“I don’t want to be included in the group gift.”

“Ew! You have so much of LaTasha in you that it’s not even funny. Even with her running off and not sticking around to raise you, you still turned out just like her . . . selfish and self-centered as hell.”

LaTasha was the woman who birthed me. My biological mother. Whenever a family member really wanted to take a shot at me, they would accuse me of being like her. As a young girl and a younger woman, that comparison used to eat me up inside. My motherwasselfish. Shewasirresponsible. Shewasimmature. Shewasnegligent. The thought that my family would even suggest that I had similar characteristics would usually get me to do whatever they were trying to browbeat me into doing.

That tactic no longer worked. I shrugged my shoulders.