Page 60 of Right Side of Paradise
Not Enough
“Ow, granny! Unhand me, woman.”
This was my fault. When my granny told me to bend down close to her on the couch, I thought she wanted to greet me with a kiss on the cheek like always.
But her fingers wrenched around my ear cartilage instead, and now she wouldn’t let me go.
“You been looking at me all summer and you ain’t said nothing.”
“I just did,” I hissed, jerking my head away from her. But her grip was blessed by God himself because she still had her hold on me.
“You know what I mean, li’l boy. Before now.”
My neck pulled from the way I was holding my head, and still an amused snicker left my lips.
After a while, Edith Westbrook let me go and tsked at me, her gray brows pulling into a deep frown and the deep dimples she passed down to Harlow making an appearance, even though her mouth was turned down in disappointment.
“I was waiting for Harlow to tell her mom.”
“And what am I? The red-headed stepchild? Ain’t nobody told me a thing.”
She loosened her hold on my ear, but glared up at me as she stood, patting down the pockets of her housecoat. “My poor grand baby, I need a cigarette. Let me call her. Where is she? Why didn’t you bring her with you?”
She fired off the questions on her way outside, not leaving a pause longer than an inhale between her next string of words.
I joined her on the porch, rubbing the back of my neck. She wasn’t paying me any mind as she fished around in her pockets for a lighter and I shook my head.
“Granny…”
“What, boy?”
“That’s all you gotta say?” She wasn’t reacting to the fact that me and Harlow were together, just the fallout it created with our parents. “You don’t care?”
“You grown. And y’all ain’t blood related.” She waved me off, pulling out a pack of Newports. She beat the bottom of the pack with her palm until a cigarette slipped through the opening at the top. “Other grown folks' business ain’t got nothing to do with me. My opinion don’t change nothing.”
Why the hell couldn’t Ms. Yvie adopt her mother’s mindset?
I watched the only grandmother I’d ever known light her cigarette and inhale, squinting at her phone screen.
“You ain’t as slick as you think, either.
I got eyes, baby. They ain’t as sharp as they used to be, but I could see you loved that girl probably before you did.
Soul and Christian too. Your eyes always told the story.
” She blew out a plume of smoke, shaking her head.
“All anybody with eyes had to do was pay attention.”
I stood there, using my body to keep her screen door open, knowing she wouldn’t fuss because she didn’t turn on the damn A/C for me to let any out anyway.
“I thought one of you would grow out of the crush and move on.” Her raspy laugh turned into a coughing fit before she clapped her chest and winked at me. “But I guess y’all found a different solution. I ain’t mad at it.”
Silence blanketed the porch, and I stared at her crepe myrtle in full bloom until my lagging brain connected the dots. Letting the screen door clang closed behind me, I walked to her rocking chair and peered down at her.
“Granny, who been bringing you cigarettes?”
“Grandson, I thought we were both minding our business.” She cut me a look, and my smile came without coaxing. “Now help me call Harlow.”
I could’ve hired someone to take care of my grandma’s yard a long time ago. The landscaper who’d been up keeping my childhood home for years even offered to do it for free. But I liked doing it. It was the one guaranteed block of time I got to spend with her a couple times a month.
And when she wasn’t trying to detach my ear from my head, she was alright to hang out with.
I always knew my grandma Edith was a little different.
She didn’t care too much about keeping up appearances or sending us home stuffed full of her home cooking.
If there was one thing I knew when it was me and Harlow’s time to get dropped off it was that we were going out to eat .
Edith knew her strengths and stuck to them.
She could sew me an outfit from scraps she found around the house, and she could solve any puzzle somebody put in front of her.
That was enough for me.
Besides, it was during those visits that she taught me how to manage my money and cuss somebody out. I never cared about the rest.
Sweat dripping in my eyes, I blinked through the sting and turned off the push mower before walking back to her carport to get the weed eater.
Aside from her old Buick, her carport held bins of her gardening supplies. I was grabbing the weed eater when tires rolled over her gravel driveway.
I expected to see her little boyfriend, Mr. Tiny and his Cadillac, but scowled at the Volvo SUV that stopped a foot away from me.
Yanking the towel from my back pocket, I cleaned my face as the woman I didn’t want to see hurried over to me. “Rico, I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“Likewise.”
Harlow’s mom sniffed at my cold tone and wrung her hands in front of her. Anxious eyes jumped over my face, but she kept her lips tight.
“You want something? Because I got work to do.” I nodded toward the weeds creeping up around the perimeter of the house.
“I have Harlow’s birthday present in my back seat. Maybe you could give it to her since you?—”
“No.”
She looked like she wanted to flinch and thought better of it. “I don’t see why not. Y-you…”
Her words disappeared with the rest of my patience. It was too hot out here for us to be staring at each other. “I don’t know what you want from me, but I won’t be your go-between,” I said, my voice callous.
Yvette’s perfect posture slumped.
“You were the one who broke communication, not her. You want to talk to her, or give her something, you got her number and my address. But don’t pull up without telling us first. I’m not letting you corner her.”
“Why are you talking to me like I’m some stranger off the street? I raised you. I love you.”
That little wobble on her bottom lip would have meant something if I didn’t know what she said to Harlow.
“I’m talking to you like you’re somebody who disrespected the woman I love.
” I stuffed the towel back in my back pocket.
“I’ll always love you and honor the role you played in my life, but Harlow and the family we’re building come first.” I held out my palm and extended a finger with each name I said.
“Her, Soul and Christian are who I protect before anything else.”
“I see.”
“You forgot you raised Harlow too? That make it okay to call her a pass around and tell her we don’t respect her?”
“No.” She wouldn’t look at me anymore but kept fidgeting with her hands as my words landed.
I scoffed, attention back on the crepe myrtle at the front of the house. Granny was conveniently in the house, and I knew she was probably at the kitchen window, listening to every word we exchanged.
“Listen, you can’t say you love me and have a problem with one of them just because you won’t open your mind to what we’ve known for years.
” I shrugged, backing away from her with the weed eater in my grasp.
“You can call me disrespectful, but I’m a grown man.
I love them and I don’t care who feels a way about that. ”
Yvette’s face crumbled after holding her pinched expression. “You love her?”
“That woman is my world. You raised the sweetest soul I know, that’s why I don’t understand what you’re getting at by saying we couldn’t love her.”
Her stubbornness gave way to remorse. “I think it shattered my illusion. Made me confront that our family would never look the way it did when your father and I first got together.”
My brows fell. “Why that gotta be a bad thing? Nothing in life stays the same. That’s kinda the point.”
“I know. I was in denial. In my head, y’all are still the seven-year-olds who took to each other like two peas in a pod. Everything was simple then.”
“There’s nothing complicated about what we are now. It’s just…different.”
“If I accept that, I have to accept—” Ms. Yvie shook her head and looked away. “Oh, never mind.”
But I could hear what she wasn’t saying, and I wondered what that meant for her reunion with my father. Did she only want him back because she wanted the image of her family back? Or did she love him?
A long-suffering sigh split the humid air and she said, “I’m sorry.”
“Telling me ain’t enough. Tell her .”