Addie on the Inside Read Free Page B

does Ms. Wyman hate me?
Why do I stare at Ms. Watkins’ hair?
Why do I notice what she wears?
Will Joe always be my friend?
Does my dad wish I was little again?
Why do I act like I know everything
when inside all I really know are
questions?

Love Songs

The first week of April
and Grandma’s in her Birkenstocks
    even though we had snow only last week. “Honey,” she says,
“shoes are foot prisons, trust me. Feet are meant to be free.
Now, let me look at you.” She’s shorter than me by an inch,
which is news to both of us. It’s only been since the summer
that we saw each other and I was looking up at her and she
was looking down. The kitchen fixture reflects in her eyes,
twin specks of light shining with the intensity of miners’ lamps
as she turns the beams of her determination this way and
that, digging for something, until “Eureka!” she cries. “I hit
gold. I see it in your eyes, Addie.” “What, Grandma?” “Love,
girl!” My face goes red hot as if it were a piece of dry wood
her focused rays have ignited. “DuShawn, is that his name?
Oh, Lyddie,” she says, turning to my mother, who is crushing
garlic with the bottom of last year’s National Public Radio mug,
“how much do you love that our Addie went and got herself
a black boyfriend?” “Grandma!” I cry. “I didn’t ‘go and get’
anybody, and it doesn’t matter that he’s black!” “Exactly my
point,” she replies, and where have I heard that before. “This
is what we fought for, marched for, Lydia, that it wouldn’t matter
what color anybody’s boyfriend is. What about Joe? What’s his
boyfriend like?” I am tempted to say he’s green with orange
polka dots, but I tell the truth. “His boyfriend is in the closet,
so he doesn’t qualify as a boyfriend anymore.” “Back in the dark,”
Grandma says with a click of her tongue. “There is so much work
yet to be done.” I’m all set to tell her about the GSA, when she
takes my hands in hers and says, “I am so happy to be here.
I’ve been lonely.”
    This is how she is. One minute she’s taking on the world
and the next she’s taking you in her arms. She has been
in our house less than an hour. Hugging her, I can’t say I
tower over her—an inch is only an inch—but for the first
time I don’t feel small. Maybe this is what it means that I’m
growing up. Maybe this is what it means that Grandma
is growing old.

With or Without
    Grandma has been here for over a week now, sleeping
in the study that doubles as a guest room. She brought her own
coffeemaker because my parents only drink tea, rescued last
year’s National Public Radio mug from the garlic, claimed it
as her own. Each morning she sits on the sofa (Kennedy
hunched on the arm behind her looking like a gargoyle, but
fuzzy) with her knees drawn up and her favorite mug, steaming,
held in her hands the way I imagine a priest might hold
the sacramental chalice of wine. As far as I know Grandma
is an agnostic, but she calls the mornings her sacred time.
Maybe she worships coffee. There are people who do. Maybe
she worships a god she doesn’t choose to discuss.
    On the second day she was here I asked her how long she’d be
staying. “As long as it takes,” she said. “You know I’m getting
the house ready to sell. Didn’t your mother tell you?” My eyes
welled up with tears. “Oh, Addie, come here,” she said. “It’s too
much work to keep up that house all by myself, and it holds too
many memories I’d rather keep in my heart, not face every day in
the cupboard where his cereal bowl still sits or there by the side
of his chair in the pile of papers I stupidly refuse to throw out.”
“But why do you have to move? I love that house,” I said. “I love
it too. But you have to