Beneath a Meth Moon Read Free Page B

Grandma or Nana or even her name—Helene. The Grandlady of the House—or M’lady.
    M’lady was tall and, as she always said,
thick boned, not fat. There’s a difference, Laurel.
She had blue hair hanging long down her back, and I thought that blue was the prettiest color hair I’d ever seen
. It’s the rinse
I use,
she’d say to me.
This shade’s hard to come by. You see people trying for it all the time, but most times, theirs is off-color, like dank water.
    Some days, I’d just climb up onto the couch and sit running my fingers through her hair. Felt like hours I could do that, us just sitting quiet, me running my fingers through her long blue hair.
    She could make just about anything—pretty crocheted doll dresses, grits and boiled shrimp, sweet potato pie with a Louisiana praline crust. She’d been born in Louisiana, and there was French in her blood. And that’s how she learned to make gumbo.
I don’t just make any old gumbo,
M’lady would say, stirring so many things into the big pot so fast that I got dizzy from watching.
I make a gourmet gumbo. Not everybody can cook gourmet. They might say they can, but their cooking’s just regular. Watch here, Laurel. Learn yourself some gourmet.
On the days she made gumbo, people always found a way to just drop by our house to talk about church or the weather or how fish didn’t seem to be biting.
    Anyone could be a grandma, Laurel,
M’lady said to me one morning.
All you do is have yourself some children and wait for those children to have themselves some children and then it’s done. But it takes more than that to be a Lady.
    We were sitting on her couch. The small hole I’d dug in it had some filling sticking out, and I pulled at it until M’lady slapped my hand away.
    Not anybody, M’lady,
I said.
Not daddies.
    Not men, I guess.
M’lady was working the hem out of a pair of my pants. I’d grown over the winter, and it was springtime. When I pulled the pants on, they stopped just above my ankles, and M’lady bent down and raised up the hem, saying,
There’s some fabric here. We could get another good inch out of these.
    I watched her work the seam ripper underneath the material, then gently slide it along until it hitched on something, making her slow down a bit to work through the thicker stitches.
    And you can’t be a grandma if you don’t get old,
I said, my fingers slowly finding their way back to the hole in the couch.
    M’lady stopped working the pants and looked at me, her pale eyes almost the same color as her hair.
    You planning not to get old?
    Just last week you told me that some people just don’t get old. Said some people die before they even get one baby going.
    M’lady went back to the pants and made a
tsk
sound.
Since when do you listen to everything I say? And remember it, too.
    You told me I have to listen if I want to tell stories. Told me the best stories come from other people’s stories. You don’t remember saying that, M’lady?
    Hmph,
M’lady said. But she was smiling to herself.
    She finished one leg and moved over to the other, gathering the cuff around her hand.
    My plan is this—you gonna get old, Laurel. You gonna grow up first, though, find your husband—somebody you love a lot and loves you more—
    I started to huff about not wanting a husband, but M’lady shushed me.
    Just listen to me, girl. Just listen.
    I folded my arms and threw myself back against her couch, but I didn’t say anything more.
    You gonna start writing down your stories. He’s gonna listen to you read them, and he’ll tell you everything he loves about them—just like I do now.
    M’lady looked at me and smiled. I tried not to smile back, but I did a little bit.
    Then you and your husband gonna have some babies. My great-grandbabies. I plan to be here to see at least one or two get born. And one day,