Keeper of Keys Read Free Page A

covered the receiver, "She'll paint with her teeth if she has too." We both giggled.

    "Okay, well when will you get the cast off? Tests? Why?" My grandmother's voice changed with each question and her posture, usually as straight as a soldiers, slumped.

    "What?" She said and sat down in the winged back chair next to the small mahogany table that held the phone.

    "Oh, I see. No, no I'm not worried," She said and waved her hand to the air. "Not at all." She reinforced her statement, even though nothing but worry crossed her face.

    She caught the look that covered my face; the look that said: What's wrong with mommy?

    Her voice picked up again, like the French horns that come in suddenly during a symphony. She stood up again, smiled and began asking about Eve and how did the summer students like Hughes and Hurston.

    Her questions made me feel better. I was ten years old and still able to fool myself about certain things.

    "Okay baby, well here she is. Call me as soon as you know anything. Hold on."

    My grandmother handed me the phone. Her hand was shaking and it seemed the smile she offered me, pained her instead of giving her joy.

    She was out of the room and calling to my grandfather before I could even say hello.

    "Hal!"

    Her tone was too high and the urgency in her voice set their poodle Casey to yelping and running in circles.

    Chapter Four

    I asked about her arm and she told me that she had broken it while moving my dresser.

    "Why were you moving my dresser?" I asked, not considering the fact that her arm should not have simply snapped in two from moving a piece of furniture.

    "Well to sweep the candy wrappers from behind it, silly!" Her response was jovial but I knew her smile was missing and somehow I knew that the small tubes of paint had not been opened since I boarded the plane.

    "Oh," I laughed along with her and popped another Jolly Rancher into my mouth.

    "I guess you spent the dollar I gave you," Alice asked after telling me how much she loved me.

    "Uh-huh."

    "Candy?"

    "Yep!"

    "Oh." Her response was low and still. I felt something slip from me, but I didn't understand what that was at the time, I would understand weeks later when they lowered my mother's coffin down into the ground.

    "Well I'll call you again in a few days, okay?"

    "Okay."

    "Love you."

    "Love you too."

    A week later my grandmother was getting on a plane to New York.

    "Well you're not there and she needs someone to help her unscrew the paint caps and cook and clean and wash the clothes…"

    My grandmother was trying hard not to cry as she rambled off all of the reasons she had to go and be with her daughter, my mother.

    "Well then why can't I just go back home then?" I asked, baffled at why my grandmother was so upset, wondering if she disliked planes that much. She had complained, twisted and turned in her seat and called out to the lord more than once during the hour and half plane ride. "Lord knows I hate planes!" She hissed in my grandfather's ear when the plane started down the runway.

    "Viola you cutting my circulation off woman!" My grandfather had reprimanded her and after thirty minutes, finally snatched his wrist from her grip.

    "Well honey..uhm - well this is your summer vacation. No need in you being stuck in some hot apartment when you could be here with your cousins Precious and Poor Boy." Grandma said in a voice that was filled with distraction.

    She stopped talking for a while and just stared at the clothes she'd thrown in her suitcase. It was as if her mind had stopped working for a moment and then just as suddenly, she began talking and packing again.

    "I'll be back after your mamma gets back on her feet." She said and threw a worried look at my grandfather who had not moved from his rocking chair since my mother had called earlier that morning.

    "I thought it was her arm that was broken?" I said as I pulled the nylons she'd just thrown into the suitcase and wrapped them around my neck like a