Chapter 20
Navy ‘Nay’ Prescott
Day Eight
“Child, if you don’t slow down, your body gon’ make the decision for you, and I promise you ain’t gonna like the way it does it.”
Lulu stood on the other side of the kitchen island with one hand planted against her hip and the other wrapped around the handle of a small yellow saucepan as steam curled up around her face as she poured more broth over the bowl sitting in front of me, never mind the fact that I had already told her twice I had enough.
The smell of lime, peppers, potatoes, and tender pieces of chicken filled the kitchen, warming the back of my throat before I even lifted another spoonful.
Lulu’s chicken souse had always been my weakness.
It was hot enough to clear my nose, sour enough to make my lips pucker, and seasoned in the way only an older Bahamian woman who measured everything with her spirit could manage, and I loved every bit of it.
She claimed she had never written the recipe down because people who needed instructions didn’t deserve to make it.
I blew across the spoon and looked up at her. “I am slowing down.”
“You’re sitting still while you eat don’t count Nay.”
She placed the saucepan back on the stove, then turned to face me fully.
Her house dress brushed against her ankles as she moved, with bright orange flowers scattered across soft blue fabric.
A scarf covered most of her silver hair, although a few little frizzy curls had escaped near her temples.
At seventy-six, Lulu still moved like she had somewhere important to be, even when the only thing waiting on her was the daytime court show playing in the living room.
She pulled out the stool beside me and lowered herself onto it with a quiet grunt. “You work at that hospital all night, then you got them fake food orders coming through all day. When you sleeping?”
“They’re not fake orders.” I laughed. They’re cakes Lulu.”
“They’re orders nobody placed until you made up a reason for them to place them.”
I stopped with the spoon near my mouth. “That is literally how a business works.”
“Mhm.” She reached into the bowl of sliced limes and squeezed some more into my souse without asking.
“Back in my day, if somebody wanted a cake, they called you and said, ‘Lulu, bake me a cake.’ They didn’t need no flash sale, coupon code, countdown clock, or thirty-seven pictures of the same damn cupcake. ”
“Oh Lord, it’s called marketing.”
“It’s called begging with graphics.”
I nearly choked on the broth. Lulu sat there with a straight face, picking a piece of lint from the front of her dress while I coughed into my fist. She had always been funny without trying.
Half the time, I could not tell whether she meant to make people laugh or genuinely believed the things coming out of her mouth were ordinary conversation.
“I’m not begging,” I said once I could breathe again. “The orders are real and people are buying.”
“And you baking all of it?”
I nodded my head. “Yes ma’am.”
“On top of working?”
“Yes.”
She frowned. “And you don’t see nothing wrong with that?”
I shrugged. “I need the money.”
Her expression changed, as the humor faded just enough for concern to show now. “You always need money; everybody always need money. That don’t mean you run yourself into the ground trying to catch every dollar that rolls past.”
Guilt started to consume me because she didn’t know the half of it.
She knew about the hospital and the baking orders I had suddenly started accepting in bulk.
She knew I was going through a divorce and trying to get my life back together.
She didn’t know that some nights, instead of sleeping, I traded my scrubs for crystals and heels and danced at a club owned by the same man I owed thousands of dollars.
That part would have sent her pressure through the damn roof.
“I’m fine, Grandma.”
“That’s what everybody says right before they fall out in the middle of Publix.”
“I’m not about to fall out.”
“You don’t know what you about to do. That’s the whole purpose of falling out. It’s a surprise.”
I laughed and reached for another piece of potato, grateful for the way she was always concerned about me. Lulu watched me eat for a moment, then leaned back on the stool and folded her arms beneath her chest. “That damn Rome called again this morning.”
The spoon paused halfway to my lips. Of course he had. “What did he want?”
“What he always want… you.”
The disgust in her voice made me glance up.
“He called asking if I’d seen you, if you came by, if you been talking to anybody.
Like I’m working dispatch for your whereabouts.
” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.
“I told him I don’t know nothing, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell his overgrown ass. ”
A smile spread across my mouth, although the tight feeling in my chest kept it from lasting. “I can’t believe he’s still coming here too.”
“From time to time.” Her eyes dropped into slits. “Pull up in that car and sit outside like he part of neighborhood watch. Last week he came knocking, talking ’bout he just wanted to make sure I was okay.”
I shook my damn head. “He doesn’t care if you’re okay.”
“I know that. I’ve been alive longer than he’s been lying.”
I placed the spoon inside the bowl and stared at the broth. “I filed yesterday.”
Lulu raised her brow. “For what?”
“The divorce.”
She parted her lips to say something, but no sound came out at first. Then she reached for my hand with her fingers closing around mine with a softness that made my eyes burn before I could prepare for it. “You did?”
I nodded. “And I started the process for the order of protection too. I have to go back with some more information, but I filed what I could.”
Relief crossed her face before the sadness came behind it. She squeezed my hand and looked at me the same way she had when I was little and came home with scraped knees. “I’m glad you did it, baby, but I’m sorry you had to.”
“I should’ve done it sooner.”
“No.” Her grip tightened. “You did it when you was ready. Don’t beat yourself up because it took you time to admit something was hurting you. People love to tell women when they should leave, but they ain’t the ones who gotta live through what happen after.”
I looked away before the tears fell so I could suck them back up.
Lulu had never been one for long emotional speeches.
She gave wisdom in the middle of cooking, fussing, or cursing at the television, then moved on before anybody could make a scene out of it.
She released my hand and reached for the spoon again.
“Now eat before this get cold. Don’t be getting all skinny after this divorce.”
I looked down at myself knowing damn well I wasn’t skinny. “I’m nowhere near skinny.”
“You look thin in the face.”
“I look exactly the same.”
“You don’t. Your cheeks used to sit up higher.”
“That was when I was eight Lulu.” I laughed.
She furrowed her brows. “And they looked healthy.”
I kept laughing as the television audience in the living room erupted into applause over something that judge Mathis had said on one of the old rerun shows, and Lulu turned her head toward the sound as if she might need to intervene. When nothing else happened, she faced me again.
The question sitting in my mind had been there since the waterfront house, although I had tried not to give it enough thought.
Twenty-four hours had passed, and my thoughts still felt tangled around Lev, Marv, the debt, and everything that could go wrong if I allowed myself to want something I had no business wanting.
It was a big ass loop of tangled lies and betrayal.
“Grandma?”
“Mhm.”
“What do you do when you think you might like somebody you should probably stay away from?”
Her eyes snapped toward me so quickly I almost regretted asking. “Who?”
I smirked. “It’s hypothetical.”
“Ain’t nothing hypothetical about the way you just dropped your voice.”
“I’m asking in general.”
She slid closer, her full attention on me now. “Is he married?”
“No.” I said.
She got even deeper. “Does he have a woman?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Old?”
“No.”
“Ugly?”
I frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“It matters because trouble already ugly, child ain’t no reason the man bringing it should be too.”
I looked down to hide my smile although I wanted to fall out laughing. Lulu just didn’t care about what came out of her mouth. “He’s not ugly.”
“So, he’s fine then.” She smiled.
“Grandma.”
She tapped her fingers against the counter. “Why should you stay away from him?”
“Because it’s complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
“I owe him something.”
The answer was technically true. Grandma Lulu’s brows drew together. “Money?”
I looked at her and she stared right back. There was no way I was explaining fifty thousand dollars, a dying man’s stolen cash, or the fact that Lev owned the club where I had been dancing to repay it. “It’s not that simple.”
“Then make it simple.”
“I can’t.”
“You can, you just don’t want to.”
I sighed and leaned my elbow against the counter. “There are other people involved.”
She scooted a little closer and sucked on the lime. “Other women?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Well, if it ain’t other women, then it’s other men?”
My silence answered before I could say anything else. Lulu leaned back, and the expression that crossed her face told me she had just found the part she wanted. “Oh.”
“It’s not like that.”
“It’s always like that when somebody say it ain’t.”
“I’m not cheating on anybody, hell, I’m not even in a relationship.”
She pointed her finger at me in a stern way. “But you got one man thinking he’s got a place while you’re thinking about another.”
I shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe.”
“Mhm. See, that’s how people get hurt.”