Chapter 26
Noah
Students will be able to confess (almost) everything.
“Then Ella said her baby brother takes baths in the kitchen sink! That is disgusting!” Gennie roared.
I met Shay’s gaze across the kitchen table as she gathered plates and silverware from dinner. I gave a single shake of my head and hoped she knew that meant does this story make any sense to you? Are babies really bathed in sinks?
“Is it disgusting because of the baby or disgusting because of the sink?” she asked.
Gennie scrunched up her face. “All of it.”
“What if you were bathed in the sink?” she asked.
“Momma isn’t that wacky,” Gennie muttered, clearly disappointed in our reaction to the outrage of Ella’s baby brother’s tub routine. “Is there any dessert for people who like dessert tonight? You said I could ask about dessert on Friday and it’s Friday so I’m asking.”
I shared a private grin with Shay as she stepped away from the table carrying the dishes. If there was anything I’d learned in living with her for the past two weeks it was that she needed to help with preparing the meal or cleaning up from it.
“Are you a person who likes desserts?” I asked my niece.
Gennie drummed her fingers on the tabletop, her lips rolled inward and her eyes sparkling.
She’d launched a case for dessert early in the week and pled it every chance she got.
I found it odd considering there was no shortage of sweets from the bakehouse around here but then I realized it wasn’t a general request when she asked for tapioca pudding.
She said Eva used to make it and tell stories about how her mother made it when she was a kid.
For the life of me I couldn’t remember anything like that, but apparently Eva did and now Gennie remembered it too.
Nyomi whipped up several batches of pudding and she was halfway in love with one of the recipes and threatening to put it into production to sell at the farm stand.
I didn’t care about that but I was looking forward to unveiling this for Gennie tonight.
It was nice being able to grant her a wish once in a while.
So many of them were far outside the scope of my abilities.
More than that, she deserved something good.
I hadn’t received a single call from school this year to report bad behavior—or language.
There hadn’t been any fights on the playground and the pirate talk was at a minimum during school hours.
“I’m always a person who likes dessert,” Gennie said, as outraged about this oversight as she was about Ella’s brother naked in the sink. “I’ve told you that a thousand hundred times!”
“That many?” Shay asked as she loaded the dishwasher. “And Noah still doesn’t know?”
“Not so fast,” I said, moving toward the fridge. “I might have something in here.”
“What is it?” Gennie asked, bouncing in her seat. “What is it, what is it, I have to know!”
“Hmm. Where did I put it? Maybe I forgot it over at the bakehouse.”
Shay grinned at me like I was a real pain in her ass with this ruse before turning back to the dishwasher. She had no clue how much I enjoyed being her pain in the ass. I wasn’t sure she’d see it that way but I didn’t care. I could keep it to myself the same way I always did.
“I have to know,” Gennie wailed, both hands pressed to her cheeks and her mouth stretched wide in agony. “Don’t make me wait, Noah!”
“Oh, look,” I murmured. “Tapioca pudding.”
“Fuck yeah,” Gennie yelled. “Shay, my mom used to make this for me, and her mom made it for her. It’s my super best favorite.”
“I love that,” Shay replied. “What makes it your favorite?”
“Momma used to tell me about being a little girl and how she helped her mom make jam. She’d put a little raspberry jam on my pudding and swirl it around like this”—she scribbled a hand in front of her—“but she always said the jam from the store wasn’t as good as her momma’s jam.”
I brought the pudding to the table with a bowl and spoon, and I swallowed down the forty different reasons that story pinched at the last of my patience.
Hearing about Eva’s experiences with our mother from Gennie was one of the most surreal and uncomfortable parts of being her guardian.
I had to bury all trace of the battles that went down between my mother and sister when she still lived at home.
I had to pretend my mother hadn’t turned her back on Eva after she moved out, or that Eva seemed to pride herself on refusing to be the one to reach out to the Reverend for years .
I had to let Gennie keep her memories intact, the ones that sounded like revisionist nostalgia, and never reveal the other side of those events.
“You should make pudding with jam when you have a little girl,” Gennie said to Shay.
A bunch of silverware clanked to the bottom of the dishwasher. “Sorry about that,” Shay called. “I just—it slipped and—and it’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
“When you have a baby,” Gennie continued, “you should make them pudding. Even babies can eat pudding. They don’t need teeth for pudding.”
I glanced at Shay but she was busy fishing out forks. “Let’s not worry about pudding for other people,” I said. “Pick the jam you want.”
Gennie bounded out of her seat and into the pantry, saying, “I already know I want mixed berry. It’s the best.” She slammed the jar down on the table.
This child didn’t know her strength—or she loved making a fuck-ton of noise.
Probably a bit of both. “Ginger peach is another best. And apricot. And tangerine marmalade. And—”
“Okay,” I interrupted. This could go on for hours. It was the price I paid for dragging her to all the farmers markets. “Mixed berry it is. How much do you want?”
Immediately, I recognized this to be a stupid question when Gennie replied, “Medium.”
“How much is medium?”
She brought her thumb and forefinger together. “This much.”
“That’s height. What about circumference?”
“She wants a teaspoon of jam,” Shay called from the other side of the kitchen. “Six-year-olds don’t understand circumference.”
“Do you think your baby will like jam or marmalade better?” Gennie asked Shay.
“Which do you like better?” Shay asked.
“I can’t choose. I like them both,” my niece said.
“Focus on this jam,” I said to her as I spooned a dollop of mixed berry over the pudding. “How’s this? Is it what you wanted?”
She took a tentative bite and gazed off into the distance like she was having an existential moment. Then, “It’s the most magnificent thing I’ve ever eaten.”
A laugh burst out of me and I leaned back in my chair. “Great. Nyomi will be thrilled.”
After another bite, she added, “Mixed berry is the best jam for pudding.”
I appreciated that. Mixed berry could be a beast to get right without one of the berries stealing the show. “Do you think we should put together a take-home tapioca kit? Ny’s pudding and a jar of jam?”
Gennie shook her head. “No. It’s a family secret. We shouldn’t sell that shit.”
Shay joined us at the table, a glass of white wine in hand. “Are you happy? Is this a good dessert for people who like dessert?”
“It’s not good. It’s great ,” Gennie replied.
Shay grinned at me. “The wonders of pudding.”
“Do not interpret this as any indication you should resume your pudding breakfast lifestyle,” I said. “We’re not doing that here.”
“Right, because it’s so much better to hand-slice bread every time someone wants toast. Far more sensible.”
I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. “It doesn’t take that long.”
She took a sip of her wine and I could almost hear her response gathering steam.
“No, I guess you’re right about that. It doesn’t take long to slice bread.
The process does slow down when we have to ride out to the dairy to get butter because you prefer fresh batches every few days, or when we have to go skulking around in the cheese basement—”
“It’s not a cheese basement ,” I argued.
“—because you want cheese aged down to a specific day—”
“It makes a difference,” I muttered.
“—or when we have fifteen different jars of jam in the fridge but we’re not allowed to touch any of them because you’re always in the middle of one secret project or another. Or fifteen.”
“There are at least forty other jars that you are welcome to use.” I gestured toward the pantry. “I believe you know where they are. You’re familiar with the pantry. Aren’t you, wife?”
She swallowed her smile with a sip of wine and glanced away.
Gennie loudly sucked every trace of pudding off her spoon. “These balls feel really big in my mouth.”
I met Shay’s gaze across the table. She gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head and rolled her lips inward to fight off a grin. “What was that?” I asked my niece.
“The balls,” she replied, digging her spoon into the pudding once more. “They’re really big.”
“I see,” I managed.
“In the pudding,” she added. “They’re big tapioca balls. Momma’s pudding never had big balls.”
Shay brought a hand to her mouth and stared down at the table. Her shoulders shook a little and I could hear the stuttering of a repressed laugh.
“I still love this pudding.” Gennie sucked the spoon and stared off into the distance again. “Even if it’s not the same as my memories.”
“Because of the balls,” Shay said, a laugh tearing through each word. I grabbed her wineglass and set it out of reach. “Hey! Give that back.”
“I will when you behave yourself,” I said.
“The balls feel different on my tongue,” Gennie continued, ignoring both of us. “But it tastes the same.”
I jabbed a finger toward Shay as she wheezed with laughter. So often, she was the one to keep a straight face but that was falling apart before my eyes. I kind of loved it. “Stop that.”
“I’m trying,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “I am trying. I swear. I just—” She shot a sidelong glance at Gennie. “I can’t.”
“Now that I’ve tried it, I think I like the big balls,” Gennie said. “I can bite them!”
I caught Shay’s eye and we burst out laughing together.
* * *