3. Nolani
The tires crackled over Nana’s oyster-shell driveway Thursday evening as the sun lowered itself behind the marsh, gilding across the water and every blade of cordgrass it touched.
Her screen door swung open before I turned off the ignition.
She stood beneath the porch light in a pale-blue housedress, one hand resting against the frame and the other shading her eyes as though she hadn’t been tracking my car from the moment I crossed into Willow Run.
Some places waited for you to announce yourself before welcoming you back. Nana’s house had always known I was coming.
“There go my baby. I was fixing to send somebody out looking for you,” she called as I stepped from the car.
“I’m early, Nana.”
“According to that clock you live by. Mine said you should’ve been here before I started missing you.”
“I called when I left Self Ridge.”
“And I started missing you before you called. Both things can be true.”
I laughed and closed the car door, but Nana’s attention had already shifted from my face to the rest of me.
She came down the porch steps without hurrying, her house shoes brushing over the shells until she reached me and took my chin between her fingers.
She tilted my face toward what remained of the sunlight and studied beneath one eye, then the other, as though exhaustion might confess under proper examination.
“Them people done worked all the groceries off you. You sample cake batter and call it lunch, then want to stand here telling me you eat.”
“I don’t even make the batter most days.”
“That ain’t the defense you think it is. Turn around.”
“Nana, why am I turning around?”
“Because I said so.”
Thirty-something years old and still, apparently, susceptible to grandmother authority, I turned.
Nana made a dissatisfied sound behind me before patting my hip and heading toward the trunk. “You getting narrow back here too. Ain’t nobody feeding you over there?”
“I feed myself just fine.”
“Then fire the cook.”
Nyla had clearly submitted a full report. Skipped meals. Late nights. Coffee masquerading as breakfast. Every offense I’d disguised as entrepreneurship had apparently been forwarded to senior management.
I reached for my suitcase when Nana lifted it from the trunk, but she shifted it beyond my grasp and headed toward the porch.
“I can carry my own suitcase.”
“I know you can.”
“So give it to me.”
“No. Get your purse, and close that trunk before these mosquitoes carry you back to Self Ridge.”
I followed her inside with my purse over one shoulder and the strange awareness that I had nothing else to hold.
At Crème she planted because she trusted food more after watching it become itself.
“Get that big one near the bottom, and don’t squeeze it like you picking peaches.”
“I know how to pick a tomato.”
“You also knew how to keep yourself fed, according to you, and we see how that turned out.”
I crouched beside the vine and reached through the leaves. The pendant at my throat slid forward as I bent, and my thumb found its edge before I realized what I was doing. I rubbed the smooth silver between my fingers while searching for the tomato’s stem.
Nana watched from beside the basil. “What you worrying about?”
“I’m picking a tomato.”
“You can pick a tomato and worry at the same time. Matter of fact, you seem gifted at doing most things while worrying.”
“I wasn’t thinking about anything.”
“That don’t mean your body wasn’t.”
I released the pendant and twisted the tomato free. “I didn’t realize I was doing it.”
“You never do. Your mama cleaned when she got bothered. Nyla starts talking faster. You reach for that necklace like it might whisper the answer.”
“Does everybody in this family have a nervous habit?”
“Everybody in every family got something. Most folks just too busy studying other people to learn their own.”
She clipped several sprigs of basil into the bowl and headed toward the house. Nana never chased the truth after speaking it or stood around making sure I understood every layer. She put it somewhere within reach and trusted me to decide what to do with it.
By the time we sat down, the tea glasses had already started sweating.
Nana bowed her head and thanked God for traveling grace, family, good food, and “enough sense to sit still when the Lord finally made a way.” She squeezed my fingers once before letting go, then added another hush puppy to my plate as though God had personally included it in the instructions.
The catfish crust broke beneath my fork with a soft crackle, revealing white meat tender enough to separate into clean flakes.
The crab pasta was bright with lemon, celery, green onion, and enough lump crab to remind me Nana had never believed in stretching seafood until it became rumor.
Tomatoes from the garden still held a trace of the sun, while the cucumbers carried the sharp sweetness of vinegar, onion, pepper, and sugar.
At Crème & Chill, food had become something I evaluated before I enjoyed. Texture, consistency, temperature, portion, cost. Even pleasure had started arriving with a clipboard.
Nana’s table only asked that I sit long enough to taste what was in front of me.
“This crab pasta is ridiculous. What did you put in it?”
“If I tell you, you’ll go home trying to measure everything.”
“I own a food business. Measuring is important.”
“Not in my kitchen.”
“How do you know it’ll taste the same every time?”
“It ain’t supposed to taste the same every time. It’s supposed to taste right.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It made enough sense for you to get a second helping.”
Before I could defend myself, a man’s voice traveled over the backyard fence.
“Miss Pearl, you frying fish over there?”
Nana kept eating. “I surely am.”
“You got enough for one more?”
“Depends. You bringing something besides your appetite?”
“I got hot sauce.”
“I asked what you bringing, not what you keep in your truck.”
His laughter drifted through the garden. “I’ll go get a pie.”
“Get one from Miss Corrine. Don’t bring me none of that frozen mess you tried last time.”
I stared at Nana until she finally looked across the table.
“Was that Mr. Calvin?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“He still shows up whenever you fry fish?”
“That man been following cornmeal through this neighborhood since your mama was in pigtails.”
“You’re giving him a plate, though.”
“After he brings my pie.”
We ate until daylight thinned beyond the kitchen windows, and Nana’s blues program replaced the gospel hour.
She told me which cousin had married, which marriage was “hanging together on prayer and shared property,” who returned from college with a degree and too much confidence, and why the pastor had finally forbidden Deacon Lowell from controlling the church thermostat.
Willow Run’s history lived in people more than buildings, and Nana carried it through stories as naturally as she passed the serving bowl.
When I lifted my plate, she pointed toward my chair.
“Sit down.”