Chapter 9 #2
Gabriella’s boyfriend was tall and thickly built, with a clean-shaven, handsome face and a quiet confidence that bordered on arrogance already.
They made a cute couple, though I wouldn’t have pegged them as “together” by the way he walked in without so much as a peck on her cheek.
She didn’t fawn over him or melt into smiles, either.
Gabriella introduced me to Lorenzo, and he got to work right away.
Reminded me of my last ten years with Eric. All business.
Gabriella stood beside him for a second, showing him one of the videos we’d watched. After less than a minute, he waved her off and barked, “I got it already.”
My head snapped back fast because I just knew Gabriella was going to say something about his tone. But she didn’t. She sighed, holding in the thoughts that were written on her face.
Lorenzo turned on the oven light and then opened the back door. “Tell me when the light goes off.”
I felt embarrassed for her. Then angry. Then I decided it was best to mind my own business and be glad someone had come over to help us. Who was I to tell a young woman how to be with her boyfriend after it had taken me nearly thirty years to advocate for myself in my own marriage?
After Lorenzo had successfully killed the power to the oven, Gabriella and I served as assistants, handing him wrenches and screwdrivers.
Sweat began to form along his hairline before long.
“You need water?” Gabriella asked.
“No,” he snapped. “Just… Quiet on the set, okay?”
The room was filled with the funk of his attitude and the sound of strained breathing and the occasional clink of metal on metal.
When Lorenzo got to the point where he was ready to unhook the electrical wires, he started to unscrew the back panel first. Having watched several videos already, Gabriella and I both knew he didn’t need to do that.
We exchanged wary glances, but she stayed silent.
Seeing as we were all three huddled close, supporting that heavy oven, and Lorenzo was expending his energy and stretching his arms beyond their natural capacity, I spoke up. “You can disconnect the cords through the top panel.”
He acted like he didn’t hear me. Kept right on doing it the way he’d committed to.
“Yeah, that’s what the videos showed for this model,” Gabriella said a few wasted seconds later.
Lorenzo gave a heavy sigh and asked, “Do you want my help or not?” First, he laid his eyes on Gabriella. She didn’t respond.
But when he poked those sassy brown eyes at me, I said, “No, I do not. We can finish on our own.”
“Fine.”
He let go of his corner, and all the weight landed on me and Gabriella. We struggled to push the oven back in place as he grabbed his little sorry tools and threw them in his piddly orange box.
I gave a count. “On three. One, two, three.” Together, Gabriella and I restored the teetering appliance to a safe position.
“Really, Lorenzo?” Gabriella grunted at her boyfriend.
“Really. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”
I gladly showed him out, wondering why I had the worst luck with handymen. Note to self: Next time, find help online! The internet could not do worse than Lorenzo and Wardell.
Left to our own devices, Gabriella and I exchanged a glance—hers full of youthful determination, mine tinged with a resignation that came from years of facing life’s curveballs. We were two very different people in that moment, but we shared one common goal: fixing this blasted oven.
“I’ve got my father’s tools,” I offered, hoping the ghosts of past DIY attempts wouldn’t come back to haunt us.
“The power’s off, so we can’t electrocute ourselves. We only need a screwdriver at this point,” she reminded me, with that confident nod of hers that made me believe we could actually pull this off.
We fumbled through the final steps of the tutorial, the mechanics simple enough but somehow still daunting.
The screwdriver slipped once, twice, but Gabriella caught it in midair, her reflexes quicker than mine.
We kept pushing through, handing tools back and forth, our hands brushing occasionally as we tightened bolts and loosened screws.
Each clink of metal felt like a tiny victory, and with every success, a little more of the tension between us eased.
But we did it. Together.
“On three. One, two, three.” We freed the oven from its snug spot beside the cabinet and set it on the floor.
It was a small one-hundred-dollar victory in the grand scheme of things, but monumental in that moment.
In the aftermath, a spontaneous celebration erupted between us.
A shared laugh broke the tension, and we found ourselves doing a little dance around the room, a salsa dance of sorts.
That’s when I saw it. Tucked away in the dusty corner where the oven had stood, pressed against the cabinet wall, a slim, unassuming black box with rusted edges. “What’s this?” I whispered to myself.
I felt Gabriella’s warm presence behind my shoulder as I approached the box and gently slid it out from the cabinet, leaving a dusty outline.
“Dang, that’s been sitting here forever,” she remarked.
“You mean since, like, 1999?”
“Right! Ancient!”
“I was joking,” I said.
“Oh. Sorry.”
I turned the box over to find only more black tin. No writing, no engraving. It might have been a cashbox? A cigar box?
“Open it, Ms. Joyce,” Gabriella urged.
I sat at the table, and she hovered so close that spirals of her hair brushed against my face.
I laughed. “Have a seat, girl.”
She scooched one right next to me, holding her breath.
My heart raced, unsure of what we would find in Grandma Jewel’s private business.
Had my father known about this box?
Slowly, I unlatched the mystery, careful not to damage the hinge. The first thing I saw was two folded stacks of money—wrinkled twenty-dollar bills on top—with dried-out rubber bands clinging to them.
Gabriella sang out, “Snap! Your grandma was ballin’, baby!”
A musty smell arose as I laid the money in the top portion of the box. Then I gasped at the sight of the book that lay beneath. The green background had faded, but the cover text remained legible. “The Negro Travelers’ Green Book.”
“What the heck?” Gabriella asked.
“It’s a Green Book. A list of places where it was safe for Black people to stop and get gas or stay while they traveled across the country,” I explained. Honestly, I was afraid to touch it. The brittle, yellowed edges of the document seemed too sacred for human hands.
Gabriella obviously did not feel the same. She reached for the booklet.
“Careful, careful,” I warned.
She complied, slowing her movements, opening the first page as though unfolding a fragile piece of history. “Wow.”
I appreciated her reverence for this artifact, for my grandmother’s property.
Suddenly, a packet of papers slipped out. We both scrambled to catch it before it hit the ground. And again, Gabriella did the honors of opening the papers.
“It’s a list of foods for traveling.” By the spark in her eyes, she had found the Holy Grail. “What? Wait…because they couldn’t eat at most restaurants.”
“Right,” I confirmed.
She peeled off the top page from the papers and put a hand over her mouth. “It’s a recipe for fried chicken.” She looked at the second and third pages as well. “Pound cake. Spiced nut mix. Anything with potatoes or beans. All things that didn’t take much space, either. This is amazing.”
“It is,” I agreed.
“This is why I love cooking. So much history.”
When she got to the last page of my grandmother’s insert, Gabriella let out a “Oooh! She’s got names. And a ledger. See?”
Our heads bumped slightly as we surveyed my grandmother’s meticulous accounting. There were names and dollar amounts and asterisks with the word Owe and cross-throughs with the word Paid.
And the money.
“Your grandma had a side gig selling traveling foods,” Gabriella declared.
“I ain’t mad at her,” I said. “I could use a side gig right now.”
“We could put her money toward the oven,” Gabriella suggested.
“I don’t know…” Was that the best use of these precious dollar bills?
“She obviously believed in financial independence,” Gabriella lobbied.
“Yes, but… I just need a minute to process.”
My housemate nodded. Impatiently. As though she wanted me to be past the moment already.
“So…tomorrow?”
“Gabriella. This”—I pointed at our new treasure—“changes things. This house…this money…”
“Right! What if she’s hidden more money all over the place?”
Not exactly what I had mind, but it was a possibility.
“Let’s just wait a minute.”
Her shoulders slumped with resignation. “I think she would have wanted you to use it for whatever you need. And don’t I get a vote? Am I not the person responsible for this problem anyway?”
We shared humorous sighs.
“We did a good thing today,” I told her.
“We did, huh, Ms. Joyce?”
With that, Gabriella wrapped me up in a bear hug that was quickly interrupted by Elijah stomping into the house.
“I’m hungry!” he announced.
“What else is new?” Gabriella teased, and I joined in her laughter.