Chapter 17
M Y GRANDMOTHER WAS STANDING in the doorway of the hall leading to the apartment’s two small bedrooms. Arms folded, she’d been watching me all this time. Had I been talking to myself? Talking out loud? I had no idea what I’d been doing.
“I woke you, didn’t I?” I said in a whisper that was hardly necessary given the crying baby.
Nana was calm, and she seemed in control of herself. She’d stayed at the apartment to help with the kids in the morning, but now she was up, and that was my fault, and little Jannie’s.
“I was awake,” she said. “I was up thinking that you and the kids have to come back to my house on Fifth Street. It’s a big enough house, Alex. Plenty big. That’s the best way for this to work from now on.”
“For what to work?” I asked, a little confused by what she was saying, especially as Jannie was wailing loudly in my other ear.
Nana’s back arched. “You need me to help you with these children, Alex. It’s as obvious as the nose on your face. I accept that. I want to do it, and I will.”
“Nana,” I said. “We’ll be fine. We’ll do this ourselves. Just give me a little time to get my bearings.”
Nana ignored me as she continued to bring me in on her thinking. “I’m here for you, Alex, and I’m here for the babies. That’s the way it has to be now. I don’t want any more back talk on it. So just stop, please.”
She walked toward me then and put her thin arms around me, hugged me tighter than it looked like she could. “I love you more than I love my own life.” Then she said, “I loved Maria. I miss her too. And I love these babies, Alex. Now more than ever.”
We were both tearing up now ? all three of us were crying in the close, cramped living room space of the apartment. Nana was right about one thing: This place couldn’t be our home anymore. Too many memories of Maria lived here.
“Now give me Jannie. Give her over,” she said, and it wasn’t exactly a request. I sighed and handed over the baby to this five-foot-tall warrior of a woman who had raised me from the time I was ten and already orphaned.
Nana began to pat Jannie’s back and to rub her neck, and then the baby produced a righteous belch. Nana and I both laughed in spite of ourselves.
“Not very ladylike,” Nana whispered. “Now, Janelle, you stop this awful crying. You hear me? You just stop it right now.”
And Jannie did as she was told by Nana Mama, and that was the beginning of our new life.