“Come in here, Ava,” Don had yelled to her from his bed.
Ava stopped at the doorway. She could not remember when her father had ever been in bed in the middle of the day. He was never a sick man, never a layabout. It made her nervous to see him red-eyed and wrapped up in the sheets. “Go get me some water, baby, with plenty of ice,” Don said from his bed.
Ava cracked open a rack of ice cubes from a metal pan and brought Don a glass of water and a glass of ice, like he liked. Her father’s eyes were red, puffy, and he had slept in his clothes. “Just set it down on the table,” Don had said and rolled over to face the wall.
“Get up from there, Don, and stop scaring Ava,” Sylvia said as she brought a snack for herself to watch television. “Don’t let him bother you, Ava,” she said.
“Is Daddy sick?” Ava whispered to her mother.
“Oh he’s sick, but there’s no help for him,” Sylvia yelled loudly enough for Don to hear. “Don’t worry. He’s just a fool. There’s no cure for that. He’ll get his sorry tail up by evening,” Sylvia had said.
Ava had nodded, strangely comforted.
“Avery, wash up those few dishes before everybody gets here,” her grandmother yelled.
Ava knew that her grandmother knew her name was not Avery. Calling her Avery was her idea of protest against her daughter-in-law, Sylvia.
“I’ve already started, ma’am,” she yelled from the kitchen. Her grandmother hated anybody to yell in her house, unless it was her.
“Come in here if you have anything to say to me.”
In the fifteen or so steps it took to get to the den where her grandmother watched her movie Ava got her mind right and her face cheerful.
“I’m already doing the dishes, Mama Lora.”
“What are you standing around for?” Mama Lora had not looked up from the television screen. “You need to see this woman play. This is a good movie.”
Ava hated the movies her grandmother watched. Always black-and-white, the people too grand and too dramatic for her taste. Why she wanted to see a screen full of hysterical white people was beyond her understanding.
“I’m going back to the kitchen.”
“You should already been done with the dishes.”
The greasy water in the sink had grown slimy and cold. She would have to start again. There had been a time, she vaguely remembered it, when she thought washing dishes would be fun and begged to stand on a chair beside her grandmother to watch her work. “One of these days you’ll be begging me to get away from these dishes,” her grandmother had said.
“I can’t wait to wash,” Ava’d said.
“Remember you said that.”
That was back when she and Mama Lora had spent a lot of time together. Ava’s mother had left the house with her and Devon and stayed with their Grandma Mabe. Sylvia had fled to her mother’s house thinking that maybe life had passed her by on the bus, though it would not wave. What looked so much like life had hidden behind her, crept in the house and yard for years, persistent as a shadow, but she couldn’t whirl around quick enough to see it. Her mother had never planned to actually leave Don, but she hadn’t told Don that. Ava had not even remembered the week and would know nothing about it if Mama Lora hadn’t mentioned it. Don had not been worried about Sylvia’s absence and it took five days for him to call. Sylvia was in the middle of making dinner, chopping onions for the salmon patties, the fishy smell of the canned meat all over the kitchen. Whatever it was Don said was not inspired. Sylvia saw the chipped plate her mother used as a cutting board as she watched herself chopping at the same counter. The fact that she hadn’t moved, not one inch of progress in all those years, made her sad. It was time to go back home.
Maybe they had looked pitiful and dispirited and Mama Lora had felt sorry for them then. Whatever came over her then was past tense now and she was just as direct with Ava and Devon as any other of the grandkids. Mama Lora never forgave Sylvia.
Even during the comparatively sweet time with her grandmother, Mama Lora was natured nothing like her son Don. She was not fun, not easily amused. She could never see the good side of a situation. She didn’t believe a situation could have a good side. Don was always a good time. Even when Ava had not wanted to love her father, she couldn’t help it.
Ava hardly had time to fill the chipped plastic bowl her grandmother made the older kids wash the dishes in before her daddy’s brother Skip and his two little girls showed up. Skip’s wife Gina came to visit exactly twice a year—Easter and Christmas, both times in honor of a past when loving Jesus had been a part of her life. She was like a comet that way. Skip was not his real name, but he hated the awkward depression of the name Earl and renamed himself in high school. Too bad there was never a name that fit a body better than Earl fit her sad uncle Skip.
“Y’all doing all right?” Skip lowered himself into the chair like he was in his eighties instead of the forty-six-year-old man he was.
“You want to eat. There’s supper in the oven. If you get here earlier it might not be cold as a rock,” Mama Lora said as she took plates out of the cabinets for Skip and his girls. The two little girls watched from either side of their daddy. They were cute and dressed alike as usual, though they were not twins.
“You hungry girls?” Mama Lora said.
The girls looked afraid to commit. “Yes ma’am,” Jessica said.
“Just give the girls something. I’m too sick to eat today,” Uncle Skip said as he rubbed his round little stomach. Her grandmother spooned sweet potatoes and chicken casserole, collard greens and a square of corn bread.
Mama Lora handed each girl a plate.
“Avery, give them some milk in plastic cups.”
The girls glanced at their plates and then at their father. “Go on and eat all you can. Go on,” Skip said.
The girls took small bites that might register under a microscope. It was clear to anyone who had ever been a child that they hated everything on their plates. Uncle Skip and Mama Lora were apparently too far away from those wonder years to remember. Don, Ava’s daddy, was the opposite of Mama Lora, but Skip she spit out identical to her and slapped a big porn star-approved mustache on. Never have you seen two separate people more alike. Both happiness killers. If they came close to a flicker, a spark of happiness, they’d stamp it out quick before it spread.
“Here, baby, put me a little of that chicken on a plate, a few of them greens too. I might be able to keep a little of it down.” Ava started with a spoonful for Uncle Skip’s plate but he kept nodding for her to add more. She handed Uncle Skip his full plate. He pulled his eyebrows up, leaned his face close to hers.
“I seen your mama at the grocery store with James Martin,” he whispered. “She needs to stay away from him, from any Martins. I ain’t never liked none of them. You know he just got out of county.”