Mom on the Porch
Mom sat on the porch all morning with a pitcher of tea and her Bible in her lap, open to the Psalms.
She did not read it much. Mostly she watched the lane and kept count of who came.
Kenzie took a break every hour to walk up to the porch with a water bottle.
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The first time, I thought she was getting a drink. Then I saw her kneel down and press her thumb into the top of Mom’s ankle.
“Grandma, feet up,” she said.
“I’m fine, honey.”
“Your ankles are puffy. Feet up on the stool. Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re not a doctor.”
“I’m a nurse. Almost. Feet up.”
Mom put her feet up on the stool. Then she said, “Yes, nurse,” in a voice so prim and serious that Kenzie burst out laughing, and then Mom laughed too, and I heard it all the way down at the trunk over my idling saw.
It was the first time I had heard Mom laugh in two weeks. I stood there with my saw running and my eyes stinging, and told myself it was the sawdust.
At noon, a woman named Teddi who waits tables at the café drove out with a box of ham sandwiches and a gallon of lemonade.
She said the coffee men had passed a hat at breakfast. She would not take a dime from Mom.
We ate in the shade of the hedge, eight of us. The men talked about the 1993 flood and somebody’s cousin’s combine and whether it would rain on the fourth. Nobody said anything about anybody’s brother.