The Solo Her Grandmother Tried to Stop

Sunday morning on the porch

She came at a quarter to twelve the next day, in her church clothes, carrying a pie.

It was rhubarb from her freezer, the last of the summer before. She stood on my porch and did not knock until I opened the door.

I did not ask her in. That was not to be cruel. It was because it was Nora’s to decide.

I went and got Nora from the kitchen, and the two of us came out and sat on the porch steps, and Gloria-Jean sat in the lawn chair.

The sun was out. The neighbor’s kids were riding bikes up and down the alley.

Eula was out in her yard across the way, raking last fall’s leaves out of her lilac bushes and pretending she was not watching us.

Gloria-Jean told Nora about the Christmas program. She told it slower than she had told me, and plainer.

She did not make herself look any better in it. Then she said she was sorry.

“I was wrong to say that to you,” she said. “I was wrong to hide your shoes and wrong to tell the school you were sick. You were not going to embarrass yourself. I was the one who was scared. Not you.”

Nora looked at her for a long time. She is a fair child, my Nora. She thinks before she talks, which she did not get from me.

“Did you watch the whole thing?” Nora asked. “The video?”

“Seven times,” Gloria-Jean said. “I watched it seven times last night.”

“Did I get the land office part?”

Gloria-Jean laughed, a wet little laugh, and wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist.

“You got every word of it,” she said. “I couldn’t have done it. Not at eleven. Not now.”