Fragments

“Who’s that in my house?”

The dark, handsome child turned his attention from the TV and responded. His voice was deeper than a boy’s ought to be. “We’ve been over this—that’s you. Do you want me to take it down?” 

I didn’t know how to answer him when the volume was missing in the room. I couldn’t understand what held his focus or mine. He rolled his eyes back to his video game when he got no response from me. 

Trying to make sense of what he said, I raised a tired hand towards the face in the flaking mirror. Both were pale and wrinkled. 

The reflection wasn’t black enough for me. I knew who I was, but this face didn’t carry the marks of a discriminating history. It didn’t look like it bore the hard truth of being unwelcome. It was ambiguous—undefined. The boy’s words didn’t register. 

“No—can’t be me. What’s your name, young man?” 

This time, he slammed the controller down with a loud thud onto the low, wooden coffee table. The suddenness frightened me. “Are you doing this on purpose, Grandma? Because it hurts, you know.”

I studied his restless brown eyes. Took inventory of his flaring, wide nostrils, and curly, high fade. I retreated into my jumbled thoughts, searching for him in the mist. There was nothing of him amongst the weeds and tangled string, only that I knew I was safe in his presence. 

“Can you bring me some sweet tea, child?”

He sighed but got up anyway. I could hear his heavy boots marching towards the kitchen, away from me. 

At my house, mindful people took their shoes off at the door and didn’t slam things down without expecting consequences. This boy couldn’t have known me. 

As I watched the back of him pass through the room, a familiar whiff of cedar, lemongrass, and honey tickled my nose. I inhaled my daughter holding a sulking toddler on her hip. He was blubbering into her shoulder because he didn’t want to leave. He called out to me, “Grandma? Can’t I stay? Please, Grandma?”

I exhaled. The image vanished like a vapor on a foggy night. 

“Samson?”

His cumbersome steps still receding, he called over his shoulder with little ceremony, “Ma’am?” 

I heard him opening cabinets and rummaging through the refrigerator. People who knew me didn’t do that at my house. This must not have been my house. 

Sunshine caressed my right cheek. Smiling, I turned towards its warmth and picked at a sore on my neck. “The porch needs to be swept, Samson. Where’d you put my broom?” No answer.

On the other side of the wide glass door, the autumn leaves rustled across the old planks of the back porch. There were too many of them. Brown, yellow, and red, they crisped and made a terrible scratching sound, like long-nailed, gnarled fingers writing in cursive against the wood. They had to go, I decided. They had to go. They had to go. I rocked and whistled the command through parched lips while listening to their awful noise. 

Although impatient for the deed to be done, I knew I would have to wait for Samson to come, but he only visited on Sundays. I remembered he would help do the hard work while I swept the porch clean. That was the only task I could reasonably manage before the exhaustion set fire to my bones. Sleeping the rest of the day was the remedy to putting it out, but then I would miss the rest of our time together—time with my grandson. 

A pine sapling swayed with the wind. I smiled deeper.

Samson only complained about helping me when the heavy branches and dead trees had to be cut down. He would always say, “This is pointless, Grandma. More of them are gonna die, and we gonna have to do this all over again next fall. Can’t I just go inside and play the game? It can wait til then.”

The shadow of his whining made me close my eyes and lean back. “Being outside, helping, ain’t gonna kill you, boy. Matter of fact, you need to be working out here every day. It’s not natural to hole yourself up in the house. Your mama is ruining you. Back in my day, we knew how to work—cause we didn’t know we had a choice.” 

Samson would mumble under his breath, “Yeah, yeah, and you walked up a hill both ways to school in the snow with no shoes on. I know—I know.” 

I heard him—I always heard him—but he knew how to make me laugh, so I left it at that. He was the only person who could get away with such transgressions. 

I opened my eyes to the broom still in my hand. The leaves scraped across the porch in the wind, but this time, they moved backward somehow, with the terrible noise a reversed record. The broom disappeared, but the handsome young man returned. 

His hand gently distracted mine from the sore, and a coffee mug was placed inside my palm. It was cold to the touch. I looked down at the liquid and recognized it for what it was.

“Water? I don’t like water. Don’t you got any sweet tea? Why you don’t got any sweet tea? Proper peoples share sweet tea with their guests.” Angered, I shoved the mug back towards him, spilling large droplets onto my faded pink muumuu.  

He received the offensive cup and gingerly set it on the side table closest to my chair. He had a towel ready and dabbed at the wet spots of my clothing. “You need to drink it, Grandma. Doctor says we’re letting you dehydrate yourself—no more sweet tea.”

The warmth from the sun moved on, and the low-hanging mirror captured me. Long grey tuffs of wiry hair were plaited into a struggling braid. A thin face, blank in expression, stared me down. Unnerved, I returned its gaze for a time, wading through weeds and tangled string—nothing. 

But I desperately wanted to know, so I asked the nameless boy sitting on my couch. 

“Excuse me, young man. Who’s that in my house?”