Nanna

Dust danced in the light cutting through the shadows in the attic. Planting her knees on the creaky floorboards, Haley rifled through musty boxes adorned with faded scribbles. Living Room. Bathroom. Den. Keepsakes.

A box caught her eye. It was different. Older. Corners frayed by time.

“Hello, what's this?” she whispered to the mice watching from the cobwebbed rafters. Haley's fingertips grazed the box’s dust-laden cover as she heaved it from its shadowy corner with a grunt. The lid creaked open like a novel's first page, inviting her big brown eyes to its secrets.

Her hand hovered, then plunged inside, fishing out a bound journal. The cardboard whispered as Haley’s fingers traced its edges. Then she freed it from its cocoon.

Inside, nestled between layers of mangled, yellowed tissue paper, laid a journal. Leather-bound and worn with a curious meadowlark embossed on its coffee-colored cover. Urging her to open it. Its spine crackled like kindling around a roaring camp fire.

“Nanna’s handwriting,” Haley whispered reverently, thumbing through the pages with care. This was Nanna’s heartbeat pressed onto paper.

Photos poured out from it, cascading around Haley like autumn leaves. She grasped a picture: a beaming young Nanna, her wide-brimmed glasses sitting beneath a crown of ebony curls. She must have been in high school. Her smile wide and hopeful, eyes swelling with trouble.

Letters—folded, faded—slipped out next. Haley flipped through one, the old paper sighing in protest.

“Ok, Nanna,” Haley said, a faint smile curving her lips. “Let's see where this takes us.” She tucked her long, black curls behind her ear, settled back against an old trunk, and traced the looping lines of ink with her finger. A faint smile curved her lips, like she she was sitting down with Nanna for their Sunday tea again.

Her thumb brushed the journal's edge, caressing the worn leather like a newborn. She flipped it open, and the years fell away. Haley could almost hear the clink of diner forks, the murmuring voices.

“August 10, 1964,” Haley read to herself in hushed reverence. “Left the colored section today. Got in line with the white folks. Order eggs and toast. This man, he says, ‘We don't serve your kind. Git.’”

In Haley’s head, the scene played out in monochrome like an old movie—Nanna, young and headstrong. Haley traced the looping ink, each word choking her like the vines creeping up the trellis beside the house.

“They all look through me like I wasn’t there. Like I’m just a shadow,” she read further.

“So I stand up. Stand up tall. I tell them, ‘My money's green, same as theirs,’” Haley whispered to the dust motes dancing in the twilight.

“I walked out. Left the change. Let ‘em keep my two cents. Need it more than me.”

Haley chuckled. That was Nanna, alright.

The journal quivered in Haley’s hands like Nanna was laughing with her again on a Sunday afternoon, both of them watching the crows fly in from the porch. Nanna always did know how to dance in the rain.

Dust swirled in the light like the memories pirouetting in Haley’s eyes. The air, thick with the smell of old ink and aged paper, clung to her skin as she dove deeper.

Her fingers graced a photograph, its edges frayed. It was Nanna, standing tall, all five and a half feet of her. Smile undimmed, carrying a sign with the words, “Civil Rights Now.” Haley felt the curve of her lips mouth the words, wrapping them around her like a well-worn quilt.

One amber-colored letter slipped from between the pages, landing softly beside Haley’s crossed legs. Her heart tightened. She brushed a tear away, surprised by the suddenness of it. Leaning back, the journal resting on her knees, she flipped through the pages.

“Strength isn't always loud,” Haley read, the words only a whisper as she pressed her palm against the rough paper. “Sometimes, it’s the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I'll try again tomorrow.’”

Her voice echoed against the dead silence of the attic.

“Life will hurl stones,” another entry began, “But child, we are rivers. We shape the rocks, wear them down to pebbles.” Haley chuckled, the short burst of sound cutting the air. Only Nanna could turn geology into gospel.

Haley felt it. Like Nanna was speaking to her from inside these bound pages. Gazing out the attic’s star-shaped skylight where moonlight was beginning to pour in, tears pearled down Haley’s cheeks. She felt just a bit light-headed.

“Heartache is just life's way of making your story worth telling,” the passage read.

Photos slipped from between pages like memories come loose. A young Nanna, chin up at a wall of police officers, batons in hand, pointing and herding her the other way.

“Life isn't fair, but it’s ours to color,” Nanna’s words whispered next. Haley smiled at the thought, picturing Nanna with a paint brush, brightening the darkest corners of history.

Haley’s fingers lingered on the tattered final page as its ink bled into memory.

“Thanks, Nanna,” Holly said, closing the journal gently, the whisper of paper like applause for a life lived unapologetically. “For showing me how to be strong, even when strength feels like a foreign language.”

Haley stood up, clutching the journal to her chest like a treasure map. The floorboards beneath her feet thrummed and groaned as she descended the attic stairs.

In the kitchen, time ticked away as the seconds passed on the old grandfather clock’s ebony face. Like time itself was daring her to remember how much of it she had left. The kettle whistled—a high-pitched hallelujah—as steam curled into serpents of promise. Haley poured herself a cup of tea, cradling the porcelain grail that graced a childhood of Sunday tea parties.

“Good night, Nanna,” Haley said as she toasted the night.

Outside, the old oaks stood watch, leaves rustling tales in the wind like the pages tucked under her arm. Their branches knew of beginnings nestled in endings, of sprouts in the ashes.