Grandma rose to her elbows. — We haven’t seen your mother except Friday.
— We should tell the police.
Nabisase only repeated herself. — Mom’s gone.
— I thought she stopped doing this, I said.
Grandma said. — She did. For some time.
I felt fevered, but not them. Now I wondered if her message had sounded more despondent than I recognized. — What did she tell you the last time you saw her?
Grandma said, — She left as my eyes closed.
— We can call the cops from here.
— Forget the police, Nabisase said.
— Why do you sound so grown? I asked her.
My sister sat down next to Grandma. Their postures were the same, but Grandma had reason to hunch over. She was ninety-three and her hip might be broken. While my sister was soon to be awarded Uncle Arms’s gold prize. She didn’t know and I couldn’t tell her because I didn’t think she’d believe me. But soon.
Even as they sat there confused, I was happy. I’d never felt like an oracle before.
— Were there any notes?
Grandma said, — Do you believe she gives a thought as she waves out the door?
Grandma was tired. Uncle Isaac. Mom. Me. How does a parent go on living, really pretty healthy, while watching her children decompose gradually?
— She’ll be back by this afternoon, I said. I was optimistic. Sometimes Mom forgot her life and it lasted for a few weeks, but most often she got confused, wandered for five hours then came back to us.
— I’m not waiting to see, Nabisase said.
— We can’t let her run around town getting in trouble, I pleaded.
— Can’t we?! Grandma yelled.
This isn’t the start of things I’m telling about. It’s not the middle, too.
I stood, surprised that I’d become the paladin of compassion. — I’m going to get her back.
Nabisase and Grandma, both, touched their hands to their eyes.
— You’ll have to take Grandma, Anthony. They have a woman who can help me with my hair backstage, but it’s only me who’s going to steam my dress. And I have to go find some glitter to put on my shoes.
— Will you miss the announcements? Grandma asked her. Of the winner? With the tiny man’s contest?
Nabisase punched her own thigh. — Forget about that. It’s not important. I have to be ready for tonight. Uncle Allen wasn’t looking for pretty girls anyway.
I should have urged her to get the fuck downtown, right now, and collect her prize, but the offhand way she described herself made me angry. More than angry. Just a blubbery bitter boy. Petty because I wasn’t good-looking.
— We may help? Grandma offered her. To prepare yourself.
— I need to get used to doing things on my own, my sister said. I want you both to go.
I felt like the appointed manservant of some young caliph, but did as the young girl commanded. Nabisase tied my grandmother to my back with a few sheets. I carried her that way to the parking lot and put her in the passenger seat.
In the wounded Dodge Neon we drove through Lumpkin, Virginia. There was the chance we’d sight Mom from the car, but not likely. So the new method was to travel, park, tie Grandma on my back and walk around a few blocks looking in stores or driveways.
In 1981 Uncle Isaac tracked Mom to a duck farm in Providence.
Grandma had a recent picture that we showed to clerks, people waiting to cross at red lights. Pedestrians and passengers stared at Grandma and me with patterns of bemusement on their faces as I carried her around. Most were nice enough to listen, but none recognized our dear.
Just like Southeast Queens the city of Lumpkin, away from the phalanx of tourist restaurants and hotels, was the Lord’s territory.
Calvary Baptist, Grace Brethren Church, Sacred Heart Catholic, First Church of Christ Scientist, Mountainview Church of Christ, Christ Episcopal Church, Dormition of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox, Grace Lutheran, First Presbyterian, Seventh Day Adventist, Centenary United Church of Christ, Braddock St. United Methodist, Market St. Methodist, St. Paul the Redeemer, Beth El Congregation Synagogue Reform. In a pretty small town. With twenty-five houses of worship what’s the gamble that, on a Sunday, marriage bloomed.
At an A.M.E. church the jubilant congregation stood outside. Women in pink dresses, men in red suits. The front lawn looked like a taffy shop.
The one-story wooden church was just another white house on a residential block, except for the wheelchair ramp leading to the front door.
Soon as I walked onto the lawn a short, wide man approached. He was one of those small guys with a rib cage large enough to store a car engine. — Hey now, he said.
He put his hand out to me.
— Yes, I said.
— Out strolling.
This sounds like a question, but he wasn’t really asking. With his right hand on my shoulder he turned me away from the church so that Grandma and I faced the street once more.
Grandma said, — We are looking for someone.
— Yes, he agreed, but the face showed his unconcern.
He put one hand in his red vest pocket which matched his red shoes, his red jacket and tusk-colored shirt. I tried to show him Mom’s picture, but there wasn’t time.
— You both have a good day now, he said. You go on from here because we’ve got a whole mess of cars about to come up the road for a wedding. It’s going to get crowded. Go on. Go on.
In a pantomime of friendliness he smiled.
A woman, his wife I bet, walked closer to us and she smiled.
The whole hill of people, hell-yeah fifty-five if I counted, walked closer to us and they smiled, too.
The guy pushed me without making it obvious. Maybe he bounced at bars. With his hand against my right arm he sent Grandma and I going. I had to walk because the momentum would’ve tripped me if I didn’t move. I waved cheerfully until Grandma slapped my face.
— Why would you wave? She asked. They were not friendly. When she scowled her eyebrows covered her eyes, so that her face lost its light.
— They were nice. I was indignant for them because they’d smiled.
— They were disgusted.
— By you?
She pinched my ear.
— By me? I asked. They didn’t like me? How?
— Because you are a stinker. One thin, mottled hand waved not across her own nose, but under mine.
— How could they know just by looking at me?
She hooked her thumb into the sheet where it passed under my armpit. — He smelled you.
— It’s that bad?
— Terrible, she admitted.
I unbuttoned two of the buttons on my shirt and put my nose in. — What do I smell like?
Grandma wasn’t going to detail the offense. I really hadn’t noticed. It was three days by now. That is a while.
— I’m sorry, I said to Grandma.
The car was parked downtown; as I walked she reached over my shoulder, rubbed my cheek. Before we got back in the car we stopped in a little pharmacy with aisles so tight that when I tried to slide into the personal hygiene lane I knocked Grandma into a whole display of brightly tinted coolers. I wanted to find some cologne to spritz myself.
CVS was bigger; a chain store with plenty of floor space. There were perfumes in a glass case, but the case only opened with a key. I could’ve cracked it with my elbow, but who becomes a crook for such a dumb reason.
— I’m going to have to buy one, I told Grandma.
— These are too expensive. Try something else. She pulled my face away, to the right, not gently.
Some perfumes were twenty dollars, but I understood what Grandma really meant. It wasn’t that she thought people shouldn’t spend twenty dollars on cologne, but that they should bathe before it became an issue.