When Mama and Daddy sat me down to tell me that my grandmother in Philadelphia needed our help, that she was getting older and wanted to see us more, I knew what they were doing.
They were making it so that if I refused to go, if I kicked and screamed like they knew I would, I’d look selfish, like a spoiled eleven-year-old who doesn’t care about her poor, frail grandmother.
The truth is, I love my grandmother (I call her by her first name, Maeve) because she lets me borrow ivory-colored combs for my hair and doesn’t mind when I open up her “traveling trunk” and dig through it to pick out silk scarves to spin around in.
I am an excellent granddaughter.
But leaving in the middle of sixth grade? Not even at the start of a school year? Right before Isabel Jessup’s twelfth birthday party, where she’s going to have a chocolate fountain? This is unfair. Unreasonable. Outrageous.
I argued until I heard Daddy say my full name: “Mathilda Maeve Markham!” And then I knew: that was that.
I wish I had a sibling so we could at least team up. The biggest protest I can think of is riding in the way-wayback of our minivan with my arms crossed over my chest as we drive from North Carolina, which takes like nine hours. That’s nine hours of Mama and Daddy knowing that I’m angry and I don’t want to go.
But after an hour, I fall asleep against the window, and when I wake up I’m hungry and Mama offers to stop at Burger King, so I get a cheeseburger and move to the middle row of seats, because they’re more comfortable for eating. Besides, it was getting lonely in the way-wayback.
“We’re going to be on the top floor of an apartment building,” says Mama. She’s told me this at least ten times, but it’s one of the things I’m sort of excited about. Apartment buildings are fancy.
“Tell me about the door guy again,” I say.
“Doorman,” says Daddy. “There are a few of them, but I met a nice one named Will.”
“And he wears a uniform?” I’ve been told this is the case, but I want to confirm it. It’s another thing I’m sort of excited about. We don’t have uniformed doormen in my town in North Carolina.
“He does indeed. Black with brass buttons.”
I sit back in my seat and look out the window. It might be like having a butler, which I’ve only seen in movies.
As I watch the highway miles go by, the green ground turns white with the frost of December snow up north, and the restaurants change from Hardee’s to Roy Rogers. I wonder what else might be different about this move. Will I be different? Can I?
At my old school, I played it safe. I was in the middle—not the smartest kid or the one with the most friends, but not at the bottom. Maybe this is my chance to move up.
We stop at my grandmother’s house for the night before we go on to our new apartment—the moving van isn’t coming until tomorrow, so we wouldn’t have beds to sleep in yet.
When Maeve’s tall, thin shadow steps into the entryway light, I smile and rush forward for a hug. She smells like Shalimar, a perfume she bought in France. Like travel and romance.
My grandfather died before I was born, so Maeve is alone in this big, old row house in the middle of the city. It’s got three floors and it’s really narrow, and I always thought it would make a great movie-set house because it has polished wood floors and real built-in fireplaces—not to mention a stained-glass bay window in the living room and a creepy old basement covered in dust.
“Your bed’s all ready, Honeypie,” Maeve says. If anyone else called me that I’d probably make a face, but Maeve has nicknames for us all, and she grew up in West Virginia, so her voice is soft and sweet and southern and her Honeypie sounds like whispered love.
When she tucks me in a few minutes later, she brushes the hair off my forehead and says, “It’s hard to move to a new place, isn’t it?”
I nod, but my eyes are half-closed, I’m already drifting away, into the soft, feathery comforter that floats around me like a cloud.
“Don’t worry, Honeypie.” Her voice is soothing. “You’re sweeter than peach cobbler, and prettier than a bluebird.”
I don’t believe her—she’s my grandmother, after all—but I fall asleep smiling anyway. Because when I’m with Maeve, I’m home. For one more night anyway.