When I get to Grandma’s after school, a woman is playing the piano in the lobby and Grandma is there sitting on the end of the couch. Her right hand is tucked in tight to her side, where it always is, but her left hand is floating in the air in front of her like she’s conducting, moving up and down and left and right in four perfect beats over and over, like Mr. Fletcher’s one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and. Her eyes are closed, and even though the right side of her mouth turns down, I can tell she’s smiling. And her left foot is tapping. Tapping right on beat.
I sit down next to her and pat her left knee.
She grabs my hand but doesn’t open her eyes. “Na na,” she whispers, and I know she’s saying Cyrus, that she knows it’s me and she’s glad I’m here. Her hand squeezes mine. We call this giving strength in my family, when you take a tired, scared hand in your own and squeeze it tight until all your strength flows over.
I gave my grandma strength every day we visited her in the hospital after she had her stroke, and my dad gave me strength every night when we returned home and he tucked me into bed, both of us hoping that Grandma’s words would return tomorrow.
I can feel Grandma’s strength filling me up, and I don’t know how she knows I need it, but I do know that before the song is over and she opens her eyes, both of our left feet are tapping together.
Milly delivers dinner to us in Grandma’s apartment, and there are two extra brownies on my tray. She gives me a wink.
There’s a Twins game on mute and a record playing and Grandma is cutting fish with her fork in her left hand. I want to reach over and do it for her, but I don’t know how to help without making her feel like a little kid. The fish is crispy on one side, and she can’t get the fork through. She spears it and tries to shake it free, but the whole piece of fish lifts up and some of it falls down her shirt.
“Na!” she shouts and slams her fork to the plate.
I move closer and put my right hand on her left and give it a little strength while I count out a beat of one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and over and over, and with my hand I’m telling her to slow down and it’s OK. Slow down and try again.
She takes the fish from her shirt and puts it back on her plate. Then she tries again, slower this time, edging her fork back and forth through the crispy part until it breaks through and she cheers, “Na na na!”
She finishes the rest on her own, going more slowly like I showed her, and I eat all the brownies by the second inning.
“I should have saved one for Dad.”
Grandma shakes her head and waves me off and says, “Na na na,” and it gets us both laughing because I know she’s saying Our secret.
Then she points to my book bag and makes the zipping motion. She wants to see my schoolwork.
“I don’t really have much yet, Grandma.” But she keeps pointing, so I open it up and take out my graph paper notebook and show her some problems we worked on together in class. I’m OK at math, especially at balancing equations and finding X.
I tell Grandma that I like my new math teacher, Ms. Martin, because she pulled out little scales and a bucket of different-sized blocks to practice balancing equations. “What goes on one side has to go on the other,” she said. “And what comes off one side, has to come off the other. You have to keep it balanced.” She let us play with the scales for a while and it didn’t even feel like school. Then we did some problems together on the board and she drew an equation to look like a scale and it all just clicked and made sense.
Not like reading.
Grandma reaches her hand in and takes out my English folder and Mr. Hewett’s assignment. She reads it and raises her eyebrows at me. “Na na?” she asks, and I know she’s saying Which book?
I shrug. “Not sure yet.”
I flip a page in my graph paper notebook and show her how I did this equation by myself and found X in three steps and Ms. Martin wrote a little note—I like the way your brain works!—in pink pen right in the middle of class. Grandma gives me a high five, but then she pulls Wonder out of my bag. She taps her finger on the cover.
“Haven’t started it yet.”
She taps again. “Na.” And I know she’s saying Now. No time like the present, because that’s something my grandma always used to say.
She turns to the first page, holds the cover open with her left hand, and passes it to me. And even though it’s supposed to be Grandma reading to me, and I miss her voice and the way it rose and fell across the pages, I can do this. So I start reading out loud to Grandma, and before I realize it I’m on the third page and Grandma is tapping her hand on mine, telling me to stop a second.
“Na na na.” And I know she’s saying beautiful because I didn’t skip any words or stumble at all.
Then she leans over and points to the word August.
“August,” I read.
Grandma curls her left hand to say And . . . or Tell me more, and I try to quickly read the sentence before it and after it in my head again so I can tell her more about August, but nothing is sticking and even though I read the pages perfectly I don’t know what I read and it feels panicky like the one time I tried sliding down the pole at the firehouse because it looked so easy, but I didn’t know how to use my legs like they do and the pole just kept slipping and burning between my fingers and I didn’t have anything to hold on to.
When I look up at Grandma and try my best fake, “This is a book about summer,” it feels like I’m crashing hard to the floor after a scary free fall.
She smiles her half smile and takes the book from my hands. “Na na na na na na na.” But I don’t know what she’s saying, so I start asking questions.
“You’ve read this book?” I ask. She shakes her head, so I try again.
“You want me to read the whole book and tell you what it’s about next time I come over? I can do that, Grandma.” But she shakes her head again and makes gestures with her hands and I just can’t figure it out. I can’t read Grandma right now either.
“Na na na na na na!”
“You want to see more of my math homework?”
“Na!” She smacks her palm on the hard cover of Wonder, and I can see tears forming at the corner of her eyes. She puts her head back in her chair and for a second I think maybe she’s frustrated and tired and she’ll fall asleep before Dad even gets here to pick me up.
Then she takes a deep breath and taps the cover soft with her finger with that same rhythm. One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and. Then she lifts her hand into the air and moves it like she did when we were listening to the piano music in the lobby, like she’s conducting. One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and.
And now I know what she’s saying. She’s saying slow down and try again, just like I was telling her when she was trying to cut her fish. I go to take the book from her lap so I can try again, slower this time, but she slaps her hand down on the book and holds on tight to the cover. “Na na na na na.” Then she leans back and closes her eyes again. She tap-tap-taps on the book cover and starts conducting again, one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and, and I’m thinking that she might be saying something else.
After a few beats, she turns to me and looks right into my eyes and right down deep to where my secret is, and she smiles her half smile that says It’s OK. She opens the book to the first page and sings the first sentence to me, her finger running across each word. “Na na na na na na na na na.” Then she stops and sways and closes her eyes and uses her left hand to conduct an imaginary orchestra in the air. Then she sings the second sentence. “Na na na na na na.” She stops and sways again before she taps the third sentence hard with her finger and says each word like a punch. “Na na na.”
I’m following along with all the words, and when my grandma stops to sway I know what she’s saying. Slow down. Rest. Wait. Think. Each sentence has its own rhythm.
I read each sentence with my grandma conducting, stopping and swaying when she does and thinking about each sentence before I go on. So when we get to August, she stops and points and looks right at me, her eyebrows up in a question.
“August is the character,” I say. “He likes ice cream and feels normal, but for some reason other people don’t think he is.” And when I tell her that, it doesn’t feel like falling down the firehouse pole, it feels like finding X.
“Na na na na!” she cheers. And I’m pretty sure she’s giving me a Heywood Hurrah.
Dad opens the door, and Grandma pretends she’s not happy to see him because when he comes that means it’s time for me to go.
Grandma hands me the book, and I zip it into my bag with my graph paper notebook. She pulls me into a big hug with her left hand. “Na na na,” she whispers in my ear, and at first I think she’s trying to remind me to listen to each sentence, to sing it before I rush on, but when I pull away and look at her and see the smile spreading out in little wrinkles from the corners of her eyes, I know she’s saying that the three brownies I ate after dinner will stay our little secret. And I know they will. Grandma’s good at holding secrets.
That night, I sit on my bed with Wonder open to the page that Grandma folded down like a dog ear, and that makes me think of Parker. Grandma and I didn’t get too far in the book, but it’s the first time I can actually remember what I read and I don’t have to start all over.
There are a lot of words on each page, but the chapters are short, so I feel like I can get to the next one if I just keep going like Grandma showed me. Sentence by sentence.
I hold my finger out just like she did and point to each word, and under my breath I say them all and stop at each period and sway like Grandma did, back and forth, finding the rhythm and thinking. Sometimes the sentences are long and I have to take a breath at the commas before I finish, and sometimes the sentences are short and easy to say and remember all in one breath.
The character, Auggie, is telling the story of how when he was born the doctor fainted because of the way his face looked, and even though I remember reading with Grandma that he had lots of surgeries, I don’t know exactly what is wrong with his face. Then he tells about a farting nurse in the delivery room and even though I’m wondering if there are any stories from my birth and who knows them, it makes me laugh so loud that Dad comes in.
“What’s so funny?”
I look up from the page. “This book Grandma got me.”
He smiles and taps the door frame with his big hand before he leaves. “Good.”
And because I’m OK at math I know that if I read Wonder at this rate it’ll take me thirty-nine days to finish. But even so, it feels like running through the trails with Parker. Free.