When I get to Grandma’s building, there’s a tall man with a mustache sitting at the piano in the lobby, and even though my heart is still racing fast away from the fire, as soon as I hear the music, my feet slow and I walk on the beat of the notes to where Grandma is sitting with her eyes closed.
I sit down at her left side, and she doesn’t have to open her eyes to know it’s me. She pats my knee with her good hand and says, “Na na na.” And I know what she’s saying, because I know my grandma. She’s telling me to close my eyes too. Firehouse emergency days are hard for both of us. And I think Grandma’s hand needs my knee as much as my knee needs her hand.
“Na na?” she asks.
“A fire,” I say, and her hand squeezes my knee a little harder because we both always wish it were just a cat up a tree.
“Na na na,” she tells me again.
I don’t really want to close my eyes because we’re not the only ones sitting here listening and I’m pretty sure I’ll look funny doing it, but I close them anyway because Grandma looks relaxed and the music sounds good and I’m wondering if maybe the older you get the less you care if others think you look funny or not.
I’m glad I close my eyes with Grandma because it helps me hear only the notes of the piano. My brain is trying to pull me back to the pops and cracks of the fire. And wondering if my dad has run back through that door yet, and if he found the source of the fire, and if he could act fast before it spread to the humane society. And where they brought Parker. And if they took my T-shirt from his kennel before they ran out.
The piano music gets higher and lower, and I focus my brain on imagining the man’s hands flying up the keys and back down. It makes me think of Mr. Fletcher dropping the trombone slide and pulling it back up. And I know there are lots of people sitting around and listening and closing their eyes and swaying to the music, but it feels like the notes are talking right to me and they’re saying Shhhh, it’s OK.
Then the notes and chords start to sound familiar, and the man at the piano is turning this song into another one, one I know. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Grandma takes her hand from my knee, and I open my eyes to see her pat the spot right over her heart. Then she sings. “Na naaaa na na na na naa.” Her voice rises and dips and I whisper to her, “Dad used to sing this song to me.”
She opens her eyes and nudges me with her elbow and smiles. Then she points to herself and says, “Na na na na na na!” And I know what she’s saying. She’s telling me that this is her song and who do I think sang it to my dad before he sang it to me? I smile and she closes her eyes again. She sings along with the pianist and I can feel the music from my ears all the way down through my heart and out my tapping feet.
I try to picture Grandma sitting on the edge of my dad’s bed just like he used to sit on mine when I couldn’t sleep, singing about troubles melting like lemon drops. But all I can picture is my dad in his uniform, number eighty-eight, fielding passes with sticky-palmed gloves that never fumble and running straight on toward the end zone. Or in his suspenders and big boots and firefighter’s jacket running headfirst into the fire. I close my eyes again and listen to the music, and little by little I can. I can imagine him tucked in tight, his heart beat calming with each note, Grandma squeezing his hand in hers, giving him strength. And I wonder if maybe people who are brave like that, brave like barrel-into-a-defensive-back brave, are also scared sometimes too.
When the song ends, Milly comes to help my grandma back to her room. “Anita,” she says, and I can tell she’s being playful because she throws out a hip and cocks her head to the side. “Where is your cane?”
Grandma says, “Na na na,” and waves her off. And I know she’s saying Oh, you forget that right now. I don’t need any cane.
When she first had her stroke, the doctor said she’d never walk on her own again. She looked right at him, raised her left hand from beneath her hospital sheet, pointed her finger at the Dr. Cole stitched on his coat, and said one clear, loud “Na.” Now every day she gets up on her own two feet to show how wrong he was.
The doctor also said she’d never be able to talk again. That part turned out to be true. But I think my grandma found out there’s more than one way to say what you mean.
Milly walks half a step behind us just in case, all the way to Grandma’s apartment door, and helps her into her chair. Then she winks at me and says, “I’ll go see what I can find for you in the kitchen.”
Grandma runs her fingers over the remote, but she doesn’t turn on the TV, because we don’t watch TV on firehouse emergency nights anymore, even if the Vikings are playing or the Twins are in the playoffs. On our first fire emergency sleepover, we turned on the TV to find the Twins game. But now we know we can’t flick through all the breaking local news, the lights flashing, and reporters gathering. We just sit and wait, and try to keep our brains on something else, until we hear from Dad.
I run my finger along Grandma’s records and stop on Marvin Gaye, What’s Going On. Grandma puts her hand over her heart and closes her eyes and I drop the needle in the groove and Marvin Gaye starts singing about how there’s too many of us crying and the song sings right into my heart because it makes tears burn behind my eyes and I don’t even care when one leaks down my cheek.
I think the music is singing right to Grandma’s heart too, because she sighs deep and changes the subject.
“Na na na na na!” she says and pulls her arm back like she’s throwing a football long, but football is the last thing I want to talk about.
For one second, I think maybe I’ll fake like I can’t figure out what she’s talking about, but that feels worse than the truth, and Grandma always has a way of pulling out what’s way down deep in me anyway. So I inhale and let the breath raise up my shoulders. Then I tell her.
“I quit football, Grandma.”
“Na!” she says. Just one clear na! as definite as the na! she told Dr. Cole in the hospital when he said she’d never walk again. But the way she’s looking at me, with the left side of her face curling up, trying at a smile, makes me think that she isn’t saying No!—I think she might be saying Good! or Finally!
“I’m just not brave like that.”
She raises an eyebrow and curls her hand at me like Tell me more. So I do. I tell her about Marcus and Shane and how they’re really good—good like Dad was good. And how they like going to practice and running routes and sending balls long and slamming into big defenders and coming out of a pig pile with the ball. And how they spit through their face masks and laugh at a boy named Eduardo because he’s different.
This makes the creases in Grandma’s forehead cut deeper.
“Na.” And this time I’m sure that she’s saying No.
And I don’t know why exactly, but I start telling Grandma more about Eduardo. “He’s new and he’s small and he wears Velcro shoes and he’s doing his first English project on a picture book.”
“Na na?” she says and puts her left fist on her hip.
So what? she asked, except it sounded more like a statement than a question. And I’m thinking, So what? is right. So what? is exactly right.
I shrug my shoulders.
She starts using her left hand to gesture again. “Na na na na na na na na na na na.” She’s jumping from one thing to the next and I’m trying to follow. “Na na na! Na na?” I know she’s upset about Marcus and Shane being mean, but I don’t know exactly what she’s saying or how to respond. I sort of feel like I should say I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I couldn’t look Marcus and Shane and everyone else who just followed along right in the eye and say, So what?
Then Grandma’s gesturing again, a football behind her head, then holding her palm up to the ceiling like she’s saying Why? or How?
“It was OK when it was two-hand touch in Mighty-Mites. After that I only really played because Dad did, and because Marcus and Shane did. Quitting wasn’t so hard,” I tell her. “Especially because of Parker.”
Saying his name makes my heart jump because it makes me think of the fire again and I hope he’s OK and not scared and that they took him somewhere warm. And it makes me think of Dad and whether he’s found the source yet and snuffed it out.
I tell Grandma about Parker, how he was all alone and skinny and shivering when he showed up at the firehouse and Dad said no. I tell her all about the humane society and The 7 and how Parker’s more important to me than football or Marcus or Shane.
Grandma sits back in her chair. She’s thinking about everything I just told her, and all that quiet makes me think about it too. And mostly I’m thinking that I hope I didn’t make Dad disappointed. Disappointed that I snuck behind his back. That I’m not a wide receiver.
It just stays like that, quiet, for thinking, until Milly comes in with two chocolate cupcakes on a paper plate. “Found a little something for you,” she says and puts them down on the coffee table.
I love dessert-before-dinner days. It’s kind of my grandma’s and my thing, and we never tell my dad, which is also going behind his back but doesn’t feel as bad because it’s only cake. Before Grandma’s stroke, she used to slide a plate of homemade cookies across the table at five o’clock and say, “Live a little.” Then, with a full, laughing mouth, she’d say, “Our secret.”
“These were baked this morning,” Milly tells us. “I might have tasted the frosting while they were decorating, just to make sure they were good enough for our residents. It’s a hard job, but somebody has to do it.” She sighs big and shrugs.
That makes me laugh, and the laugh makes my shoulders sink down like I just dropped the weight of too-big pads from my frame. “Thanks,” I say.
She smiles. “De nada.”
I’ve heard Milly say de nada and gracias and call my grandma Anita Bonita a hundred times, but it isn’t until right this second that I realize those are Spanish words, and that makes me feel really slow, but I don’t really hear a lot of other languages and at Joseph Lee Heywood Middle School you don’t pick between Spanish or French class until seventh grade.
“Milly,” I say. She stops at the door. “Do you speak Spanish?”
“Sí, claro,” she responds. I can tell that means yes. I’m not that slow. And I tell her that my friend at school does too and that next year when we get to choose, I’m going to pick Spanish. “My name is Milagros,” she tells me. “It means miracle.” Then she winks and closes the door.
Miracle is exactly right, I’m thinking. I can’t imagine this place without Milly.
Grandma grips the arm of her chair and tries to scoot to the edge, but I can see it’s hard for her to get momentum, so I hold behind her elbow like I’ve seen Dad do and help her move forward. I don’t make a big deal about it because Grandma doesn’t like anyone fussing over her.
I sit back down on the couch, and she leans forward and pushes the plate of cupcakes toward me. “Na na na,” she says. It’s our little secret.
We both take bites and laugh and wish that we could take our minds more off Dad and the fire. It’s dark outside now and Marvin Gaye is singing about oh, mercy mercy me and Grandma gestures to my book bag. She might spoil me with dessert before dinner, but she also always makes sure I do all my homework. “You’ll thank me someday,” she used to say. And when I’d finish, she’d read to me way past my bedtime.
I do my math problems while Grandma peeks over at my graph paper notebook. I quickly cross out numbers and subtract things from each side of the equation, then divide and find X. It’s six. That was an easy one, but Grandma still says, “Na na!” and puts her arm out like she has no idea how I did that so fast.
“You just have to get X by itself,” I tell her.
Milly comes back in with a menu for dinner. I look down at it and only read the main course written in big letters for all the old people to read. I already know that if I start trying to read about all the sides and sauces, I won’t remember what the choices are and end up pointing to something called meat loaf, and I know I don’t want that again.
Grandma points to the first choice. Haddock. I look up at her and she says, “Na,” and tries to make a fish face and turn her left hand into a flapping fin. Milly and I laugh, and I point to the second one, ravioli.
“One haddock and one ravioli coming right up,” Milly says, and leaves again for the kitchen.
I tell Grandma I don’t have any other homework even though I do. What I didn’t realize would be so hard about middle school is that we change classrooms and teachers for every subject and it doesn’t seem like it all goes together. The hardest part is that each class has reading. A lot of reading. So the rest of my homework is printed copies of textbook pages, and I don’t think I can relax my brain enough to slow down and find the rhythm and think between each sentence like Grandma taught me. Not with Dad fighting a fire and Parker being herded down the street and away.
She raises her eyebrows like she doesn’t believe that’s all the homework I have, and I want to tell her that it’s Friday, so I don’t have to do it all right now anyway. Then she folds her hand into the shape of a book and pretends to read her palm. “Na na na?”
I don’t want to tell her that I’ve only read eight more pages of Wonder and that for most of the pages I didn’t slow down and find the rhythm and think after each sentence, so I don’t know exactly what Auggie is doing right now, which makes it even harder to open the book back up.
“I left it at school,” I tell her, and before the fake feels too bad in my gut, Milly comes in with dinner. She folds out a tray for Grandma and helps her scoot to the edge of her chair.
“Na na na na na!” she says and points to her fish. It’s already cut into bite-sized pieces and Grandma is saying No, Milly. You don’t have to do that. But Milly just smiles and hustles out, and I’m thinking that was a good move because you can’t just straight up help Grandma. You have to go at it sneaky like that.
After we eat, I take the cushions off the couch and pull out the bed. Neither one of says anything, but I know we’re both trying to remember that fighting fires takes time and no news is good news and right now, other families need him.
Milly comes back to help Grandma in the bathroom and into her nightclothes. They close the door to her bedroom, but I can hear “Na na na,” and I think she’s saying a combination between I can really do this on my own and Thank you, because ever since her stroke my grandma’s been taking naps during the day and getting tired earlier at night.
I lie down on the bed with my head propped up because I’m not ready for sleep yet. The door opens and Grandma points to the edge of my bed, so Milly helps her over. The bed sinks when she sits down and Milly says, “Buenas noches,” and winks and closes the door.
Grandma smiles at me and sticks her left hand down into my book bag and pulls out Wonder. She looks at me like Oh, here it is! and opens it to the page I have dog-eared. She taps her shoulder, and I sit up next to her and put my head right there and help her hold the book open. Then she reads to me—“Na na na na na na”—and I follow the words along the page as she stops and sways after each sentence. I stop and think and sway too and follow Auggie through his first day of school.
I must fall asleep like that and Grandma must have pressed her pendant button for Milly to come help her to bed or maybe she clicked off the lamp and made her slow way herself, because when I wake up next it’s Dad’s suspender strap I feel on my cheek. At first I think it’s a dream and I’m that tiny baby being rocked and rocked in the hospital, but it’s really him. He’s here and he’s safe and he’s lying down next to me and even though he’s not wearing his uniform jacket anymore he still smells a little like smoke. But I don’t care. I breathe through my mouth and keep my head right on his suspender strap anyway.
I want to ask him about Parker and if the fire spread and does he know where they took the dogs? But I don’t want to remind him about sneaking behind his back and I don’t want him to know that I followed the truck to the fire, then chickened out and ran away. So I just keep on pretending to sleep and try not to think about all the mess I’m in. How I walked off the field, away from Coach Matthews and toward Parker, and that I told my dad the whole thing.
Now I’m not sure what it’ll be like at Defeat of Jesse James Days tomorrow. Whether I’ll apologize to Coach Matthews and sit on the bench with my zero-zero or whether I’ll watch from the top of the fire truck with the crew like I usually do. Or whether I’ll be grounded and stuck in my room like I deserve.
I count my breaths in and out, one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and-one-and-two-and-three-and-four, and before I fall back asleep I feel Dad’s breath warm near my ear.
“Parker is fine.”
I don’t want to give up that I’m fake sleeping, but I’m so excited that he’s OK and that Dad used his name, Parker. I keep my eyes closed and wait a beat and then whisper back.
“Thanks.”