AUGUST 1995
NEW ORLEANS EAST
Gaby and I had decided to try to make money over the summer by doing odd jobs for our families and neighbors, but we didn’t know how to do much, and no one seemed to need any help. Finally, Gaby’s grandmother hired us for an afternoon out of pity. It was August and though we had just started washing the windows, we were sweating already. I had lost a coin toss and was working on the outside of the big glass sliding door while Gaby did the inside. She aimed a big spray of Windex at my face and said something that I couldn’t hear. I flinched even as the drops splattered harmlessly on the other side of the glass and she laughed, dragging paper towels through the spray while bobbing her head to whatever music was playing in there. I retaliated with my own spray but she just wagged her finger at me, now singing along to something I still couldn’t hear.
The sun was blazing. Luckily, I was in a small triangle of shade from the overhang of the roof. All around me the treeless stretch of her grandmother’s backyard just baked. Grass and concrete and a low hedge, my impression of New Orleans East was one of flatness—it didn’t have the bumps and oaks and twisty greenery of the rest of the city. Everything out here looked very new and orderly. Her grandmother’s subdivision was all one-story houses, wide and flat, driveways and paved paths, the white-hot heat having nowhere to go but into the ground. Her grandfather’s Cadillac, old but still impressively huge, sizzled near me in their driveway, the rusty gold color adding to the feeling of me and everything else roasting like food in an oven.
I finished my side and banged on the glass and when Gaby let me in, the air-conditioning sent chills down my spine. I hadn’t been to her grandmother’s before and the house had the unfamiliar smell of the many different little air fresheners that were plugged into every room. Her grandfather sat in a recliner watching TV, a glass of iced tea on a little table next to him with a doily on it. The muted dings and mumbles of Jeopardy filled the living room where everything around him matched, shades of mauve and tan echoed in the drapes and cushions and rugs. It made me not want to sit on anything for fear of messing it up. The women of the family, Gaby’s grandmother, her mom, an aunt and a cousin I had never met before, circled around her grandfather. They mostly ignored him, having their own conversations, a buzzing life that only paused every so often to ask if he needed anything, which he shook off with a wave of his hand.
“You look a little hot, you want me to turn the hose on you?” Gaby asked me with malicious innocence.
“No thank you.”
“Come on, just a little spritz, to freshen you up?” She acted like she was going to get me with her spray bottle.
“Next time, you’re taking the outside,” I said, wiping off my forehead with the bottom of my T-shirt.
“Oh no, that kind of weather is only for the stupid or the sinful.” She shook her head and whacked me with a damp rag she was holding, and I squeaked.
“Gabrielle, I know you two aren’t talking about getting my living room wet?” a voice called from the kitchen and we both mumbled a quick “no ma’am.”
“Come in here, I have another job for you.”
Gaby picked up our buckets and rags and ambled toward the kitchen with a slowness I was sure was going to get us scolded, but it gave me time to look at all the framed pictures lining the hall. Lots of teenagers in shiny graduation gowns, blue, green scarlet and lots of the proud, toothless smiles of school portraits. I was quietly impressed that her grandmother had ordered the big eight-by-tens. There was Gaby in the big puffy braids she had worn in kindergarten before I knew her, brightly colored pairs of balls knotted around each end, that self-conscious awareness of the momentousness of the event of getting a picture taken and that smile, so serious even then. I could just see her, determined to be worthy of the occasion—it was so like her. Then another picture of Gaby on a balance beam, arms upraised fiercely in a rainbow-striped leotard. “I didn’t know you did gymnastics?”
“What? Oh yeah, Lakeside Little Hearts. I did that for years until I hurt one of my ankles.”
We had always been so dismissive of after-school activities and athletics of any kind that I felt a little betrayed. “You never told me that.”
She turned to look at me. “One, I don’t tell you everything, Ms. Nosy, and two, there’s nothing to tell, I had to quit.”
“It’s still interesting. Were you good?”
She turned away. “I was awesome at it, but there’s no gold stars for trying and I had to stop, so what’s the point in talking about it?”
“I don’t know, it’s kind of cool. If I had been really good at something, I would talk about it all the time.”
“Yes, you would,” she agreed, and I gave her a poke in the back but stopped because we were now in view of her grandmother.
The table next to her was piled with loaves of white bread and deli bags. Her grandmother smoothed down her cardigan. I couldn’t imagine how she could wear one in this heat, but it matched the shirt she was wearing underneath. She was all one shade of light teal. Her hair was set in a pile of gray curls and she wore a little gold pendant necklace that matched the small hoops in her ears. I had never really known anyone so carefully put together and she made me a little nervous. My Keds were filthy and I was pretty sure I hadn’t brushed my hair that morning. “Girls, I’d love it if you could help make these sandwiches for my church. We are feeding the needy this weekend.”
Gaby was reading the label on one of the deli bags. “I see you got the cheap ham for the needy,” she said, and I was shocked, but her grandmother just gave her a look.
“If you want to get paid, Gabrielle, I suggest you start learning how to talk to those that will be signing your checks. There’s a plastic bag for each sandwich. Easy on the mayonnaise.”
She pronounced mayonnaise in three long syllables and as I sat, I noticed all the brands in her kitchen were ones I had never seen before. Nescafé and no-salt seasoning and a little pile of toothpicks in a crystal bowl.
“She’s not going to give us a check, is she?” I asked, when she had left. I didn’t have a bank account.
Gaby shook her head at my stupidity. “That’s just how she talks.”
“Your grandmother is so elegant,” I said admiringly as we started prying thin pink slices of meat from the wet stack and folding them across pillowy white slices of bread.
“Yeah, she’s always been like that.” Gaby was making faces at the mayonnaise as she spread it, wiping the knife on each piece of bread like she was trying to clean off something disgusting. “My grandpa had his own contracting business. He did pretty well, some city contracts and stuff. Not to hear them talk about it though. ‘Gabrielle, how are those grades, you know this school is expensive, you got to try twice as hard if you want to be a doctor,’” she said, imitating her grandmother’s careful enunciation. “Girl, you know I don’t want to be a doctor. Can you imagine me cutting up bodies?”
“Gross.”
“It’s always one thing or another, uplift yourself, uplift your community. We’re lucky she’s paying us, usually she has me doing this kind of stuff for free.”
“Still, it’s nice that they’re here. I don’t even know my grandparents.”
She thought about this. “Well, then that’s one less set of people breathing over your shoulder every week, asking about this test or that quiz, already asking me about college applications. I’m in eighth grade, for God’s sake.” Then she stopped herself. “I actually can’t imagine what it would be like not to have family around. That’s strange that y’all can live like that.”
“It’s not me, it’s my mom.” I felt a little defensive.
She looked unconvinced and starting humming, then singing “Waterfalls” by TLC. A moment later her mom and aunt came in, looking for something in the fridge. “Ooh, Gaby, you are murdering that song,” her mom said affectionately. “You want some potato salad?”
“Oh no,” her aunt replied, waving a hand. “I’m on Weight Watchers. Let me show you how it’s done, Gaby.” Her aunt reached across the table for a lone apple sitting in a wooden bowl and started to sing where Gaby left off. Her mom joined in from behind the open door of the refrigerator while Gaby yelled at them both to shut up, that she could carry a tune just fine.
They ignored her, clearly having fun together while Gaby put her hands over her ears. “Like a pair of dying cats, I swear. This family.”
I kept assembling sandwiches, slicing through the yielding bread over and over while they all laughed and teased each other, singing and pulling more food from the refrigerator. I felt very left out and very small. I couldn’t help but wonder if Gaby really needed me at all. I wanted to be a part of it all so badly, so I started singing along too. I didn’t actually know the words, but I made kind of approximate sounds and I hoped that her mom and aunt were singing loud enough that no one would notice, but they gave me a funny look.
“Some people should learn the words before they start singing,” her aunt said to her mom, taking a bite out of her apple and shaking her head a little. I saw them exchange a knowing look. “See how young they start?” I heard her mutter as they left the kitchen, as Gaby’s mom shushed her.
Gaby was laughing at me as she pushed aside a stack of plastic-wrapped sandwiches. “You’re so stupid sometimes,” she said lovingly.