Jaris Spain, where are your table manners!?” Grandma Jessie demanded. “You are acting like a wild barbarian! Look, everyone is staring at us. You see that nice couple over there? They can’t take their eyes off you. They’ve never seen a young man carrying on like this. You eat like the animals in the zoo. What’s the matter with you? Have you gone mad?”
“Sorry, Grandma,” Jaris apologized. “When I get hungry like this, I sorta lose it.” Jaris looked over at the couple. It was true, they were staring at him. Now they were laughing and talking, no doubt about him.
“Now, what is it we were talking about, Grandma?” he asked. “Oh yeah, those poor polar bears. I heard on TV a lot of them are gathering on the few ice floes that are left. Sometimes the floes tip over, and they gotta swim for their lives.”
“Jaris, I am trying to be serious,” Grandma persisted, with her best opossum face. “I am really concerned about your future. You should be seeing many girls. Yet here you are, locked into a relationship with a very troubled young woman from a dysfunctional family. I am just terrified that this will end up ruining your life.”
Jaris knew he could not justify his feelings for Sereeta to Grandma. If she had ever really been in love herself, it had been long, long ago. She probably had forgotten what it felt like. But Jaris had heard rumors, especially from Pop, that Jessie Clymer was married to a poor wimp of a man who was henpecked to his dying day. He had always disappointed Grandma, and even as he lay dying, she was scolding him for the sloppy way he handled the checkbook. Once, Pop made a mean joke that the poor guy died on purpose just to get away from her.
Rude and terrible comebacks circulated in Jaris’s mind like dark, ragged crows. He could tell her, “Mind your own business, you meddling old woman.” Or what about, “How dare you stick your needle nose in my business.” Or even, “You look just like one of Shadrach’s opossums when you squint like that, Grandma.” But Jaris knew he would not—could not—say anything like that to his grandmother. It would hurt Mom deeply, and that he would never do. Even beyond that, Grandma Jessie was his grandmother, and as much as he resented her, he owed her respect.
So Jaris swallowed his anger and cast his eyes on Grandma’s almost untouched crepes. “Grandma,” he asked, “are you going to eat those, ’cause I’m still a little hungry and—”
“Jaris,” the woman scolded, “you already stuffed yourself with a big stack of pancakes. Do you want to be sick?”
In that moment, Jaris remembered an opossum at Shadrach’s shelter. It had opened its little pink mouth and growled at Jaris as he was trying to pick it up. It’s little beady eyes focused on him with scorn. Grandma looked exactly like that opossum, and Jaris almost laughed. But instead he said, “You’re right, Grandma. If I don’t quit eating now, I won’t be hungry for lunch.”
“Oh!” Grandma snorted. She paid for the breakfasts, and they headed out the door. As they walked to the little red convertible, Grandma glanced at Jaris’s watch. A lot of the kids at Tubman didn’t wear wristwatches, but Jaris wore this one because it was special to him. “Are you still wearing that old watch?” Grandma asked. “It looks tacky. I thought you’d gotten rid of it years ago.”
“It has sentimental value, Grandma,” Jaris explained. “Pop gave it to me when I was ten years old. I plan to wear it forever. When they stick me in my casket, I’ll probably still be wearing it.”
They got into the convertible and headed for the bay. Grandma wanted to take the Harbor Cruise. She hadn’t done that in a long time. She wanted to share the experience with Jaris, who was bored stiff by the idea. He’d already taken the cruise with his class four times. He went in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades and then again with a science class at Harriet Tubman High School.
Soon they were sitting on comfortable chairs on the deck of the cruise ship.
“It’s not that Sereeta isn’t a lovely girl,” Grandma started up again.
“She is that, she’s a babe. Hotter than a firecracker,” Jaris agreed with relish.
“Jaris, beauty isn’t everything,” Grandma snorted.
“She’s nice too. Good-hearted. Smart,” Jaris added.
“Jaris, dear, please try to understand I’m talking to you out of love,” his grandmother told him. “This girl is damaged.” She was using the very same words Mom used on the phone to her. That burned Jaris up all over again. “Jaris, Sereeta has so many problems, if you remain with her, they will become your problems. You could be heading for a train wreck.” Mom’s words again: “train wreck.”
Jaris looked at his grandmother and decided to be straightforward. “Grandma, you don’t have to give me anything for my birthday except this one favor that I’m about to ask. Stop dissing my girlfriend, okay? I’m trying to respect you, Grandma, so please try to respect me a little bit. Whatever is gonna happen in the future with Sereeta and me, we’ll work it out. Okay?”
An awkward silence followed. Grandma Jessie stared out over the water, where sailboats bobbed. Young men were windsurfing, doing amazing things on their boards, hurling themselves into waves, and coming out still erect. Finally Jaris offered, “I apologize if I hurt your feelings, Grandma.”
“My feelings aren’t the point, Jaris,” Grandma insisted. “Your future is the point.” She looked angry and dejected. She had been married to a man with a college degree and a teaching credential, but he failed at that. He went to work in a factory. He earned good money, but Jessie never had the money or social standing she longed for. Then they had a beautiful, smart daughter—Monica Clymer. Jessie was overjoyed when Monica began dating a brilliant young law student with a dazzling future. But then Monica married a garage mechanic, Lorenzo Spain. Not any of Grandma’s arguing and pleading had changed the course of her daughter’s life. Now Grandma feared her handsome, smart grandson was choosing a disastrous future with an emotionally sick, fragile girl. She felt she had somehow to succeed where she had failed before. But the stubborn, hostile look on the boy’s face ended the conversation for now.
As they rode home after dining at a bayside restaurant, Grandma Jessie commented, “I suppose you like rock music like all the young people do, Jaris. Even your mother did when she was a teenager.”
“Yeah, I do, Grandma,” Jaris responded. “But I like other kinds of music too—jazz, reggae, some country, even the old stuff, the blues and ballads from the old days. What kind of music do you like, Grandma?”
“I suppose music from when I was young,” Grandma answered, a little wistfully. “People you never heard of, Jaris. They were my favorites. Billy Eckstine, Vaughn Monroe, and Nat King Cole. Oh, he was my favorite. How I loved that velvety voice he had.” Grandma seemed to be recalling memories of her teen years, softening her voice and making her almost pretty.
“Oh yeah, I like him too,” Jaris told her. “I got some of his albums, Grandma. I mean, they’re actually CD conversions from the old records. I love him singing ‘Mona Lisa.’ That was my favorite of his songs. I downloaded a bunch of his music last year.”
Grandma Jessie turned her head sharply. “You like Nat King Cole? He died before you were even born, dear.”
“Grandma, one of my favorite historical figures is Harriet Tubman,” Jaris countered. “What a great lady and the namesake for our school. She died before you were born, Grandma, and before your mother was born. I would have loved to see Nat King Cole perform in concert, but I’ve got his beautiful music. And we got Harriet Tubman’s magnificent life to imitate.”
“My goodness,” Grandma murmured. She turned down the street where the Spains lived. She parked in the driveway and handed Jaris an envelope. “I love you very much, Jaris. And I want nothing more than your happiness. Happy birthday,” she said crisply.
Jaris took the envelope and manned up. “Grandma, you shouldn’t be giving me this. I wasn’t too nice today.”
Grandma Jessie put her fingers to Jaris’s lips. “You’re a boy. You’re just a boy,” she told him. “I understand, and I still love you. I will always love you.”
Jaris leaned over and kissed Grandma’s cheek. “I love you too, Grandma,” he replied. He usually winced when he kissed her, but now he really felt like giving her a kiss. It felt right and good.
When Jaris went into the house, Mom, Pop, and Chelsea were waiting to hear what happened.
“Was it awful?” Chelsea demanded. “Did she make you eat those skinny pancakes?”
“No, chili pepper,” Jaris answered. “We went to the Pancake Towers and had these huge pancakes. I did anyway. Grandma didn’t eat much.”
“Did she tell you what a great pop you have, like she usually does?” Pop asked, a grimace on his face.
“No,” Jaris replied, “we didn’t get into that at all.”
Mom looked hard at Jaris. “You weren’t mean to her, were you? You didn’t upset your grandmother, did you?” she asked.
“Well,” Jaris started, stalling for more time to answer. “You got two questions going there, Mom. I sorta told her to stop dissing Sereeta. She was into that a lot. I apologized for it, though. And Grandma got upset about how I was gobbling down the pancakes. The syrup sorta ran down my chin. But then things got better. I mean, toward the end, it was the best day I ever spent with Grandma. You know who brought us together? Nat King Cole. Turns out we both like him. He’s been up there singing with the angels for a good long time, but today he brought peace and tranquility to a punk kid and his grandmother.”
As Jaris walked down the hallway to his room, he was thankful he didn’t have to work at the Chicken Shack tonight. He was glad to have some time to catch up on schoolwork, maybe listen to some music, and crash with a TV show. He sure hoped he wouldn’t be getting any emergency phone calls in the middle of the night.
In his room, he fired up his computer. But, as it booted up, his thoughts ranged back over all that had happened in the past week or so. He’d had a rough day with Grandma, and in the end it turned out all right. Nevertheless, he wouldn’t have to do that again until next year, until his next birthday. Maybe Grandma would change by then. Jaris smirked. “Nah!” he thought.
Chelsea had turned fifteen, and even her birthday was a fire drill. All that anxiety over birthday gifts! “Chili pepper,” he said to himself, “you’re a piece of work.”
His job was no fun either. He’d hated what he had to do to make himself clear to Amberlynn. That was a tough conversation, but he had to do it. At least that was behind him.
And the biggest news of the week: even a jerk can do something brave and good. Marko had disarmed Mr. Becker and maybe saved the lives of Sereeta and everyone else in the room. He’d always owe Marko one for what he did that night.
Most of all, though, Sereeta was alive and still his girl. A cold hand clutched his heart when he thought again about what might have happened to her. Jaris shook his head, trying to shrug off that feeling.
Sereeta was right. Having her as a girlfriend was no walk in the park. In fact, his whole week was no walk in the park.