It was Friday afternoon when I took the Greyhound bus to New Orleans. My grandmother's neighbor, Mrs. Hawkins, agreed to drive me down on Wednesday to print out my flight and shipping tickets to Virginia from New Orleans. I stopped at her home early on Thursday morning to pick up the tickets and check her place for what I could take to New Orleans. She was in the kitchen pouring herself a cup of coffee, and I figured she'd rouse from her cloudy-eyed stupor long enough to get the part of the instructions she'd forgotten.
"Mrs. Hawkins, I know it's short notice, but I'm supposed to drive down by tomorrow around noon. I'll be back on Monday or Tuesday. I still don't have my grandmother's estate in order, but I can't just leave her here without knowing what's going on."
"Oh, Penny, is your mama going to be okay? You don't mind dropping everything, do you? I know she's sick, but just dropped dead overnight? A stroke, the scary neighbor woman said."
"I know what you mean 'dropped dead,' Mrs. Hawkins. I'm not going to worry about what my mother does anymore. She lied for years about my daddy. I'm sure it wasn't a stroke. I'm going to get my grandmother settled, and I'll be back within a week or two. I'm sure everything will be fine. She's just old, and I doubt she could survive very long without working at the diner."
"Oh, that's good. That other girl, I think she's your cousin, that goes to college, she'll have to come home, right? They always turn to you first. Your mama is never going to change," Mrs. Hawkins said about my mother, Beth.
"Mrs. Hawkins, my mom has already changed, and we'll all have to adjust. You'll get a nice check from my grandmother, and she has to live alone in that big house with no one to cook for her anymore. I'm going to stay with her until I feel she can be on her own."
"Oh, I'm sure you will. She's lucky you're here to help her. Your daddy would be cross. He didn't like the way your mom treated your grandmother. It wasn't right, you know," she said as she slurped her coffee.
"Mrs. Hawkins, do you have the newspapers? I thought they were in the basement. I'll finish up in the attic, and you can just go to the diner to watch the cook. I can get it all boarded up before the sheriff comes to collect the estate on Monday. Are you all set for tomorrow?" I asked.
"Well, that's a matter of opinion. There's more furniture in the house than there is in it. I'll have to get rid of some of it, what little I have of your grandmother's, and the sheriff's going to want it packed away Thursday."
"Mrs. Hawkins, don't worry about that. I don't want to see the last of this place. I want to take some of my mama's things, of course. I'll bring in the boxes and the rest will be here by the time I get back," I said as I went to the kitchen door.
I walked to the back, looking around the small white house, just a simple, neat, little white house, and it felt as if it should be my home, my coming home. It was quite a contrast to the last time I was here.
I jogged to the back door of the house now—and took off, knowing that Mrs. Hawkins wouldn't notice that I had left her alone. I ran up the back steps and toward the back door—which the Sheriff had left unlocked, just in case—and turned the doorknob. The door opened, and I called for Mrs. Hawkins to come in the house—all the while knowing that I had opened the door, not her.
She wasn't coming—she had no need. I was never going to live in that house as a young woman with my mama, and I sure as heck wasn't going to stay there with my grandmother while I finished high school. I wasn't going to come back here, because I had a future with my father.
My father was a month from graduating now, and he was already an assistant manager at the largest Chevrolet dealership in Lumberton.
I walked through the front door, stepping into the foyer, and I took one step on the old rug, from this same house, that I had first seen that day last month, when I walked to the door and saw her.
I never saw the door move, so I thought Mrs. Hawkins had come into the office to get me. She was there, leaning against the door jamb, holding the newspaper, looking at me. She was very different. She was dressed like a man, in a dark brown suit, with a belt that accented her tiny waist. She wore a wide leather belt that had a gold buckle. She was wearing a white shirt, with a man's collar, not a girl's shirt, and her hair was pulled back, like my mother's hair. When she smiled, she was more beautiful than anything I'd seen. It was like my mother, but not at all.
She was tall. She was standing with her hands on the window behind her, where her small frame was enough to block the view from outside. The sun was shining, and she was in shadow. I wanted to go to her, and that was the part of me that was more alive than my catatonic mother—the part that loved girls in dresses at first sight. I wanted to stand in the light, if only for a moment, to say something to her, something that meant something more than she'd ever meant to me. I wanted to love, and she was so close to it.
