Day Eight
“Child, if you don’t slow down, your body gon’ make the decision for you, and I promise you ain’t gonna like the way it does it.”
Lulu stood on the other side of the kitchen island with one hand planted against her hip and the other wrapped around the handle of a small yellow saucepan as steam curled up around her face as she poured more broth over the bowl sitting in front of me, never mind the fact that I had already told her twice I had enough.
The smell of lime, peppers, potatoes, and tender pieces of chicken filled the kitchen, warming the back of my throat before I even lifted another spoonful. Lulu’s chicken souse had always been my weakness. It was hot enough to clear my nose, sour enough to make my lips pucker, and seasoned in the way only an older Bahamian woman who measured everything with her spirit could manage, and I loved every bit of it. She claimed shehad never written the recipe down because people who needed instructions didn’t deserve to make it.
I blew across the spoon and looked up at her. “I am slowing down.”
“You’re sitting still while you eat don’t count Nay.”
She placed the saucepan back on the stove, then turned to face me fully. Her house dress brushed against her ankles as she moved, with bright orange flowers scattered across soft blue fabric. A scarf covered most of her silver hair, although a few little frizzy curls had escaped near her temples. At seventy-six, Lulu still moved like she had somewhere important to be, even when the only thing waiting on her was the daytime court show playing in the living room.
She pulled out the stool beside me and lowered herself onto it with a quiet grunt. “You work at that hospital all night, then you got them fake food orders coming through all day. When you sleeping?”
“They’re not fake orders.” I laughed. They’re cakes Lulu.”
“They’re orders nobody placed until you made up a reason for them to place them.”
I stopped with the spoon near my mouth. “That is literally how a business works.”
“Mhm.” She reached into the bowl of sliced limes and squeezed some more into my souse without asking. “Back in my day, if somebody wanted a cake, they called you and said, ‘Lulu, bake me a cake.’ They didn’t need no flash sale, coupon code, countdown clock, or thirty-seven pictures of the same damn cupcake.”
“Oh Lord, it’s called marketing.”
“It’s called begging with graphics.”
I nearly choked on the broth. Lulu sat there with a straight face, picking a piece of lint from the front of her dress while I coughed into my fist. She had always been funny without trying.Half the time, I could not tell whether she meant to make people laugh or genuinely believed the things coming out of her mouth were ordinary conversation.
“I’m not begging,” I said once I could breathe again. “The orders are real and people are buying.”
“And you baking all of it?”
I nodded my head. “Yes ma’am.”
“On top of working?”
“Yes.”
She frowned. “And you don’t see nothing wrong with that?”
I shrugged. “I need the money.”
Her expression changed, as the humor faded just enough for concern to show now. “You always need money; everybody always need money. That don’t mean you run yourself into the ground trying to catch every dollar that rolls past.”
Guilt started to consume me because she didn’t know the half of it. She knew about the hospital and the baking orders I had suddenly started accepting in bulk. She knew I was going through a divorce and trying to get my life back together. She didn’t know that some nights, instead of sleeping, I traded my scrubs for crystals and heels and danced at a club owned by the same man I owed thousands of dollars. That part would have sent her pressure through the damn roof.
“I’m fine, Grandma.”
“That’s what everybody says right before they fall out in the middle of Publix.”
“I’m not about to fall out.”
“You don’t know what you about to do. That’s the whole purpose of falling out. It’s a surprise.”
I laughed and reached for another piece of potato, grateful for the way she was always concerned about me. Lulu watched me eat for a moment, then leaned back on the stool and foldedher arms beneath her chest. “That damn Rome called again this morning.”
The spoon paused halfway to my lips.Of course he had.“What did he want?”
