Page 31 of Worth the Trip

“Wash your hands, and stop asking questions you already got answers to, chile.”

The bathroom hand soap still smelled like lemons, and a fresh towel had been folded beside the sink because Nana believed guests deserved linens nobody else had touched, even when the guest had spent half her childhood in the house. When I returned, she stood near the back door with an empty bowl tucked against her hip.

“Come on. I need two more tomatoes.”

“I thought I wasn’t allowed to help.”

“I said I didn’t need you rearranging my kitchen. You can still pick produce.”

The garden stretched behind the house in tidy, imperfect rows bordered by pieces of sun-bleached wood Granddaddy had salvaged from an old shrimp boat. His tomato cages still leaned in the soil, bent from fencing wire and too stubborn to collapse after all these years. Heavy red tomatoes bowed vines toward the earth while bell peppers hid beneath broad leaves, okra rose in narrow green fingers, and basil spilled from cracked clay pots along the porch steps. Cucumber vines climbed a wooden trellis beside a fig tree wide enough to shade one corner of the yard.

Nana never planted because she feared going without; she planted because she trusted food more after watching it become itself.

“Get that big one near the bottom, and don’t squeeze it like you picking peaches.”

“I know how to pick a tomato.”

“You also knew how to keep yourself fed, according to you, and we see how that turned out.”

I crouched beside the vine and reached through the leaves. The pendant at my throat slid forward as I bent, and my thumb found its edge before I realized what I was doing. I rubbed the smooth silver between my fingers while searching for the tomato’s stem.

Nana watched from beside the basil. “What you worrying about?”

“I’m picking a tomato.”

“You can pick a tomato and worry at the same time. Matter of fact, you seem gifted at doing most things while worrying.”

“I wasn’t thinking about anything.”

“That don’t mean your body wasn’t.”

I released the pendant and twisted the tomato free. “I didn’t realize I was doing it.”

“You never do. Your mama cleaned when she got bothered. Nyla starts talking faster. You reach for that necklace like it might whisper the answer.”

“Does everybody in this family have a nervous habit?”

“Everybody in every family got something. Most folks just too busy studying other people to learn their own.”

She clipped several sprigs of basil into the bowl and headed toward the house. Nana never chased the truth after speaking it or stood around making sure I understood every layer. She put it somewhere within reach and trusted me to decide what to do with it.

By the time we sat down, the tea glasses had already started sweating. Nana bowed her head and thanked God for traveling grace, family, good food, and “enough sense to sit still when the Lord finally made a way.” She squeezed my fingers once before letting go, then added another hush puppy to my plate as though God had personally included it in the instructions.

The catfish crust broke beneath my fork with a soft crackle, revealing white meat tender enough to separate into clean flakes. The crab pasta was bright with lemon, celery, green onion, and enough lump crab to remind me Nana had never believed in stretching seafood until it became rumor. Tomatoes from the garden still held a trace of the sun, while the cucumbers carried the sharp sweetness of vinegar, onion, pepper, and sugar.

At Crème & Chill, food had become something I evaluated before I enjoyed. Texture, consistency, temperature, portion, cost. Even pleasure had started arriving with a clipboard.

Nana’s table only asked that I sit long enough to taste what was in front of me.

“This crab pasta is ridiculous. What did you put in it?”

“If I tell you, you’ll go home trying to measure everything.”

“I own a food business. Measuring is important.”

“Not in my kitchen.”

“How do you know it’ll taste the same every time?”