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“Ma, I don’t think you understand me right now. I want you to go into one of those girly stores with the long gowns and stuff, and I want you to pick out an olive green dress to match my tux because I’m taking you with me to my homecoming. I want you to go,” he said.
I was taken aback by what he’d said, so I took a seat in the chair that I was originally sitting down in and stared at him.
“What? Vonte, no! I wasn’t telling you all of this stuff because I wanted to go with you. I just wanted you to know why I was so happy to see you go. These are your memories to have, not mine. It’s your senior year, your homecoming. I’ll be fine. Trust me, two weeks from now, I’ll be just as happy to be on the sideline with my camera in my hands, taking pictures of you,” I let him know.
“Ma, I get all of that, but I want to take you. I want you to have some type of knowledge of what it feels like to attend homecoming. Do this for me, ma,” Vonte said as he walked over to me with a serious look on his face.
Because I knew that this wasn’t just some cruel prank that he was playing on me, I found myself getting emotional. I was such a big baby, especially when it came to my child. Tears started running down my face, and I used the back of my hands to wipe them away.
“What about Taylor? I thought you would take her,” I said.
“We not on the best of terms right now. Even if we were, I’m supposed to put another woman ahead of you? Don’t worry about all of that stuff right now. I know how picky you are, so just focus on finding a dress and praying that you don’t let me out dress you for homecoming,” he joked then pulled me into his arms and kissed my cheek.
“That’s the least of my worries, baby. You know when I step out, I’m always dressed to impress,” I let him know.
We stayed in the store for another fifteen minutes because the seamstress had come over after Vonte had tried on the second tux again. She let us know the different alterations that she would have to make on it, but she assured us that she would have it
done before the homecoming. Finding a dress wasn’t something that could happen in a blink of an eye, and I knew how much my son hated going shopping with me, so I figured that I would either come back later tonight or first thing tomorrow morning.
In the car, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. Never in a million years did I think that my son would invite me to go with him to his homecoming. I felt like a teenager again, getting ready to attend homecoming for the first time. Since it was still early, and I didn’t have anything else to do for the majority of the day, I decided that I would swing by my grandmother’s place since we were already in the area. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of weeks because I had been so busy with work, but we talked on the phone just about every day.
I was close as hell with my grandmother, which wasn’t a surprise because she was the woman who raised me. She was the one who talked to me about sex when I got my period for the very first time, although everything she told me went in one ear and out the other because I’d gotten pregnant at a young age. She was the one who signed off on all of my field trip forms if my daddy wasn’t home to sign them. She did all of those things that my mother would have done for me had she been alive to do it.
The moment we pulled up to the three-bedroom, two-bathroom home that my grandmother now lived in by herself, I noticed that her car, my dad’s car, and even Mahogany’s car was in the driveway. My daddy was pushing the lawn mower back and forth, cutting my grandma’s grass. It was hot as hell in Miami today, but I still didn’t know if that gave my daddy the right to be outside without a shirt on in his cargo shorts with his work boots. Granted, my daddy looked good as hell for his age, but still.
“Look at this man. Pop Pop knows what he be doing. He’s going to have all the cougars coming over here,” my son called out the moment we stepped out of the car.
All I could do was laugh and shake my head. My daddy was worse than the men my age when it came to women. These days, he swore up and down that he had a girlfriend, but I didn’t know if I believed that yet because no one had seen her. The moment he saw Vonte and me, he smiled big and cut the lawn mower off. He used the hand towel that was in his back pocket to wipe the sweat that was dripping down his face.
When my son got closer to his grandfather, he reached his hand out, gave him a pound, and my daddy pulled him in for a hug. Sweating or not, I went in for a hug as well.
“Why don’t you just hire somebody to come and cut Grandma’s grass? It’s too hot out here for you to be doing that,” I said, acting like more of a mother than his daughter.
“Swear you every bit of your damn mama. You haven’t been around me for one whole minute, and you already trying to order a nigga around. Why Ima waste money on the next man, when I can get my ass out here and do it myself? I can do it better than them too. I saw your grass a couple of weeks ago, and I can cut your shit ten times better,” my daddy bragged.
My dad and I have always been close. Never really had a falling out with each other either. He was that man in my life who I would call when I needed something fixed around the house. Whether it be him mounting a television on the wall, changing a light bulb in the ceiling, whatever it was that maybe my significant other was supposed to do, he was the one who would do it for me. No matter the time of day that I would call, he would always come running.
I stayed outside with him for another five minutes or so, just talking, and then I went on into the house. The moment I walked in, my stomach began to rumble as I smelled whatever my grandmother was in the kitchen cooking. If you were from Miami, then you knew that grandma Olay could cook her ass off. Back when I was younger, my grandmother had picked up a little hustle on the weekends, and she would sell dinner plates out of the house. I swear people would be lined up outside our front door trying to get a plate.
My grandmother was the best at soul fool, island food, Haitian food, you name it. Literally, every person who tasted her food always told her that she needed to open a restaurant of her own, but she always talked about the hard work that would have to go into running it and made it clear that she would much rather just cook for her family.
“I knew your car was parked outside for a reason. You only come over here when my Grandma is cooking,” I playfully said to Mahogany.
She was sitting at the kitchen island with a piece of fried chicken on a napkin that my grandma had probably allowed her to sample.
“Leave her alone. Her skinny ass needs some meat on them bones,” my grandmother said from over by the stove.
Listen, I was raised by one of those old school grandmothers like I already mentioned before. As much as my grandmother would get up every Sunday for church, this was the same woman who would sit up at the table with Mahogany and I and talk shit right along with us.
Growing up, my grandma used to have some really long, jet black hair, and she would always wear it in a long ponytail. It had to be a special occasion to get her to let her hair hang loose. Even right now, she still had her long tresses. Even though she had specks of gray in it, it still looked nice on her. She had a chocolate skin tone just like I did, and if you got close up on her, you could see the few moles that she had on her face.
With as much food as she cooked, you would think that my grandmother would be a heavy-set woman, but she wasn’t. She was short and petite, just like I was.
“Grandma, trust me, the niggas aren’t complaining. They love my skinny ass,” Mahogany shot back to my grandmother.
My grandma picked up a dishrag from the counter, and she threw it in Mahogany’s direction, but it missed her. I walked over to where my grandmother was, and I hugged her, kissing her on her cheek as well.
“Did Vonte walk through here and tell y’all that he’s taking me to his homecoming? My baby asked me earlier while we were out looking at tuxedos,” I said after I finished hugging my grandmother and took a seat next to Mahogany at the island.
