AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Couldn’t be friends with Fran, though, could I?” she asked him.
“Why couldn’t you be?”
“Where’s…Fran from?” Carine asked hesitantly.
Nana was sitting adjacent to Carine at the head of the table with Mother directly across from Carine. She turned stiffly toward Carine and said, “You look a little like Fran used to.”
“Do I?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Just how long have you known this Fran woman?” Daddy groused.
“Since before you were a squiggle in your daddy’s left nut.”
The silence in the room was so heavy and permeating that for a moment, Heidi thought she understood why some people said that time was a sham and that life was just a simulation controlled by things more real than them. She was reasonably sure that her conscious mind left her body for a moment.
Kevin, being Kevin, broke the silence with a resounding guffaw.
Kalimah gave him a discreet nudge with her elbow and whispered, “Stop.”
Nana grunted and sipped more coffee. “At least Heidi went her own way and didn’t let nobody stop her. I didn’t have no choice. Livin’ round here, what you gonna do? You find you a beau, that’s what you do. And how come nobody’s let me hold that baby?”
The silence returned as though none of them, save Nana, knew what a baby was.
Valerie recovered her voice first. “You…want to hold the baby?”
“I got arms, don’t I?”
“She can’t sit up. She’s still a floppy bunny.”
Nana pointed to the spot on the floor between her and Carine. “Put her in that carrier thing. Set her here.”
Valerie was too smart to make eye contact with either Tim or Heidi. She got up with Naomi in her left arm, then dragged the carrier over from the front door.
“Cute little thing. You only got the one?”
“Well, I’ve got Kevin, partly. That seems like a lot of kids to me.”
Kalimah snickered.
Heidi couldn’t completely identify all of what Kevin muttered but thought she heard “Y’all” and “not fair.” She certainly couldn’t count herself as an unbiased party on the subject.
Nana waved Valerie away and sipped more coffee. “Yep. Find a beau, go to his folks’ place, and work their farm. Same stuff. Just doin’ it somewhere else. I knew it was no good wishin’ and wantin’ after Fran’s belly started getting round. That’s what you did back then. You get scared, so you do the same as everyone else. Go lay in your husband’s bed and open your legs when he tells you to.”
“Momma.” Daddy dropped his dessert fork.
Heidi might have dropped hers, too, had she been holding it.
What in the world?
“What’s got you talking like this?” Daddy asked. “You taking all the medicines you should be?”
“Are you?” The old lady huffed. “They count all my pills at the old folks’ place. Who’s counting yours?”
Daddy’s jaw hung low.
Tim grimaced in Heidi’s direction.
