Page 133 of Safe With You

She ignored me.

Daddy prayed over the food, the family, and the people who couldn’t be at the table with us. He thanked God for another Sunday together and, after a small pause, asked that we not let so much time pass before the next one.

That softened something in me

I squeezed Mama’s hand before letting go.

“All right,” Daddy said. “Now you can eat.”

I reached for the macaroni immediately.

Mama shook her head. “Greedy.”

“Hungry.”

“Same thing.”

For a while, dinner was exactly what Sunday dinner had always been.

Daddy complained that Mama had put too much seasoning in the greens. Mama reminded him he’d been eating them for nearly forty years without dying. I asked whether that meant they’d been married that long or if she’d been feeding him greens before they got married, which somehow turned into an argument over when they’d started dating.

“I know when we started dating,” Mama said.

“Apparently not.”

“You asked me out in October.”

“September.”

“October.”

Daddy looked at me. “Your mama memory going.”

Mama slowly lowered her fork.

I covered my mouth.

“You might want to reconsider that sentence,” I told him.

He grinned. “I’m just saying.”

“And I’m just saying you can sleep out there with that grill you love so much.”

Daddy pointed his fork at her. “See? That’s why I don’t argue with you.”

“You are currently arguing with me.”

“I am explaining why I don’t.”

I laughed hard enough that I had to put my glass down.

This was what I’d missed.

The stories I’d heard enough times to know when one of them changed a detail. Daddy pretending he wasn’t going to eat the macaroni because Mama had used a different cheese, then quietly putting another spoonful on his plate.

I missed being somewhere I didn’t have to keep track of the time.

Here, the only thing anybody expected me to do was pass the cornbread.