Page 47 of The Family Cross

“With my Dijon vinaigrette,” Hattie said. “And peach pie.”

“Visit more,” my grandmother said, her lips curling toward a smile.

Ali came in from the kitchen. Nana coughed, cleared her throat, said, “You find me? Call ambulance?”

My son raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t go in an ambulance, Nana. There weren’t any available. You went in the back of Uncle John’s pickup!”

Nana Mama looked at me, a question on her face.

I nodded. “We didn’t have time to take you in style.”

“Humph,” she said, looking confused. Just then, the nurses came over, introduced themselves to my grandmother, and explained that they would care for her until a day team took over the following morning. Then they helped the ambulance workers move her from their gurney into the hospital bed.

When Nana Mama was settled and Dr. Ames had departed with promises to return on her way to work in the morning, the rest of us gathered around my grandmother and ate our dinner from plates in our laps.

“Smells good.” She sighed. “Hungry.” She closed her eyes and swallowed, grimacing a little. “Throat too sore.”

“Nonsense,” Aunt Connie said, getting up. “We’ll just blend dinner up for you.”

Nana swallowed hard again, then opened her eyes. “Where Jannie?”

“She’s got a meet in the morning,” I told her.

“Run fast.”

“She always does,” I agreed. “This is big-time. She’s on a path to qualify for NCAA nationals.”

“Fast girl,” Nana said, and her eyes started to drift shut. “I say truth now.”

Bree said playfully, “You saying you’ve been hiding things from us?”

My grandmother’s eyes fluttered open again. She hesitated, coughed, swallowed, and then said, “First husband.”

43

AUNT HATTIE JUMPED TO her feet, sending her plate to the floor, and called to Aunt Connie Lou, who was loading food into a blender in the kitchen.

“I knew it, Connie!” Hattie cried. “Regina says she was married before Reggie!”

Connie came to the doorway and gave her a high five. “Called it!” Hattie said.

My grandmother stared at her. “You talk me?”

“Yes, we talk about you. You’re a legend to women in Starksville.” Hattie sniffed. “What else do we got to talk about down there other than the past?”

I stared at Nana Mama. “You were married before my grandfather?”

Nana Mama’s marriage to my paternal grandfather, Reggie Cross, hadn’t been a good one. He was a handsome merchant mariner who was away half the year; Nana Mama said he’d been a charmer who’d swept her off her feet with his stories. But not long after their wedding and the birth of their only child, Jason, she realized that Reggie was away too much and drunk too often when he was home. And he became more violent and was unfaithful to her.

“Got to the point where all we did was fight. He didn’t mind drinking while we fought, and he didn’t mind using his fists either. I decided one day that, despite my marriage vows, this wasn’t the life I wanted, or deserved,” she’d once told me.

So when my dad was around seven, she’d finally divorced Reggie and moved herself and Jason up to DC to start a new life. Even as a struggling single mother, Nana had managed to get a degree at Howard University and then found work as a teacher and, later, a school vice principal.

Reggie had let his wife and son go without a fight. But around age fifteen, Jason decided to return to live with his dad in Starksville—which was where my dad eventually met and married Hattie’s big sister, my late mother, Christina.

At least, that was the story I’d been told. Turned out there was a prequel.

“Yes,” Nana said. She licked her lips. “Met Walker. I seventeen. He twenty-three.”