Page 28 of Upstate

“I’m not exactly sure. Maybe twenty thousand?”

Aisha raises an eyebrow. “You don’t know?”

“The last owner died without leaving an inventory.”

“Yeah, we were all really sad when Miss Cabot had to close this place.”

“You knew her?”

Aisha nods. “Gramma Lulu used to bring me out here when I’d stay with her in the summer. Miss Cabot had a whole section for kids, over there.” She leads me to a back corner of the barn where a filthy rug covers a few square yards of floor. “See? All the bottom shelves have children’s books. Miss Cabot used to set up little chairs and have stuffed animals to play with. I think there was a puppet theater?”

“I haven’t seen anything like that.” It never occurred to me that a section of the book barn was once dedicated to children. “Did lots of kids come here?”

“Oh, sure. See here? That’s me.” Aisha brushes dust from an upright beam to reveal a cascade of lines and names and dates. “Parents would mark their kids’ height at the start of every summer, and Miss Cabot would make a big deal about how much we’d grown.”

I think of the door frame in our Kenosha kitchen where penciled lines charted the growth of a single girl. Dad refinished that door frame when we renovated the kitchen, my measurements sanded away by the time I put the house up for sale.

My mind has wandered. “What’s that, Aisha?”

“I was saying Gramma Lulu used to tell me stories about how my grandpa Marcus got Miss Cabot started with sheep back in the day. Are you going to get farm animals, too?”

“Animals? No,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m mostly trying to figure out how to get the business up and running.”

“Yeah, I looked at your online store last night. You’ve only got, like, ten titles listed.”

“Well, I just activated it a couple of days ago,” I explain.

“I could definitely help you with that. I set up Gramma Lulu’s store on Etsy. She’s the Cozy Cozy Lady.”

I’m confounded. “Cozy cozy lady?”

“Yeah, look.” Aisha pulls her phone from a pocket of her pants. A second later, my phone pings. “I texted you a link.”

I click it. A video starts playing of a mature woman wearing pink-framed glasses rhythmically swaying in a rocking chair as she crochets a skein of bright red yarn. Her salt-and-pepper hair is artfully coiled atop her head. Her dark-wash jeans and navy blouse recede into the background as a pool of light illuminates her nimble hands. I’m leaning in to hear what the woman is saying when Aisha interrupts.

“Wait, you have wi-fi here? What’s the password?”

“It’s redbarnbooks, all one word, no caps.” I hold up my phone, video playing. “That’s your grandmother?”

Aisha nods. “She started doing this last year, while she was recovering from a knee replacement. She crochets tea cozies in all these amazing shapes, like a chicken or a cat or a race car. She’s mad creative. I posted a video on YouTube and people started commenting on the cozy cozy lady, so I was like, ‘Gramma Lulu, you should do this for real.’ I made her a channel where anyone can watch for free, but then she sells the cozies on Etsy. People love watching her crochet a cozy, and she talks while she’s doing it, about how to crochet, obviously, but also about our family’s history, and how my great-great-great-grandfather actually knew John Brown, and what it was like to be Black farmers in the Adirondacks, so it’s, like, educational too, you know?”

“Your family’s from around here?”

Aisha lifts her chin. “There’ve been Greens in upstate New York since before the Civil War.”

“Really?” This is a slice of history I’ve never been taught. I’ll have to watch more of the Cozy Cozy Lady to fill in the gaps in my education.

“For real. Anyway, since Covid, Gramma Lulu’s metrics are insane. I’ve got her on Insta now, too. You should do that, you know. It’s really photogenic in here. You could make it, like, a thing for people to take selfies in the book barn.” Aisha takes a breath. “Sorry, I guess I’m getting ahead of myself.”

I can’t help smiling. “No, I like your energy. Would you feel comfortable talking outside without our masks?”

“If you stay, like, ten feet away from me.”

Aisha stops to take some pictures of the barn, then joins me under the oak tree. After dragging an Adirondack chair farther from mine, Aisha removes her mask, revealing a face that’s rounder and softer than I expected. Taking a seat, I remove mine, too.

“I thought you’d be, like, older,” Aisha says, sipping from the water bottle she’s carrying. “What’d you do before this?”

“I was a college professor, in the city.”