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“Oooh,” Aunt Hattie said from the floor as she scooped her spilled dinner back onto her plate. “Tell us more, Regina!”
“He in a band,” my grandmother said. “Walker Arnold.”
Aunt Connie Lou came into the room carrying a bowl with pureed dinner in it. She set it in front of Nana. “A looker, huh, this Walker?”
“Handsome,” Nana Mama said, opening her mouth and accepting a spoonful from Connie Lou. She savored it slowly, smiled weakly. “Mmm. Good mush.”
Everyone laughed. “There’s more mush where that came from,” Connie said.
Ali said, “What instrument did Walker play?”
“Sax. Dance. Jazz.”
Hattie snapped her fingers and chuckled. “You always did love jazz and the saxophone.”
Nana shrugged weakly. “Walker sweet-talk me up. After me eighteen, we…” Her voice trailed off.
“You eloped?” Aunt Hattie said.
“Mmm.”
I shook my head, astonished. “You got divorced before you married Reggie?”
“A… annul…”
“Annulment,” Aunt Connie said, nodding to Aunt Hattie. “That explains why there were no records available in the online search.”
“You look?” Nana asked, incredulous.
“Just a little,” Connie said. “On the internet.”
Over the course of the next half hour, my grandmother ate and haltingly explained. Walker Arnold’s dance band had had a standing gig for the summer in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and as soon as she turned eighteen, they’d gotten married by a justice of the peace down there.
“Young love,” Nana Mama said. “Crazy. Music. Dancing. Party. But three weeks, over.”
“What happened?” Damon asked.
Nana accepted another spoonful of the blended dinner, swallowed it with a slight grimace. “Walker angry drunk. Hit me. Saw future. Regina walk on Walker.”
The monitor tracking my grandmother’s cardiac rhythm began to beep softly.
She said, “Tired.”
Bobby the nurse stepped up, looked at the monitor, and said, “You only came around a few hours ago, Mrs. Cross. I’m surprised you’re still awake.”
“Not,” she said, and closed her eyes. “Night. Night.”
The monitor’s alarm stopped. Her heart rate returned to normal.
I smiled to myself as I stood to collect dishes and take them to the kitchen. Despite this lingering thing with her heart, despite the head injury and minor stroke, and despite the obvious language deficits, my grandmother still had her sense of humor. She was still my Nana Mama.
But for how long?
44
BY NINE FIFTEEN THAT night, Nana Mama was fully asleep, the aunts had left for the hotel where they were staying, Damon had gone out to meet a few old friends, Bree was in the top-floor office, and Ali was up in his room studying for a test. As the night nurses ran through their tasks, I did the dishes and put the plates away as quietly as I could.
The doorbell rang. It was John Sampson, coming by to check on Nana Mama.
