idea if it’ll be bad.” One of my favorite pastimes is denying Nanny anything.
Nanny laughs like a crow. “Not as she tells it.”
I spy my mother at the tables. She stands in the crowd of women arranging store-bought rolls on a plastic tray. Her smile is the tightest thing about her and I’ve got no sympathy for her misery. She’s not the one waiting to find out what’s wrong with her.
“She shouldn’t be telling it at all.” Too late, I realize I’ve given Nanny an inch.
She pats my arm. “Don’t you fret. Lots of girls have these sorts of problems. I’m sure she doesn’t blame you.”
Her needles are so practiced. She’s stitched me into a corner with barbs masquerading as kindness. My options are to take it with a smile or be bullheaded.
I smile. She wins. I’ve made her day with this sticky silence. It’s a small comfort, but if it means she’ll leave the topic alone for the rest of the night, then in some way, I’ve won, too.
Nanny settles into her chair and sends me off with a command to bring her something to chew on. There’s a line at the buffet, but Uncle Jack makes a hole for me at the head. I pile Nanny’s plate with barbecue, fried okra, and creamed corn. I skip Aunt Sarah’s loathsome green bean casserole because I’d like to keep what little of Nanny’s good graces I still have.
Mom stands at the end of the table, fussing with aluminum foil and condiments we’re all capable of opening ourselves. She hands me the hot sauce without a word. A small sigh escapes when I thank her.
Today is my seventeenth birthday and my mother won’t meet my eyes. I am more dead to her than the generations of kin rotting beneath our feet.
I started to die earlier this summer when Doc Payola updated his concern over my lack of a womanly cycle. When I was thirteen, it wasn’t an issue at all. When I was fourteen, I was simply a “late bloomer.” But when I was fifteen and sixteen it went from “peculiar” to “problematic.” This summer, it finally became something that warranted a visit to New Orleans Children’s Hospital, where the doctors ran a few tests and listed possible causes as carelessly as they might a grocery list: late onset menstruation, amenorrhea, cancer. Now we wait for the results. And my mom seems to think I’m already dead.
I am alive. I am a ghost.
Just after delivering Nanny her plate, Cousin Red catches me around the neck and pulls me into a sweaty armpit hug. It’s worth it for the cold beer he sneaks into my hand. I swivel and let his broad shoulders block me from view while I take a long pull. Half the bottle in one go. He’s only two years older than me, but the Cravens believe in the eighteen-year-old adult—if you’re old enough to vote and die for your country, you’re more than old enough to drink. I, on the other hand, still have to employ stealth.
“Thought that was your ‘save me’ face,” Red says with a satisfied laugh. He’s compact as a tank. Every bit of him means business, from his tanned skin to his blunt nose.
I scoff. “I’ve never had a ‘save me’ face in all my life. You must be thinking of my ‘I’ll raze this village to the ground’ face.”
“Things that bad?” He steals the bottle and swigs. “I heard something about doctors . . .”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.
Red opens his mouth to protest, but Leo appears at his shoulder. He stands a head taller than his little brother, which allows the Craven family girth to sit more comfortably on his sturdy frame. He’s less a tank and more a semi. His brown eyes shine beneath the worn and curved bill of a baseball cap, and he gives his brother a meaningful shove.
“Respect,” he says, and Red begrudgingly shuts his hole.
The food is exactly as it always is: salty and spicy and damn good. As expected, my “cake” is a mountain of cream Twinkies and pink Snowballs sporting seventeen wilting candles. And the darker it gets, the easier it is for me to slip my own bottle of beer so I can stop siphoning off Red and Leo.
When the sun’s quit the sky, the party begins to wind down. Nanny Craven leaves first, propped in the Gator with Jack at the wheel and the majority of the folding chairs