My father called many times. First he raged. Then he wept. Then he said:
“Natalie, I’m your father. You can’t turn my own mother against me.”
One afternoon my grandmother picked up the phone herself.
“Nobody turned me against you, Raymond. You walked to that place all on your own.”
And she hung up.
A restraining order was later granted, barring him from approaching the house or pressuring her.
Little by little, life returned.
We repainted the front of the house. Changed the locks. Fixed the leaks. Stocked the kitchen with real food. The house smelled like coffee again, like warm soup, like fresh bread.
My grandmother went back to the market. She started wearing red lipstick again. She went back to sitting outside in the afternoons with Betty. One day she asked me to take her to get her hair done.
“I want to look like a woman who survived her own children,” she said.
And that’s exactly how she looked.
Strong.
