What Lies Beyond the Veil(Of Flesh & Bone #1)(33)

I sit there awhile, tryna sort through all the big words and big ideas. “How you know all that?” I ask. “You been depressed before, too?”

Granddaddy laughs. “Well, I’m sure I have, but we ain’t used to have a name for it back then. Black folks always say that ain’t nothin’ we goin through that God can’t fix. Your momma the one that taught me that even with God, we still might need help in other ways, too.”

I sit there not saying anything. After a while, Granddaddy reaches over and takes my hand. I look at my hand in his and it looks tiny. But in his big, warm hands, my hands also look comfortable. Safe.

“Kenyatta, you know that your momma would rather be with you girls than anywhere else in the world, right?”

I nod. I start to feel the tickle in my throat that lets me know I might cry, but I try to hold it back. “You think she gon’ get better?” I finally ask. To my surprise, Granddaddy laughs.

“I know she gon’ get better,” he says, “cause your momma always does whatever she puts her mind to.”

I can’t help but smile, cause I know it’s true.

“She was just like you when she was little,” Granddaddy says with a sigh. “Always with a book in her hands and a million thoughts in her head.”

“She was like me?” I ask. I always figured Momma was just like Nia as a kid, since they both seem so alike now. Quiet and moody.

Granddaddy don’t answer with words, just stands, slow, and walks to the bookshelf. He reaches down and picks up the large brown book that I noticed before and figured was a photo album. It takes him a while to stand back up, but finally Granddaddy carries the book back to the couch and sits beside me. Turns out, it is a photo album, and when he opens it, dust rises and falls from the cover. I wonder how long it’s been closed, and how many days and weeks and years are stuffed inside. I always secretly wished for a photo album filled with pictures of me, like maybe Momma had been collecting photos and macaroni art and birthday cards since I was born, and all of it was stuffed between the pages of some old, dusty book that I’d find one day, and remember it all. But if Momma was keeping a book like that, she was hiding it real good, cause I ain’t ever even seen a picture of myself as a baby.

Granddaddy balances the album on his knees and opens to the first page, which has two pictures, black-and-white, of a woman I don’t know. She has hair like dark, coiled yarn, and skin that melts one feature smooth into the next. In the first picture, she is sittin’ in a wicker chair. Even though it’s not the same room in the picture, it looks like the same wicker chair in Granddaddy’s living room. I take a quick peek to be sure. I wanna count the strands on each chair to see if they match, but Granddaddy might turn the page. In the second picture, the woman stands in front of a small house. She is holding something in her arms, a blanket wrapped tight.

“Who is she?” I ask, pointing at that second picture, where her smile stretches cross her black-and-white face.

“That’s your granny,” is his quiet reply. I stare at the picture in silence. Momma never talked bout no granny, but here she is, smiling like Momma.

“This is the day we had your momma,” he finally continues, pointing at the wrapped-up blanket. Turns out the blanket is Momma, so small I can’t even see her in the faded image. I knew Momma had her own momma, cause I know for having babies you need a daddy and a momma and some eggs, but I ain’t sure how many or exactly for what. But I do know that Granddaddy was the daddy and this granny who Momma never mentioned was her momma.

I wonder how Momma could forget to tell me bout her, cause in just one minute of staring at her picture, I think she might have the best face I’ve ever seen. Her hair is straighter than mine and longer than Nia’s, with soft bows clipped by her ears. Since I can’t see the colors, I imagine the bows are bright red like ripe cherries. She is wearing a short dress that dances on one side, like the wind was blowing that day, and she has to pull and tug to keep the blanket wrapped around her baby.

Granddaddy turns to the next page, which has just one photo. The woman again—Granny—and a dark-skinned man with a soft face and big smile. He holds her hand and she has flowers in her braided hair.

“Is that you?”

“Yes. On the day I married your granny,” Granddaddy says, and for the first time I wonder if Granddaddy’s quiet ain’t from being mean, but from being sad. I study the picture. Granny and Granddaddy are outside, but it don’t look much like a wedding, cept for the flowers. Blooming buds are everywhere—in Granny’s hair, on the ground, pinned to Granddaddy’s jacket—and I bet they are all different colors like the flowers in the field. I bet Granddaddy picked them all and when he gave them to her, she smiled. I ain’t ever seen Daddy give Momma flowers. And that’s not the only way I notice they are different. Daddy ain’t ever have this much time to spend, just talking and remembering and being with me. Granddaddy don’t seem to mind the time at all.

We look at pictures for what feels like days, probably cause so many days go by in the pictures. Granddaddy tells me stories bout all of ’em. And not like before, when I had to make him talk to me. Now the words pour out of Granddaddy as quickly as we can turn the pages. First, Momma as a baby. Then the wedding. Christmas and New Year’s and Easter, then Christmas again. Some are inside a small house bout big as our motel room and dark like a cave, some outside, the sun so bright all the faces look like they’re glowing.