The Revisioners. Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

at Lakeside’s Stila counter. And when I had King, and my own husband started to drift, she’d watch the baby for me while I slept or got my nails done. She’d sit on the sofa in my modest two-bedroom and fold his onesies like she hadn’t had a housekeeper her entire life. Now she has more, a chef named Binh, a part-time nurse named Juanita, who even walks her up and down the streetcar tracks when the weather permits. Still, she’d called me one Saturday crying. She was lonely. I’d settled her down, then I’d confessed I wasn’t faring much better, laid off from my paralegal job, and she’d proposed I move in. A win-win, she’d said. A win-win, though at seventy-eight, she is not who she has been. She walks with a limp; she wears Depends and not just at night, but she’s always seemed mentally sound. She dresses and feeds herself, and she still has that softness to her that makes me want to tell her my secrets. She still makes me feel welcome here, and finally, like I made the right decision.

      She reaches for King.

      “It’s so good to have you,” she says, and she pulls him into her. I can see him still clenched up in his back, but he is polite like I’ve taught him and he thanks her.

      “No, thank you,” she says. “I haven’t had children with me for I don’t know how long. It’s welcome, I can tell you. It will lighten up the place.”

      “And you, my granddaughter,” she reaches out for me next. It is nice to hear her call me that, granddaughter. Growing up, I don’t think I ever heard her acknowledge the bloodline. The omission didn’t occur to me until I was older, but once I noticed it, I started offering her subtle chances to say aloud what we were to each other, but she wouldn’t.

      “I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you would uproot your life like this,” she says now.

      I don’t bother to say we didn’t have that many other options. I could have gone to my mother’s, sure, but there was her mouth to consider, and I couldn’t bear the cost. Besides, where would it land us? In a year’s time I’d still be in the same predicament. Grandma Martha on the other hand offered to pay me my other salary just to sit with her during the day. King will start tomorrow at the best public middle school in New Orleans. At the end of the year, I’d have enough for my own place, maybe just a townhome and probably one in the hood at that, but still, we could lay down some roots. I made good money with Mr. Jeff, and I got my bartending license to supplement once King’s daddy left, but I had to drag myself into Vincent’s every night, then back to Mr. Jeff’s in the morning. I’m not stupid, I know I should be grateful to have had a job at all, but from where I’m standing, with the antique writing table at my hip, and the signed oil paintings on the walls above me, it might be okay to start to ask for more.

      “Well, I’ll leave you two to settle in,” Grandma says, and she hobbles off down the stairs, taking longer on each one than I remember.

      She turns back and catches me looking.

      “Maybe I’ll see you for dinner. Of course we don’t have to sit down every night, but since it’s our first one together, we’ll want to commemorate it, won’t we?”

      I look at King the same time he looks at me. We had heard stories about the chef, whom Grandma has always called Bee-Bee, about the made-to-order meals, bread pudding, pastries with chocolate ganache. He smiles.

      “That’ll be lovely,” I say.

      I get up with Binh before dinner to tour the bar. As much as I complained about the schedule, I miss my bartending days, and out of respect, I still make a cocktail every night, pour a little bit out for my former self. Tonight it’s a gin and tonic, two parts gin, five parts tonic. I chill the glasses, then add the ice, pour the gin over the large cubes, squeeze the first lime before the tonic hits; the second lime is just the cherry on top really. I lean against the counter, take a sip, and set the glass down. It’s perfect.

      Binh serves fried chicken and waffles with a side of sweet potato biscuits and rosemary jam. I’m supposed to be on a plan, but I have a weakness for breakfast food. I reach for two waffles and a biscuit, and I’m not shy with the syrup either. King eyes his plate with suspicion, Grandma’s old wedding china.

      “I thought this menu might be more modern,” Grandma says, pleased with herself. She watches King eat with what seems to be fascination. He’s wearing his uniform: a Nike hoodie and athletic shorts with basketball tights underneath. At twelve, he is a head taller than I am, a chocolate boy with dredlocks that touch his shoulders. I married his father because I couldn’t deny the first boy who called me when he said he would, who told me he loved me before I fell asleep at night, but if I’m honest, there were other things. King’s daddy couldn’t have been blacker, and I was still lamenting my light skin, my checked-out father at the root of it. Even the Seventh Ward girls at school read oppressor in my face. I was a heavy child, still do shop in the plus-size section of most stores; I have more hair than most families combined, and I wear it out in a curly brown fro that almost touches my shoulders. It’s the style now, but it wasn’t back then. My mama didn’t let me straighten it, and the unoriginal children would call me Chia Pet and Free Willy, or sing He’s got jungle fever, she’s got jungle fever when I walked into the room. And my plan worked; nobody would look at King and not know he was a black child. Not only that, he’s cool in a way I never showed. When I’d pick him up from McMain, a posse would escort him to my car, but it had started to be more than the middle schoolers. It was the high schoolers as well, some of whom I recognized from the street corners.

      Now he picks at his food.

      I know what he’s thinking. White people know they don’t have no business serving fried chicken.

      “Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to,” he sings from the old-school music I listen to on FM98 sometimes, and I reprimand him though I want to laugh. Grandma Martha stops me.

      “Let him be a child,” she says. “You only have a few more years of it left. You better enjoy it because then they’re old and”—she gestures around the long table—“well, you’re left by your lonesome,” she finishes.

      “You have us,” I whisper.

      “Oh, sure,” she says. “I only meant, when I bought this table, I imagined I’d have my children around it forever, surrounding me, into my old age, but—” her face loosens and drags and then she picks it back up in a flash. “But here’s to new connections.” She lifts her glass of soda water, and I lift the gin and tonic I crafted, and King lifts his chocolate milk, and we clink them all together and I catch him smiling.

      That night as I’m turning down her bed, Grandma Martha asks me to sit on the wicker bedroom bench across from her.

      “This is so nice.” She extends her legs and pulls them back in in soft motions. She’s taken her medical alert system off and placed it on her dresser.

      “Yeah, I mean your house is out of this world,” I say. The bedroom is immaculate, and about the size of my old apartment. There’s a cream-colored chaise lounge in the corner, a fireplace with a white marble mantel, a gold-framed mirror to my left.

      “I’m not talking about that,” she says. “I’m talking about you.” She dips her hand down toward the room where King is staying. “The family. The life you built. King is so cared for, he’s so happy. I tried to do that with your dad, but I don’t think I got it right. I spoiled him is the thing,” she goes on. “He never had to work for anything, and look where it got him; I only hear from him every few months, and even then it’s just a five-minute call. Every year it’s a different woman. I never thought your mother was the right one, but . . .” she trails off, then starts right back up again, “at least there was you to care for.”

      “I’m sorry I wasn’t around more, when you were growing up. You needed that influence, but I was trying to be a good wife. I was too caught up with the times. You know things were so different back then, but the child, the child just needs love. The child doesn’t see color, that’s what I’d always tell your grandfather but he couldn’t grasp it.”

      If she wants forgiveness, I’m not ready