42nd Emerson Review

// Katherine Bove // 63 My yiayiá was over for dinner, but instead of listening to her mumble in Greek, I’d decided to mope about my glasses on the swing. At the time, it didn’t seem selfish or wrong. It was just grown-ups planning poorly or something—how could I devote time to my grandmother when I had four eyes to deal with now? I hadn’t seen her in awhile. I wasn’t quite sure why, exactly, but she never watched my brother and me anymore. I was thinking about how I’d have to compose myself, compose my bleary, stupid, dead eyes, and go try to talk with her, but when I looked over at Yiayiá from the swing and saw her, short, hunched form leaning over the freshly mulched marigold beds, I was scared.

Before school started, I was over at my grandparents’ house all of the time. My yiayiá had always been a cheerful person. I don’t think I ever heard her yell. I remember sitting on the edge of the steps and drawing chalk dogs on the sidewalk while she swept the stoop. I remember holding her sleeve and walking down the block to a convenience store where we’d buy Funyuns and rip into the greasy, yellow bag before even leaving the store. But mostly, I remember watching her cook. She bustled around the kitchen, sometimes in socks, singing and laughing with the TV turned down low on some soap opera.

Her skin was cold and smelled of flour a lot of the time and sort of hung in places—her elbows and chin—and it was so white that the blue veins in her wrists stood out; I thought she was like dough, especially in the way her jaw muscles would knead the rest of her face into a big, floppy smile. I don’t remember the way her hug felt; even her voice was indistinct. When I think back to my time with her, I just feel my un-socked toes digging into the couch cushions and the stolen meatball hidden in the pocket of my cheek like a warm pit. I hear TV static, crackly, peanut-brittle singing, and the under-hum of the fridge, and the way that hard, flat, fuzzy sound carries through the creaky yellow linoleum.

There was something warm about that kitchen. Every room in the house led into it, was just a pit stop on the way there. The buttery smell of stuff like tiropita made me feel drowsy and comfortable in a November Sunday-evening kind of way: clear sunlight hanging in the windows, and nothing and everything balancing on the promise of nightfall.

The last time I remember really being in my grandparents’ kitchen