What We Had Beatrice “Is this the last one?” I drop the cardboard box onto grandma’s beat-up wooden coffee table. “Careful,” Grandma scolds. “You know you can’t buy wood products anymore.” She sets down her chipped blue mug, the only one she ever uses, and carefully peels back the tape. “Are there any more upstairs?” “No.” “Then it’s the last one.” She removes a thick orange envelope from the box, opens it, and pulls out a stack of photos. “So how do you want to do this?” I say, sitting down across from her. “Do what?” she asks, staring at the photos. “This!” I wave at all the boxes on the faded living room carpet, the coffee table, and the couch. She puts the photos down and takes a sip from her mug. Every time she uses it she tells me that it’s supposed to be used for coffee, and I ask her why she still has it if there isn’t any coffee to fill it with. She never answers, just sighs loudly as she fills it with lukewarm tap water and says for the hundredth time that the white bird painted on it is now extinct. “Isn’t it your job to tell me that?” Grandma peers at me over her glasses, her dark eyes cryptic. “We want our subjects to be comfortable with the process, Grammy. The best way for you to share information is the best way for us to gather information.” “Is that what is says in your project description?” “No,” I lie. “So I’m your subject, then?” she asks. “Well, we want our interviewees—” She holds up a hand. “Just tell me what you want to know.” I pick up my tablet and open her file. “Let’s start with your life,” I say. “Anything you can remember from living on the coast before the Floods. You lived in Eastport, right?”
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