A Jar of Malice

By Gregory Marlow

1982

The morning light woke me as Mamaw slid in through the front door carrying a small flour sack. Mamaw’s couch was made of Brillo pads that left crinkle imprints on my cheeks as I peeled away from the cushion. I had kicked my quilt and pillow onto the floor. Mom used to say I ran marathons in my sleep. But that was before she left us.

Mamaw was trying to be quiet in the unpracticed way of a person who had lived alone for over a decade. She pushed the front door closed with a light click and then walked slowly to the kitchen with the flour sack in her hand. I watched her from the couch. She looked old and tired to my ten-year-old eyes, even though she was only fifty-six. The gray hairs outnumbered the brown, and her upper back was permanently arched forward, having spent more hours of her life leaning over a countertop and stove than standing upright.

Then I saw the sack move as if something inside had given it a little kick. I sat up quickly and wiped the sleep from my eyes.

She’d caught one.

2022

I slide the Mason jar across the quartz countertop of the kitchen island until it sets in front of my husband. Franklin pauses mid-sip of the day’s first cup of coffee. His left eye always droops just a touch more than his right when he is sleepy, but both of his brows go up. He hasn’t shaved this morning, and his sexy stubble is coming in gray. His “Gay and Trashy” mug with a picture of a possum and a rainbow slowly lowers from his lips and makes a slow trek to the countertop with a light clack.

The tiny figure is limp and sleeping, curled along the bottom of the Atlas jar. It is a thin and waify figure, like one of those plastic music–box ballerinas but about twice as tall. It is unclothed, but something about it refuses to be naked, as if its skin hides its true nakedness.

Dust fogs the glass, and a paper envelope the size of a house key is wedged securely under the rusty band at the mouth of the jar. In canning, the band isn’t necessary after it’s been processed. The lid will stay sealed without the band if you have done everything correctly. In this case, the band is there to secure the tiny envelope. But I know it is also there as an extra level of security. If the seal leaked, the little figure might wake up, and that lid would be no match for them.

Franklin looks at the jar, then back at me, then back at the jar. The eye darts repeat several more times, and I can tell the synapses are firing in Franklin’s head. I have only been married to him for seven years, but he has been mine for much longer. We met nearly 30 years earlier in college. We went from roommates to confirmed bachelors to special friends. In 2015, we became husbands. I know how his brain works. I can hear every thought. What date is it? Is it a holiday, and is this a hyper-realistic Halloween decoration? Is his husband taking a craft workshop that he has forgotten about? Is the coffee not working, and are his eyes malfunctioning?

Is this a fairy in a jar?

Franklin sets his coffee cup down and looks up at me. “Alan, what, exactly am I looking at?”

I take a deep breath. It is going to be a long explanation.

1982

“Well, look who’s finally awake. You want some breakfast, sleepy bones?” It was 8:30 a.m.. It wouldn’t matter if I woke up at 4:00 a.m.; Mamaw would always call me sleepy bones and smile.

A giant metal canning pot, almost the size of a five-gallon bucket, was on the mustard-yellow stove. It was three-quarters full of water, simmering to a boil. On the back eye was a smaller pot of boiling water.

On the countertop was the wiggling flour sack. Mamaw had placed the pressure canning lid on the empty part of the sack to weigh it down. Orange morning light shone through the kitchen window in streaks and crisscrossed the sink and countertop. The kitchen never seemed to have enough light for me. I was used to the giant sliding glass door of our apartment in Richmond.

“I can wait on breakfast. What’s the water for?” I asked.

She smiled. “Really? The water is what you’re most curious about?”

I shrugged and smiled. “Is there something else I should be curious about?”

She smiled back and wiped her hands on her flowered apron — the pattern similar enough to the kitchen wallpaper that I thought of it as “matching.” She carefully moved the pressure canner’s lid and picked up the sack. I hopped on the stool across the counter from her.

She took a clean Atlas Mason jar and tucked the end of the sack into it. She carefully untied the top of the sack and shook it. The fairy tumbled into the glass container. Mamaw left the sack tucked into the top of the jar and overlapped it on the mouth. Using some twine, she tied the excess sack around the lip to prevent the fairy from escaping.

I leaned forward and looked at the small creature as it shook off the disorientation and stood. It was a sleek and slender tiny biped. Like someone had shrunk down a human figure skater to the height of a coffee cup.

“She’s amazing,” I said.

2022

“They,” I correct Franklin.

We have moved the jar to the living room and are sitting on the couch — pleather, not Brillo. Franklin sits back and smirks at me. “Honey, if you have another one you aren’t telling me about . . .”

I shake my head. “They’re genderless.”

He leans forward and examines the fairy more closely. “It looks like a little woman.”

“Well, so does your friend, Todd, but we still use his preferred pronoun, don’t we?”

He rolls his eyes, and I wonder if he is annoyed at me or thinking about the spectacle Todd made at the New Year’s party about the whole bean-dip fiasco. “Are you telling me this wee little fairy prefers ‘they’?”

“They’re genderless and asexual. They are immortal and eternal beings; they don’t need to reproduce.”

“Of course,” he says, throwing his hands up and collapsing back on the couch. “How silly of me. Immortal and eternal.”

I can’t help but smile at him. He’s the same boy I fell in love with in philosophy class. His face has more wrinkles, and his joints are achier, but he is the same boy. He has the same mannerisms, the same frustrations with change — despite all the changes he’s seen in his lifetime. To be fair, this is a big change to accept, so I am patient with him.

He sits back up and looks at me. “Where did they come from? Aren’t fairies supposed to have wings?”

I ignore the second question for now. That part is going to come later, and I am dreading it.

“I was looking through the stuff Mamaw left me. I wanted some old Mason jars for the kitchen. The new valance I got for the patio door has a farmhouse vibe. It just felt like some jars would look nice with it, you know. Maybe put some sugar or coffee in them.”

He nods in a way that says he doesn’t care about the kitchen and that I should proceed with explaining the unconscious fairy in our living room.

“So, I remembered Mamaw had left me a box of old canning jars. I apparently had never gone through them. Thank God there weren’t any old green beans or pickles in there. Can you imagine? Anyway, I found them on the bottom row of one of the boxes.”

He sits for a few seconds, letting my explanation sink in and trying to formulate his next question. He stands and walks around the coffee table. He paces in front of the window that looks out onto the bay. The morning sun is already climbing the sky and casting long beams of light into our living room.

We moved into this house when I got the promotion to IT manager at the hospital. I had been driving thirty minutes both ways into Annapolis every day, but the promotion allowed us to buy a nice house on the water that was closer to my job. Franklin is a hairdresser, so he was able to move his business relatively easily. He lost a few regular clients in the process, but some of them still drove out to his new place, and it didn’t take him long to get new clients.

He continues to pace back and forth through the beams of light, and I want to say something that helps. “I know this is a lot to take in. You can ask me anything.”

“Wait,” he says. He stops and turns toward me, almost accusatory. “Why are you so calm?”

“I’m just as shocked as you are that we’ve had a fairy in our attic all this time, too,” I shoot back.

“The shocking part is not that the fairy has been squatting in our attic!” he practically shouts. “The shocking part is that fairies exist. Did you know that already?”

“Well,” I start cautiously. “Kind of.”

“You’ve known for the last thirty years that fairies existed, and you never told me.”

“No!”

“How do you know they are genderless?”

“I mean, I knew, I just . . .” I hesitate, trying to find the words.

“You just what?” he shouts, his impatience overflowing.

“I forgot.”

He looks at me, disbelieving, but his temper is settling back down. “You forgot,” he says, and I can’t tell if there is a question mark at the end or not.

“I forgot.” I say it with a hard stop. “And then when I found the jar, I just . . . I unforgot. Like all at once. It was like it was always there, not like a memory I suddenly could remember again. It was like I’d always realized it and hadn’t been paying attention to it for decades.”

Franklin is quiet for a long time. Then, slowly, he walks forward and kneels until his head is almost level with the dormant creature in the jar. I hear his knees pop, and he cringes just a little.

He looks up and stares at me for a long time. Now it’s his turn to read my mind. Finally, he says, “You know this one, don’t you?”

I nod.

“How?”

“I helped put them in there.”

1982

“What are we going to do with them?” I asked.

The fairy pounded on the side of the jar with their tiny fist. They looked like an angry little hornet. I could read the malice in their face long before I knew the word malice.

“We are going to make some luck for your daddy’s interview,” Mamaw said.

Daddy had dropped me off at Mamaw’s house at the beginning of the summer break a few weeks earlier. Mamaw’s house was outside Blacksburg, about three hours away from our apartment in Richmond. After Momma left, he had to take care of me by himself. His job at the grocery store wouldn’t let him change his schedule to pick me up from school.

“He’s ten years old,” I heard him tell Mamaw when he was dropping me off. “I can’t just leave him alone at home all day.”

“Have you heard anything from his momma?” Mamaw had asked.

He had looked at me on the other side of the room. “No,” he said, and then more quietly, “She’s not coming back, Momma.” Daddy never kept anything from me — but he knew the difference between being honest and being hurtful.

He had called a few weeks later to tell Mamaw about a job interview about twenty minutes from Mamaw’s house in Blacksburg. I’d have to change schools, but it wasn’t like I had a lot of friends anyway. Daddy didn’t know that part. I wasn’t as honest with him about everything as he was with me.

I leaned forward and tapped the jar. “How’s a fairy going to give Daddy good luck?”

Mamaw leaned over the smaller pot of boiling water. “I’ll show you.” She put a thick garden glove on her left hand — Mamaw was left-handed like me.

She walked over to the fairy in the jar and lifted it to look at them. The fairy was kicking the glass and shouting small noises that I was sure were obscenities. “You remember helping me can all those tomatoes last week?” she asked.

I nodded, and then fear struck me. “We ain’t going to run them through a foley mill, are we?”

“No, sweety, that was tomato sauce. I’m talking about when we canned whole tomatoes. Remember? What did we do first?” She walked over to the stove, loosening the string that held the sack over the mouth of the jar.

I thought back. She had pulled a chair up to the sink, and my job was to wash each of the tomatoes and pass them to Mamaw. Then she scored the bottom of each tomato with a knife and dropped them into the boiling water to blanch them. After they sat in the boiling water for about a minute, they each floated to the top. She would scoop the tomato out of the boiling water with a spoon, and with a gentle squeeze, the tomato would slide out of the skin, slippery and wet.

Mamaw reached into the jar with her small, gloved hand. She pulled out the fairy, holding them in her fist. They wiggled and bit at the thick glove hide, but Mamaw’s hands were stronger. I tried to predict her next step. Was she going to wash the fairy or skin it? I looked at the boiling water and ventured a guess. “Blanch it?”

She smiled, nodded, and tossed the fairy into the boiling water.

I gasped.

2022

“She boiled it?” Franklin asks with shock and disgust on his face. He is squatting beside the box of jars in the far corner of the attic. He has taken out every jar on the top layer and is slowly pulling out each remaining bottom jar, one by one, and checking them for other imprisoned fairies.

Mamaw had left me this box along with several of my favorite nick-nacks when she died in the early ‘90s. She’d left Dad the house, and he had lived in it until he died in 2013. I’d always thought that was a small blessing. I didn’t have to receive a “regretfully declines” on his RSVP to our wedding. The box had been in my bedroom at Dad’s house, in several storage units, and finally settled into our attic. All that time, the box was housing a tiny, sleeping, mythical creature.

“She blanched them. Remember, they’re immortal. The sudden hot water stuns them.”

“But why?” He takes out the last jar, which is thankfully empty.

“She told me it was more humane, but they’re also aggressive,” I say.

“They’re like the size of a hummingbird,” Franklin says. “How much damage can they do?”

“It’s not a hummingbird. Mamaw told me she once saw one kill a cow. But even if that’s not true, they are magic. They can make things happen. They know things that they shouldn’t be able to know.”

Franklin stands up and brushes the attic dust off his hands. “So they’re, like, psychic or something?”

I shrug. “They can answer questions they shouldn’t be able to answer. They change things they shouldn’t logically be able to change.”

“So, they’re genies? Then why weren’t your family billionaires?”

I shrug again. “It’s different. They do small things — small favors.”

Franklin starts laughing. “Favors! Why in the world would they do anything for someone who just tried to boil them?”

“It’s a trade,” I say quietly. I want to stop. I want to divert the conversation. I don’t want to go where this is going to go. But, like talking to my therapist, I can’t seem to stop my mouth. No matter how much I don’t want to, I need to say it. “If you give a fairy something they’ve lost, they owe you. They are indebted to you.”

Franklin looks at me for a long time. I wonder if he can feel my shame. “What do you give them?” he asks. “What have they lost?”

1982

The fairy floated to the top of the simmering water. Mamaw used a slotted ladle to scoop them out and lay them on a dish towel. My little heart raced as I looked at the limp figure. I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but I knew I didn’t want it to happen. I watched, breathless, as Mamaw used practiced fingers to lay them out flat. I saw sluggish movement in their limbs as Mamaw rolled the tiny creature over onto their belly.

And with a quick flick of her wrist, Mamaw plucked out the fairy’s wings.

2022

I can’t tell what Franklin is thinking because I am looking at my shoes. I see a tear fall from my own eyes and land on the dusty attic floorboards.

I hear him put some jars back in the box and then stand up. He puts his hand on my upper arm and leads me slowly downstairs. I feel the roles shift as he goes into nurturing mode. He sits me down on the couch and brings me a glass of water and a glass of wine. He goes back to the kitchen and comes back with a box of chocolates. He sits beside me, facing the petite, limp creature in the jar on the coffee table.

They don’t move. They don’t even breathe. It’s like they are dead, but Mamaw said they couldn’t die. “They aren’t hurting,” she said, “just locked in time.”

What’s forty years to an immortal being?

I sip my wine and eat three chocolate truffles before he speaks. “You can tell me anything you need to. You know that, right?”

I nod.

“And I will never stop loving you.”

I am still.

“And I will never stop loving you,” he repeats.

I nod.

“You were a child.”

I start to cry. “I saw her kill chickens too. Just grab them by the neck and a flick of her arm. She was a hard lady. It was how she lived her life.”

It’s Franklin’s turn to nod.

“She said they weren’t like us.”

“Is that what’s in the envelope?” Franklin points at the jar. “The wings?”

I lean in to look at the tiny wingless figure at the bottom of the jar. Naked and thin, they seem so harmless. I know that’s not true. They are dangerous, but that doesn’t mean they deserve this.

“The canning process stuns them, and the reduced oxygen keeps them unconscious until you open the seal.” I reach out and take the jar from the table. “I’ve never seen one released, but Mamaw told me about it. Said they’ll be fightin’ mad. I guess I’d be too.”

Franklin leans close to me and puts his hand on mine. He’s worried I’ll just unloose the lid and set them free. I hand him the jar because I’m not sure he’s wrong.

He drags his fingers over the glass. “So, what stops them from killing us like that cow once they’re free?”

I reach over and flick the envelope. “They want their wings back. Whoever has their wings holds power over them. And once you give them back, they’re indebted to you, so they can’t hurt you then either.”

“So what? You just make a wish?”

“A request,” I say. “You can ask them to make something happen.” I look at Franklin. “Like for you to get the job you’re interviewing for.”

“That’s why she made it?” Franklin asks.

“That’s why we made it. She wanted her son and grandbaby back home. She wanted to be able to take care of us since my mom wasn’t going to.”

Franklin raises the jar to look at the tiny bundle of magic. “They can really do all that?”

“In a hundred different ways.” I sniff and wipe my eyes on my sleeve. “They could tell you the right answers to the interview questions. They can make the interviewer like you more than any other applicants. They can give the other applicants flat tires on the way to the interview.” I pause and take a breath. “They can cause the other applicants to wreck their cars on their way to the interview.”

Franklin looked at me and then back at the fairy. “You can attack people with them?”

“Mamaw called it ‘malice.’ They can cause malice. But she said . . .” I let out a chuckle. “She said it’s wrong to use them that way.”

Franklin holds the jar differently now as if it might explode. He sets it down on the table carefully. “Well, what do we do with them now?”

1982

She slid the wings into the tiny envelope. It struck me as strange how gently she lowered the tiny limp body back into the empty jar. She put on a lid and then secured it with a band.

“You didn’t fill it with water, like with the tomatoes.”

She smiled. “Well, look at you! You were paying attention.” She suddenly grew serious. “Now listen, trying to can an empty jar is dangerous. It could explode.” She picked up an empty jar and quickly screwed a lid on. Then she lowered the empty jar into the water with a set of canning lifter tongs. I always called them “can grabbers.”

The jar bobbed on top of the water. She looked back at me with raised eyebrows. “That jar floats because it’s empty.”

She plucked the empty jar out of the canner with the tongs and then grabbed the jar with the limp fairy in the bottom. She carefully lowered the jar to the surface of the water. When she released it, the jar sank to the bottom of the simmering water.

She looked back at me. “Don’t ever mistake all that space for that jar being empty,” she said. “That jar is full. Packed full to the brim. It’s just that some of the stuff inside, we can’t see.”

She waited for me to nod my understanding. Then she started filling other jars with water, lidding and banding them, and putting them into the water, forming a circle around the fairy jar in the middle. She fastened the pressure–canning lid on top of the pot, then stepped back and wiped her hands on her apron.

“Now we wait,” she said.

“Are you sure this is okay, Mamaw?” I asked. “It won’t hurt them?”

2022

“I remember how she looked at me,” I say. “I remember her answer so clearly. It’s strange. I’ve always remembered her answer even though I couldn’t remember the fairy.”

1982

She said, “Maybe it hurts them some. But if it takes hurting something else to help you and your daddy, I’ll always do it. Every time.”

2022

“Was she a bad person?” I ask.

We’ve taken our wine and the jar out to the deck overlooking the water. The sun is on its way down the other half of the sky. I can hear the splashes licking against the bank below the deck. We had picked this house because Franklin loved the idea of being able to fish off the back deck. Just cast his line into the water without changing out of his PJs.

I didn’t realize until after we had moved in that the deck would also become my favorite place in the house. It’s where I go to think. It’s where we both turn off our day and look at the uncaring, unhurried nature. It lowered my blood pressure. It kept Franklin from cursing out more than one Karen who refused to tip. It kept us both centered.

Franklin is watching the swirls of pink edging into the sky, and I wonder if he even heard my question. I look at his face and realize he is just trying to find the right words to answer. I give him time.

“I don’t think anyone is all good or all bad. Or maybe we are all both good and bad,” he says finally. “But yeah. She did a bad thing. I’ve done bad things too.”

I have known him for thirty years. I know what his bad things are. I don’t ask, and we don’t talk about them.

“So have I,” I say. He knows what my bad things are. He doesn’t ask, and we don’t talk about them. “But at least I’m sorry for mine.”

He looks over at me. “No, you aren’t. Neither am I. Not for all of them. I’m just sorry for the ones that didn’t make the world any better. I’m sorry for the ones that made the world worse. Those are the ones I wish I could take back. Everyone owes someone an apology. The rocks I’ve thrown that needed throwing — I’m proud of every one of those.”

“Are you saying she hurt something else to try to help me, so they even out?”

He thought for a second. “No. I’m saying she hurt someone else, and she tried to help you. Those two things have to live together somehow.”

I pick up the jar from the little end table between us.

“So, what do I do with this little victim?”

1982

The pressure gauge climbed, and the weighted pressure–release valve wobbled on top of the metal pin, releasing tiny bursts of steam and maintaining just enough pressure to do the job.

Tomatoes could be canned without pressure in a water–bath canner. Mamaw used the pressure canner for green beans and meat. I finally asked, “Why are we using the pressure canner?”

“It gets hotter and forces more air out of the jar. It will make sure they stay asleep until you need them. But you have to be careful. If the pressure gets too high, it will crack the jar.”

I nodded. She checked the clock on the stove. “That should just about do it.” She turned off the heat, and with a long wooden spoon, she tapped the weighted pressure release, and the steam came rushing out with a hiss.

2022

It is more of a pop than a hiss as the air rushes into the jar for the first time in thirty years. The band is on the table between our deck chairs. I place the jar on the banister around the deck and lay the lid beside it.

Franklin had insisted on going in and getting both of us our thick winter coats for protection. “Those little arms and legs look sharp,” he’d said.

We watch as the figure lies still at the bottom of the jar. I worry they are dead. Maybe Mamaw was wrong. Maybe nothing can be immortal.

I see the leg wiggle.

Franklin approaches me from behind and takes my hand. “What are you going to ask them for?”

I look back at him, bewildered. “Nothing,” I say. “If I ask them for something, I’m not really setting them free. It’s just another form of imprisonment, isn’t it?” I look around at our home and then back at my husband. “Besides, I don’t need anything. I’m happy. There have been times in my life I needed this favor. Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t know I had it. There are times I definitely would have chosen malice.”

The miniature figure is slowly standing up and looking around, disoriented. They see Franklin and me. They lock eyes with me.

They remember me.

They look up at the mouth of the jar. The jar is twice their height. If they had their wings, it would be no problem at all for them to fly out. Even though they are still noticeably disoriented, I am amazed by the speed at which they scale the inside of the jar wall and stand on the lip.

I feel Franklin try to pull back, but I stand still. If they attack me, I deserve it. But I don’t think they will.

They look at me for a long time, and then their eyes flick down at my jacket pocket where the wings are stashed.

I pull out the tiny envelope and hold it. In a moment of weakness, I think of the things I could ask for. There is very little that I need in my life, but there are definitely some questions I wish I could have answered. Things I have asked for years.

I unfold the flap of the envelope. “I’m sorry,” I say. “What my grandma and I did to you was wrong.”

They nod sharply.

“Will you ever be able to forgive me?”

A quick sideways shake of the head.

I nod slowly. “I’m sorry.”

I open the envelope. I can see the glimmer of iridescence making the transparent skin on the wings burst with streaks of color. I extend the opened end of the envelope to the fairy.

They take the wings with the same flick of motion Mamaw used to pluck them out. With a jab over their head like a warrior resheathing a sword, the wings are reattached. The fairy examines them for a few seconds and then gives each wing an experimental wiggle.

Then with a dart of speed, they are in the air, hovering a few inches in front of my face. I wait for a strike, but none comes. They just stare at me.

With a look of revulsion, they kneel mid-air in a low bow.

I shake my head. “No,” I say. “I absolve you of all debt. You owe me nothing. I owe you a thousand more apologies.”

Their head turns sideways, appraising me. Maybe they’re searching for the loophole, the trap.

They slowly straighten upright again and start to back away.

“Before you go, can I ask you some questions? Of your own free will? You have no obligation to answer, and I have no right to ask. But this may be my only chance.”

They stop and continue to stare at me. I feel Franklin’s hand squeeze mine.

They nod.

They shake their head. I want to cry.

“She made more?”

They nod.

“Are they still out there?”

They are still for a long time. I remember what I said earlier. They are under no obligation to answer. I imagine they’re weighing the reasons I might be asking. Am I trying to accumulate more fairy jars?

Finally, they give a quick nod. My heart breaks. I want to ask how many, but I worry it might confirm their suspicions.

“I am so sorry,” I say. “I loved her, but she hurt you. I helped. She hurt others too. I’m sorry.”

They look at me, expressionless.

“Can you free them?”

This seems to surprise the tiny face. They look at me with curiosity. Finally, they nod.

“Will you free them, please?” I start to cry.

Through the haze of my tears, I see the tiny head nod.

I wipe my eyes on my thick coat sleeve and nod back. “Thank you.”

I have another question I desperately want to ask. A selfish question. But it isn’t a yes or no question, and I know the answers aren’t easy. I’m not sure I even want to know the answers. So I push it out of my head and ask a different question. A question that is still worrying me.

“Are you doing this of your own free will, or am I asking you a favor after all?”

They lock eyes with me, and it’s like they can see parts of me I haven’t shown to anyone, not even Franklin. The parts where they and I touch. The parts that have felt trapped and used.

They do not shake their head. They do not nod. They simply fly away.

1982

When the shouting stopped, Daddy told me to go upstairs and pack my bags. I’ve never heard him yell at Mamaw before. It was scary, and I worried I would never see her again. I worried she would be gone from our lives too. I didn’t think I could take that, but I did what he said.

I packed through tears. I could hear their words down the stairs. “This is wrong, and you know it.”

“I just want to help. You’ve both been through so much.”

“If I can’t make it on my own merit, Momma, then I don’t want it.”

I crept downstairs carrying my duffle bag. As we walked out the door, I looked back. Mamaw was sitting on the couch with the jar in front of her on the coffee table.

2022

We watch the sky darken as the sun sets behind us. The pinks and purples streak across the sky as our house casts a long shadow across the water. I sip my wine. Franklin has advanced to vodka and OJ. A “screwdriver,” he always insists on calling it with a smirk on his face.

“You think they’ll come back and kill us in our sleep?” Franklin asks.

“Maybe.”

He looks over at me with genuine concern.

“But probably not,” I finish. “If they wanted to kill us, they just had their chance.”

“You should have asked them where my other Narwhal sock is. I miss that thing.”

“I know, sweety, I know.” He is helping in the way he always helps me. He makes me smile.

I think of the question I really wanted to ask — the question I have always wanted to ask.

Why did she leave?

Daddy’s answers didn’t help. Mamaw’s answers didn’t help. Even when Momma reached back out to me later in life, her own answers didn’t help. She still calls now and again. Every third Christmas or so, she’ll send a card from somewhere else. She even came to Daddy’s funeral. But none of the answers ever helped.

Franklin can sense that I’m troubled.

“Are you still worrying if your grandma was a good person?”

Sometimes, the mind reading is less successful than others. I take his hand and squeeze it gently.

“No,” I say. “I know who my Mamaw was.”

1992

I knock on the door. I’m carrying the same duffle bag from when Dad stormed out ten years earlier. The door opens, and Mamaw pulls me into her arms.

I cry into her hair. She smells like comfort and warmth and hot buttered cornbread.

“Your daddy didn’t mean it, sweety. It’s just going to take him some time. Until then, you can just stay here with me.”

She rubs my heaving back with her strong, arthritic fingers. No quick twists, no flicks. Slow and soothing love.

“You are going to be okay,” she says. “You’ll be okay.”

END