Cherry Mustard

A core memory: Granddaddy’s barn, quaint, overrun with hay, with horse droppings and old baby dolls. Smelling like cloying dairy, as if about to sour, and earthy, like shit and grass. Burning her nostrils, clinging to her clothes, to her hair. 

Unpleasant. The kind of scent that burrows into your skin and never leaves. 

Even now, when the scent of bleach, limes, medication, and orange juice is strong, and the animals that once used to populate the Harker property are long dead, Mayann can still smell the barn, and she wishes she couldn’t. 

Wishes are useless. May Harker can’t control what she remembers. 

Case in point, Granddaddy sitting on an upside-down bucket, overalls undone, plain white undershirt dirtied, skirts across her brain. 

She was a little girl. 

She stood at the entrance of the barn, the hot, burning sun licking stripes of fire across her shoulders, over her neck. She felt meek, and she wasn’t sure if it was okay to be there, despite the fact that she spent so much of her time there beside her grandfather. 

It was impossible to tell. 

His face was hidden by the brim of a decaying straw hat he’d gotten as a birthday gift moons ago. 

Granddaddy was leaned forward, his face twisted in focus, reaching out dutifully for the udders of Sheva, a brown cow. 

Mayann watched, and waited, hoping she’d get a turn. 

His head tipped up after a long moment, as if he just realized that someone was watching him. His eyes swung over to her, and he squinted. He made out her form, and he smiled. 

Like always, he called her name, his head tipping up further, sweat coating his face, making a mess of it. The back of his hand slid over his forehead, brushing the hat, and his jowls hung like curtains. Dark moles sat under his eyes like sprinkled cinnamon, skin bags like rising dough full of yeast, the underbelly of his sclera red like overripe berries. 

The reddening was new. 

Granddaddy had been old all her life, but it really showed in the beginning of the end. It was something like the crest of a mountain, the climb, the climax, something like the tumble off the edge. 

It started first with the aches. 

He began to smell strongly of Bengay, of rubbing alcohol. His mouth smelled like pills, oranges, and tomato soup. There were torn painkiller packets on the floor, on the counters, littered on his bed, but only on his side, never Grammy’s. 

He liked to keep her side tidy and clean, prepared just in case she decided to come back. Like she could come back one day—breaking free of her wooden coffin in the dead of night, crawling out from under eight feet of grave dirt and stalking her way down the open roads just to reunite with him again. 

Granddaddy had big dreams. Mayann, despite not knowing much about love, didn’t fault him for it. 

In the end, his eyes are different. The whites of them are yellowed in an overt way, jaundiced, and there, at the corners, there’s a cherry vignette, blood vessels spider-webbing on top of his sclera. 

He looks something like a zombie. 

Like he’s already dead. 

But he isn’t. Mayann knows because of the faint sound of his wheezing, the slow push and pull of his weak breaths moving his body underneath the covers, and because despite it all, he calls for her. 

He opens his shaking palm as he lay on his bed, expecting her to take it. 

It’s not as bright outside as it once was. The sun does not shine as unrelentingly as it once did. Rays pour in through the window, spreading out over Granddaddy’s frail body, cascading over the floorboards, dust mites dancing in the weak cut of sunlight. It looks like it might become overcast soon. The clouds are beginning to gray, and the breeze is growing fiercer, the wind chime bells of the porch squealing in apprehension. 

It’s a dreary day to die. 

Mayann doesn’t want to take her grandfather’s hand. She doesn’t like the idea of taking his hand in private. Doesn’t like the idea of being a secret now. She’s older. She doesn’t steal cookies anymore and Mama doesn’t mark her height on the kitchen door anymore. She doesn’t need a stuffed monkey to fall asleep anymore. 

She isn’t stupid anymore. 

She knows what the word ‘bastard’ means, and she understands why as a child it made her feel uncomfortable inside. 

She understands why Granddaddy only showed her affection when her mother wasn’t looking. She knows that he wanted to prove a point, he wanted to die holding a grudge against his daughter, he wanted to die right, and honor his promises. 

Once, Mama had placed his food down on a Sunday. They had only moved back in with him for about a week. 

Mama cooked a good spread. 

Sweet yams, fried chicken, white long grain rice, a yellow cornbread muffin with cracked, honeyed crust, everything fresh, everything hot. 

She worried her lip into a sore as she prepared it all.

Mayann remembers Granddaddy had grumbled something. 

Something like, “Wanted beans. Told the girl to run to the store.” 

Mama said to him, her voice splitting with simmering anger and anxiety, “It was rainin’.” 

“She ain’t got a coat?” He asked. 

Mama had shaken her head, and Granddaddy, recognizing it as a weak spot on her armor, continued, “You don’t got five dollars to buy her a coat?” 

“You know we’re low on money,” Mama stuffed a piece of cornbread in her mouth, but she didn’t swallow it. 

“Heh.” 

Chewed sugar was caked into Granddaddy’s teeth, clinging to his wet gums, and Mayann could hear the food sliding down his throat. Yams were his favorite. 

As was chicken. 

He liked to crack their necks and skin them. He liked to let Mayann watch. When Audrey and Pat, Mayann’s cousins, came over, it was different. He never showed them. They didn’t understand. They were haughty, and they went to private school. 

“I told you he wasn’t no good, Celeste.” 

“Pa—” 

“I goddamn told you to marry a boy from the town, like your sister. Pam don’t got no problems. Kurt does what needs to be done for her and them kids,” He said, biting a chunk of meat off the bone. “I goddamn told you. But you didn’t listen to me and now look where it got you. Not even one goddamn cent, you. You never cooked for me before, now you’re some kinda chef? Now you’re buttering me up like I’m a turkey on thanksgiving. Like I’m smack in the middle of the table.”

“I’m doin’ what I have to.” Is all Mama said. 

“Just like you had to run off with that Peters boy? Just like ya had to else… what’d you tell me? Ya had to run off else you’d never live? Else ya wouldn’t never feel free? What’s freedom got ya?” He’d asked. “Except a bastard and hard feet from standing up all day.” 

Mama hadn’t said anything. 

“The girl’s sick all the time. She likes to watch me kill the animals. Gets excited when the bones crack,” he said, like it was an issue. 

Yet, he looked at Mayann out the corner of his eye. 

He winked like it was their inside joke. Like Mayann was fine with him making jokes at her expense, like she accepted the fact that her existence was a source of conflict for her mother and her grandfather, and it would probably never be much more. 

Now, Granddaddy can hardly move. 

His fingers twitch. 

His cherry mustard eyes blink languidly, and Grammy’s empty side of the bed is littered with mucus stained tissues, and lonely prescription pills. 

Mayann couldn’t get her mother to come. 

Mama said she had no reason to go, but Mayann saw it clear on her face that she was scared. Mama had never been good at handling death, and she was even worse at handling her parents. Mayann briefly thought Mama might’ve been happy to come, to see the root of her pain cut loose just to shrivel away and die. 

But here, as Mayann stands, staring at Granddaddy’s palm, hearing the ghost of his bitter words in her head, and remembering the glint in his eyes when they’d milk cows together—or pluck birds together, or sit outside, drinking cold, spiked lemonade, hitting away mosquitoes, belly laughing at old stories, and watching the sun go down—Mayann thinks she understands why Mama didn’t come. 

Granddaddy’s voice croaks. It cracks on the two syllables of her name. Mayann takes his hand and it’s warm. 

She sits on the edge of the bed, shutting her eyes against the gradual downpour of rain. 

She sits on the edge of the bed, with her hand inside Granddaddy’s until the sun disappears behind thick storm clouds. 

Until the hand inside her own stiffens.