My Aunt Put Our Belongings Outside Before Serving Her Guests Lunch

My aunt put my son's schoolbooks beside the garbage, then raised a glass to the grandmother whose house she said we would never enter again.

By lunch, she had changed the locks.

By supper, a woman with a blue folder would make her ask for a chair.

That morning, though, I stood on a wet sidewalk in Bellmere, Louisiana, holding a bag of frozen peas against our milk.

It was all I could think to save from the fridge.

I was thirty-one, with brown skin, a crooked black braid, and white work shoes that never stayed white.

I cooked breakfast at a public school. My shift started at five. I had left my eight-year-old, Noah, with our upstairs neighbor before work, just as I always did.

Now our shirts hung from grocery bags on the fence.

Noah sat beside them with his backpack on his knees.

"Mrs. Wren waited until you came," he said. "She didn't leave me alone."

Mrs. Wren stood in her doorway across the courtyard. She looked ready to bite somebody.

My aunt Celia had a silver bob, pale pink nails, and a cream suit with gold buttons.

She held the new keys.

"You could have called," I said.

"And listened to you cry? Elise, this place needs to be empty."

"We live here."

"Your grandmother let you stay. That's different."

The building had a washhouse downstairs and two small apartments above it. Grandma June had run the washhouse for thirty-four years. Noah and I had moved upstairs when my husband left, five years before.

I paid Grandma $525 every month. I cleaned the machines after my school shift. When her hands grew stiff, I cooked her supper and counted the quarters with her.

She had died nineteen days earlier.

Her tomato plants still had fruit on them.

"There hasn't even been a hearing," I said.

"There's a petition. I'm her daughter. You're her granddaughter. Work it out."

My mother, Grandma's other daughter, had been dead for twelve years.

Celia said the word granddaughter as if it meant guest.

Noah lifted a paper sack.

"She said I could keep the cookbook."

It was Grandma's green one, held together with clear tape. Inside the cover, she had written my mother's cornbread recipe.

"You can keep it," I told him.

Celia checked her watch.

"The remembrance lunch starts at noon. Don't bring this attitude. I'm paying for everyone."

"Then pay for a room for us."

She looked at the peas in my hand.

"You earn money. Manage it."

She drove away before I could answer.

Mrs. Wren carried our milk inside. Her apartment had one bedroom and a couch too short for me, but she made room without asking how long.

I called the number on Celia's petition. A clerk told me where to get a copy. She could not tell me what to do.

I had $286 in checking. The cheapest motel I called wanted $91 for one night, plus a deposit.

"We can sleep here," Noah whispered.

"Tonight," Mrs. Wren said firmly. "And tomorrow, if we need to."

I thanked her, then went to that lunch.

I wanted the keys. I wanted witnesses when I asked for them.

The lunch was in a rented church hall. Paper magnolias sat beside Grandma's photo. Celia had ordered chicken, rice, and a white cake with June's name in blue icing.

I had made that same meal for Grandma on the night before she died.

Celia tapped her glass.

"Mama believed in helping people help themselves," she said. "Some people mistook that help for a lifetime promise."

Faces turned toward me.

Noah pushed his plate away.

I stood.

"You put our things outside. Give me the keys so I can get our papers."

"Sit down, Elise."

"His birth certificate is in the desk. My work papers are there."

"Then make an appointment."

Somebody at the back stopped cutting cake.

Celia smiled at the room.

"Mama left expenses, not a prize. There is no will. I won't support another grown woman who refuses to stand on her own."

Noah slid off his chair. I thought he was going to cry.

Instead, he opened the cookbook.

"What about this?"

He held up a folded postal receipt. A business card was tucked inside it.

Grandma had written on the back in her heavy, slow hand.

Elise. If you need help with the building, call Della. She has my will.

I read it three times.

Then I took Noah into the hall and called.

The woman who answered asked where I was. When I told her, she went quiet.

"Stay there," she said.

Forty minutes later, Celia was packing leftover chicken when the hall door opened.

A woman in a raincoat walked in with a blue folder under her arm.

"Celia Bell? I'm Della Price."

My aunt's hand stopped over the foil tray.

"I prepared June's will," the woman said. "Why have you told these people she didn't leave one?"