“Momma isn’t that wacky,” Gennie muttered, clearly disappointed in our reaction to the outrage of Ella’s baby brother’s tub routine. “Is there any dessert for people who like dessert tonight? You said I could ask about dessert on Friday and it’s Friday so I’m asking.”
I shared a private grin with Shay as she stepped away from the table carrying the dishes. If there was anything I’d learned in living with her for the past two weeks it was that sheneededto help with preparing the meal or cleaning up from it.
“Are you a person who likes desserts?” I asked my niece.
Gennie drummed her fingers on the tabletop, her lips rolled inward and her eyes sparkling. She’d launched a case for dessert early in the week and pled it every chance she got. I found it odd considering there was no shortage of sweets from the bakehouse around here but then I realized it wasn’t a general request when she asked for tapioca pudding. She said Eva used to make it and tell stories about how her mother made it when she was a kid.
For the life of me I couldn’t remember anything like that, but apparently Eva did and now Gennie remembered it too.
Nyomi whipped up several batches of pudding and she was halfway in love with one of the recipes and threatening to put it into production to sell at the farm stand. I didn’t care about that but I was looking forward to unveiling this for Gennie tonight. It was nice being able to grant her a wish once in a while. So many of them were far outside the scope of my abilities. More than that, she deserved something good. I hadn’t received a single call from school this year to report bad behavior—or language. There hadn’t been any fights on the playground and the pirate talk was at a minimum during school hours.
“I’m always a person who likes dessert,” Gennie said, as outraged about this oversight as she was about Ella’s brother naked in the sink. “I’ve told you that a thousand hundred times!”
“That many?” Shay asked as she loaded the dishwasher. “And Noah still doesn’t know?”
“Not so fast,” I said, moving toward the fridge. “I might have something in here.”
“What is it?” Gennie asked, bouncing in her seat. “What is it, what is it, I have to know!”
“Hmm. Where did I put it? Maybe I forgot it over at the bakehouse.”
Shay grinned at me like I was a real pain in her ass with this ruse before turning back to the dishwasher. She had no clue how much I enjoyed beingherpain in the ass. I wasn’t sure she’d see it that way but I didn’t care. I could keep it to myself the same way I always did.
“I have to know,” Gennie wailed, both hands pressed to her cheeks and her mouth stretched wide in agony. “Don’t make me wait, Noah!”
“Oh, look,” I murmured. “Tapioca pudding.”
“Fuck yeah,” Gennie yelled. “Shay, my mom used to make this for me, and her mom made it for her. It’s my super best favorite.”
“I love that,” Shay replied. “What makes it your favorite?”
“Momma used to tell me about being a little girl and how she helped her mom make jam. She’d put a little raspberry jam on my pudding and swirl it around like this”—she scribbled a hand in front of her—“but she always said the jam from the store wasn’t as good as her momma’s jam.”
I brought the pudding to the table with a bowl and spoon, and I swallowed down the forty different reasons that story pinched at the last of my patience. Hearing about Eva’s experiences with our mother from Gennie was one of the most surreal and uncomfortable parts of being her guardian. I had to bury all trace of the battles that went down between my mother and sister when she still lived at home. I had to pretend my mother hadn’t turned her back on Eva after she moved out, or that Eva seemed to pride herself on refusing to be the one to reach out to the Reverend foryears. I had to let Gennie keep her memories intact, the ones that sounded like revisionist nostalgia, and never reveal the other side of those events.
“You should make pudding with jam when you have a little girl,” Gennie said to Shay.
A bunch of silverware clanked to the bottom of the dishwasher. “Sorry about that,” Shay called. “I just—it slipped and—and it’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
“When you have a baby,” Gennie continued, “you should make them pudding. Even babies can eat pudding. They don’t need teeth for pudding.”
I glanced at Shay but she was busy fishing out forks. “Let’s not worry about pudding for other people,” I said. “Pick the jam you want.”
Gennie bounded out of her seat and into the pantry, saying, “I already know I want mixed berry. It’s the best.” She slammed the jar down on the table. This child didn’t know her strength—or she loved making a fuck-ton of noise. Probably a bit of both. “Ginger peach is another best. And apricot. And tangerine marmalade. And—”
“Okay,” I interrupted. This could go on for hours. It was the price I paid for dragging her to all the farmers markets. “Mixed berry it is. How much do you want?”
Immediately, I recognized this to be a stupid question when Gennie replied, “Medium.”
“How much is medium?”
She brought her thumb and forefinger together. “This much.”
“That’s height. What about circumference?”
“She wants a teaspoon of jam,” Shay called from the other side of the kitchen. “Six-year-olds don’t understand circumference.”
“Do you think your baby will like jam or marmalade better?” Gennie asked Shay.
