CHAPTER ONE
Betsy
Thank heavens for cloth seats.With all the sweating I’m doing I would slip and slide right off leather. I hang most of my arm out the window of my old Honda Pilot and beg for a cool breeze since my AC went out somewhere around Texarkana. All I get is a giant bug smacking me so hard I have to grip the wheel a little tighter to stay on the road. Shoot, that could have been a dang bird.
Doesn’t help that it’s the middle of summer in the South with nary a breeze in sight. As a West Coaster, born and raised, we just don’t understand heat on a spiritual level like people from the South. This is just about ten degrees off from the surface of the sun. If there’s a sauna in hell, I guarantee they modeled it after the weather they’re having in northern Mississippi right now.
Which is funny because the town I just moved out of is called Hell and the town I’m moving to is Heaven. Seems they flip-flopped their weather.
I have to swipe my hand across my forehead again to keep the sweat from dripping into my eyes and stinging like the devil. Nana knows I’m supposed to arrive this morning, so I zoom on past a lonely Stop & Go, even though I imagine they’d have ice-cold energy drinks and fruit slushies that would take the edge off this heat. I’m here to help Nana in her old age, not cause her worry.
A four-way stop up ahead has me pumping the brakes. They’re doing that funny thing again where sometimes they brake and sometimes they don’t. I’ve taken the car in three times to have it looked at, just to be told the brakes are fine. Brakes that don’t actually brake don’t sound fine to me, but I’m no mechanic.
I manage to stop, look both ways, and then creep into the intersection. This ol’ gal takes a bit to get back up to speed on these two-lane highways, but she gets it done eventually. Signs of civilization on either side of the road have me forgetting all about the sweat dripping down my back. My head swivels left and right to take in the not-so-familiar sights.
I’ve visited Nana before, of course, it was just a long time ago. Thirteen-year-old me didn’t much care for landmarks. I was too busy sucking on a RingPop and singing Usher and Alicia Keys at the top of my lungs while the adults talked about boring things like directions and gas prices and zoning law changes.
My phone chirps out directions, which I’m grateful for. I don’t think I could find Nana’s house without it. A second four-way stop, right in the heart of downtown Heaven, serves as a major problem. The brakes aren’t braking, not even with my special pumping action that usually does the trick. I shrug and hope for the best, which is a bit how I approach most things in life.
I keep pumping because what else am I going to do. My thigh muscles scream at the overuse, but I sail right throughthe intersection. An oversized white truck is catty-corner to me, stopped at the stop sign like one is supposed to do. It’s his turn to go, but then there’s me, barreling through with a whoop and a holler.
The driver looks to be about my age, his own window down and his elbow resting on the door. He lifts his hand as if to say, what the fuck? I give him a smile as I whizz on by, along with my middle finger extended above the roofline of my vehicle.
“Don’t let the door out of town hit ya where the good Lord split ya!” a male voice calls out above the sound of my clunking engine.
My mouth drops open and I swivel around to see the guy leaning halfway out his truck to holler angrily at me. Then I explode into laughter—I mean, come on,where the good Lord split ya??—and focus on the road ahead of me. Nana’s turn is up ahead. So much for good ol’ Southern hospitality.
The brakes decide to work again and I safely make the turn, bumping over the rough road. New asphalt has been laid in the potholes, one patch at a time, but somehow the end result is worse. My phone, perched in a holder as it gives me directions, falls off the dash and slides somewhere on the floor of my car. The directions are muffled now, but it’s okay. I remember this road and the house with the two cement lions at the base of the driveway. Nana lives in the next house, the one with gray-blue shutters and a lightly stained front door beneath squares of stained glass. I roll to a stop and climb out, pulling my clothes away from my sweat-soaked body and fanning myself.
“Betsy Mae? Is that you?” Nana calls from the porch, her little head poking out the front door. Her closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair is fully white now, curled within an inch of its life. She’s squinting hard behind her thick glasses.
“Hi, Nana!” I call back, reaching into the back seat of my car to grab a single suitcase that holds all my earthly belongings.
I roll that sucker over the bumpy walkway to her porch and then let it go to pull her into a hug. Somehow, at just five foot four, I’m still taller than Nana. She smells like sugar and mothballs, a scent that takes me back to my youth. Her arms are strong as she hugs me back, but I’m sure to be gentle with her as she feels so bony and frail.
“You know, most people call me B now,” I say as we both pull back to look at each other.
“Oh heavens, Icain’tcall you B!” Nana places her hand on her chest like I’ve startled her so badly she’s worried about her health. “I’m Betsy Sue and you’re Betsy Mae. Period.”
I bite back a smile. Same old Nana. An opinionated proper Southern belle to the very end. “When you make it to eighty, I think you can call people whatever you want. It’s like a cosmic rule.”
Nana slides her hand through my arm and tugs me inside the house. I toss a wayward glance at my suitcase, but Nana doesn’t play. I’ll have to remember to come back outside and fetch my suitcase at some point.
“Are you calling me old, Betsy Mae?”
I close the door behind us and lock it, trying to keep up with Nana. She moves fast for a woman her age. I sigh in relief as the air-conditioning hits my overheated skin. “I would never, Nana.”
She tugs me into the kitchen where I smell the cookies before I see them. My favorite: cowboy cookies. Nana smiles up at me like she knows all my secrets, even though we haven’t visited each other in over ten years. We still talk on the phone every few months, but I haven’t been the most attentive granddaughter.
That all changes now.
“You should insist everyone call you Betsy at the very least. Betsy Mae if you really want to be proper.” Nana pulls out a barstool and plops down onto it, gesturing for me to join her onthe one next to her. “And while you’re at it, you should be fixin’ to change that god-awful last name too.”
I grab a cookie right off the cooling rack and take my time with a huge bite. My eyes close of their own accord. “Oh heavens,” I mutter, melted chocolate and sugar and doughy warmth exploding in my mouth. “You should sell these.”
“Pftt.” Nana swats her hand through the air. “Sellin’ ’em would just take the fun out.”
And that right there is a major difference between the West and the South. In California, if it was good, it was monetized. Hell, even if it was mediocre at best, someone would find a way to make money off of it. Here in the South, Nana feels like the very best things in life can’t have a price tag or they’d be ruined.
