Chapter 4: Alessia
“Hi, Grandma! It’s just Aly!” I call as I walk through the front door of her home where I’ve been staying.
I hate it here. Okay, that’s probably a little extreme. I’m grateful for the place to live, I love my grandma, but I miss having my own space. And the place smells like incense, mothballs, and the bad decisions of my youth from that one summer I lived here. But most of all, it reminds me of all the things I thought I’d have by now, but don’t. Of all the decisions I made that feel wrong now.
When I was fourteen, my mom decided she couldn’t handle me anymore. I don’t blame her. She was a single mom, and I was ahandful.So, she sent me to spend a summer in Brookhaven with my grandma thinking that’d knock some sense into me.
I spent those three months in this house, sleeping in the attic to“teach me a lesson about gratefulness and the sacrifices that the women in my family have made for my future.”
All I learned was that I hate incense, and the attic is totally haunted. Thankfully, it’s a nice ghost that became my best friend that summer, but still, it’s a ghost—and I’d rather notbe back here and instead be standing on my own,livingon my own. Yet here I am… one month into my new roommate situation with grandma and barely holding on to my sanity most days.
“In here, Mija!” she calls back to me from what sounds like the dining room. I wander into the kitchen first, grab an apple, and bite into it before rounding the corner and then my world goes into full-on choke mode, coughing, spitting, eyes watering, all of it when I see there’s a man sitting next to her.
“Alessia, dear, what are you doing?” my grandma asks annoyance threaded through her tone.
I can’t stop coughing now. A piece of apple peel feels stuck somewhere it shouldn’t be just out of reach for my tongue to get rid of. I pound my chest and stomach, hoping that helps but it does nothing.
Why do people say whole apples are safer for toddlers to consume? Shouldn’t they be cut into thin slices or something? That feels much less dangerous. Whatever the proper cutting standard is, I should’ve gone with that, because right now, I’m choking and panicking, and the panicking is making the choking worse which means I’m hardly breathing now.
The man sitting next to my grandma stands quickly, his large legs move until he’s behind me, hands moving to my stomach, and then suddenly he’s giving me the Heimlich.
I’m full blown crying now, and the situation gets even worse when a piece of apple finally shoots out of my throat so violently, it smacks into my grandma’s favorite dish cabinet. It’s the one she swears she brought with her from Cuba and one of her most prized possessions.
Finally, I can breathe again.
The man pats me gently on the shoulder, “Dios te bendiga,”he murmurs softly,before returning to my grandma’s side. She looks at me, less than impressed with my near-death experienceas I rub at my sore neck and chest.
“That was a bit dramatic, don’t you think?” she finally says.
“Dramatic?” I gasp, still trying to catch my breath. “Grandma, I almostdied. Do you realize if I died in your dining room from choking on an apple, you’d then havetwoghosts haunting this place?”
She sighs heavily, and I swear if my grandma were an eye-roller, hers would be permanently lodged in the back of her head now that I live with her.
“Take a seat, mija, now that you are done with the theatrics.”
I slump into an empty chair, swiping at my ruined mascara and trying to pull myself back together from that close call.Theatrics, sheesh!
Seeing her sitting there with a stranger is what had me choking in the first place. I’ve never seen my grandma with a man before. In fact, I don’t even know who my grandfather is because he left her shortly after my mother was born.
The man sitting next to her whispers something in her ear softly that has her smiling. And that’s when I realize she’s not just smiling at him, she’sgiggling. The last time I saw her this giddy was after she’d had a few too many rums during Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance.
“What’s going on Abuelita?” I ask cautiously.
Her expression shifts in an instant—from scowling at me to a smile so warm it could light up the room. That Latina charm is all over her right now and I know it’s where I got my personality from too.
“Alessia, my granddaughter, this is Eduardo, my new partner.”
“Your… your partner?” I taste the words on my tongue, trying them out like I’m learning how to speak for the first time. “So, you’re starting a business?”
“No, dear, he’s mypartner.”
“Partner in crime?”
She rolls her eyes this time, and I swear a vein pops out of my forehead watching it. I’ve never, ever,everseen my grandma use sarcasm or let her smile falter in the face of someone she’s trying to impress.
“Alessia,” she says, emphasizing my full name like only she does, since everyone else mostly calls me Aly, “Eduardoes mi novio.” (My boyfriend)
I freeze. Yeah, my grandma, Yamila Martinez, is a beautiful woman. In my opinion, one of the prettiest I’ve ever seen. I got her large, round, brown eyes and thick, dark, curly hair.
