That’s when I saw it. Tucked away in the dusty corner where the oven had stood, pressed against the cabinet wall, a slim, unassuming black box with rusted edges. “What’s this?” I whispered to myself.
I felt Gabriella’s warm presence behind my shoulder as I approached the box and gently slid it out from the cabinet, leaving a dusty outline.
“Dang, that’s been sitting here forever,” she remarked.
“You mean since, like, 1999?”
“Right! Ancient!”
“I was joking,” I said.
“Oh. Sorry.”
I turned the box over to find only more black tin. No writing, no engraving. It might have been a cashbox? A cigar box?
“Open it, Ms. Joyce,” Gabriella urged.
I sat at the table, and she hovered so close that spirals of her hair brushed against my face.
I laughed. “Have a seat, girl.”
She scooched one right next to me, holding her breath.
My heart raced, unsure of what we would find in Grandma Jewel’s private business.
Had my father known about this box?
Slowly, I unlatched the mystery, careful not to damage the hinge. The first thing I saw was two folded stacks of money—wrinkled twenty-dollar bills on top—with dried-out rubber bands clinging to them.
Gabriella sang out, “Snap! Your grandma was ballin’, baby!”
A musty smell arose as I laid the money in the top portion of the box. Then I gasped at the sight of the book that lay beneath. The green background had faded, but the cover text remained legible. “The Negro Travelers’ Green Book.”
“What the heck?” Gabriella asked.
“It’s a Green Book. A list of places where it was safe for Black people to stop and get gas or stay while they traveled across the country,” I explained. Honestly, I was afraid to touch it. The brittle, yellowed edges of the document seemed too sacred for human hands.
Gabriella obviously did not feel the same. She reached for the booklet.
“Careful, careful,” I warned.
She complied, slowing her movements, opening the first page as though unfolding a fragile piece of history. “Wow.”
I appreciated her reverence for this artifact, for my grandmother’s property.
Suddenly, a packet of papers slipped out. We both scrambled to catch it before it hit the ground. And again, Gabriella did the honors of opening the papers.
“It’s a list of foods for traveling.” By the spark in her eyes, she had found the Holy Grail. “What? Wait…because they couldn’t eat at most restaurants.”
“Right,” I confirmed.
She peeled off the top page from the papers and put a hand over her mouth. “It’s a recipe for fried chicken.” She looked at the second and third pages as well. “Pound cake. Spiced nut mix. Anything with potatoes or beans. All things that didn’t take much space, either. This is amazing.”
“It is,” I agreed.
“This is why I love cooking. So much history.”
When she got to the last page of my grandmother’s insert, Gabriella let out a “Oooh! She’s got names. And a ledger. See?”
