“I wouldn’t be happy, either,” I replied, glad for the distraction.“That’s a lot of cooking and laundry. Who did he expect to watch all of them while he was out traveling across the world?”
His eyes furrowed. “Zeus didn’t travel.”
“No?”
“No. He’s, like, thebiggod in Greek mythology. He didn’t have to travel anywhere because he’s everywhere. Maybe you’re thinking about Odysseus. That guy traveled all over the Mediterranean Sea trying to get back home to his wife.”
“I stand corrected.”
“Grandma, do you believe in God?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then why don’t you go to church anymore?” he asked with genuine curiosity.
Back when I was a child, we didn’t ask grown-ups questions. They told you what to do, you did it, and there was little conversation outside of those directives. My father would sometimes entertain my inquisitions, much to my mother’s chagrin. She wasn’t raising a daughter who didn’t know her place, which is to say she wasn’t raising a sassy, contrary little girl who made people feel uncomfortable. “No man wants a disrespectful wife,” she’d say.
Elijah wasn’t being socialized as a girl, but he was still a child, and my mother would have cringed at him questioning me as well as the question itself. Not because it was about God, but the fact that he’d wondered if I believed in God because I hadn’t taken the boy or myself to church. I didn’t grow up in one of those families that practically lived in the sanctuary, but we were regular members with a decent attendance record and a huge white Bible with gold trim perched on the living room coffee table.
“I don’t know, Elijah. I guess I haven’t really thought about church much lately. Not since I moved.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“But I do believe in God,” I clarified for the record.
“Cool. Me, too. Not Zeus god.RealGod.”
“Cool,” I echoed his calm and collected nature.
I prayed he wouldn’t ask me to take him to church while in Robin Creek. Me and God had…let’s call it a “falling-out” recently. I still talked to Him in a thankful, reverent way. I just didn’t like how He’d set up the whole entire world with women on the bottom, and it seemed everyone—Him included—was perfectly fine with us carrying the world on our shoulders. From birthing babies to carrying water pails to being stuck in loveless marriages because most of the female-dominated careers are front line and low paying…yeah. I had a chip on my shoulder. And going through the divorce wringer squeezed a lot out of me, including my faith in people, in the general goodness of humanity. Faith in myself.
Thankfully, Elijah didn’t say anything more about church or God or anything in that neighborhood.
When our food arrived, we decided the temperature outside was so pleasant, we might as well eat in the car. This was yet another childhood rule broken.
“Grandma, this food is not like Gabriella’s.”
I gasped. “I know, right? Yesterday, I ate lunch with a friend at a nice little café. Those people have nothing on Gabriella.”
“Man, I really need her to come home.”
“Me, too, EJ.”
“When are we gonna get the stove? She said she’s gonna show me how to make old-fashioned cinnamon toast.”
My mouth watered already. I could live on oven-made cinnamon toast, and I was certain Gabriella had a Blaxican twist that wouldtake it to another level. No matter what she and Lorenzo were up to in their no-outsider zone, I was certain of one thing: She was still cooking up masterpieces, which meant he was the beneficiary of all her good cooking while Elijah and I were reduced to fast food.
But I couldn’t “interfere.” I reminded myself that Gabriella was twenty-six. Not a baby. Grown enough to have lived with her boyfriend before she met me, and grown enough to move out on her own and pay my rent. Eating amazing food had been a bonus. So had her sweet laugh and her silly jokes, and the way she’d embraced Elijah like he was her little brother.
“We’ve gotta get that oven” slid out of my mouth.
“Let’s get it,” he said while chomping on his last french fries.
“Get what?”
“The oven. Let’s go buy it, and maybe Gabriella will come home,” he said.
“I don’t think—”
