| Contents > Coffee at Nanna’s by Danuta Shaw |
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“Where was I when you come?”
“I don’t know, Nanna. Would you like milk?”
Nanna shakes her head, trying to remember something very serious. “No sugar, just milk… I was home all day.” She reflects. She holds her shaky hand to her chin, and I can see blue lines bulge under translucent arms. “I went for milk… Yes… I went for milk.” She looks up at me, clearly and directly, as if she has had an epiphany. “Danuta, I went for milk, and so I wasn’t here when you came.
“You didn’t come on Wednesday, because I went for lunch.” She smiles, again her eyes are young, coquettish, playing with me. “They come and take me.”
“At the Polish House,” I nod.
“No.” Now I am in trouble for not listening. “No, we went to the Club. For lunch…”
“Who with, Nanna? Aunty Teresa? Mum was at work?” I am trying to have a conversation, and that is not the way things happen in my family.
“I told you. The people from the Polish House… We went for lunch… It was good. You couldn’t see me then because I wasn’t home.”
“Yes, Nanna.” I pour hot water, the milk, and stir the coffee. I ask her if she has eaten – she never does anymore. I make her toast and cover it with cream cheese she buys from Aldi. She is living the life of an old aged pensioner: too much time on her own, diabetes, and not enough money to buy Philidelphia Cheese. I cut her toast into three parallel slices, thinking about how nice it is to cut toast for somebody. When I was scared in the middle of the night, Nanna used cook me sweet dumplings.
I place the coffee and the toast in front of her. “Aldi is a good brand. They make it like in Eu—rope.” She weighs the word as if it is the name of a lover, or as if she is saying that her mother’s cooking is better than anything she has ever tasted. “I like it!” More sing-song tones: more memories and childhoods.
“So, what you do?”
We are at the table, and this time she looks at me seriously. Now is the time to answer.
“I’ve been working,” I tell her again. “I saw Mum on the weekend. Just kid stuff mainly.”
“You got good kids. I remember Alexis, when he was little, he sat outside with Michael and told him so many things. Michael say, ‘Where he learn these things.’ Children not learn these things at school, I think. I think he must be very clever. Why not he come anymore?”
Nanna fiddles with her toast as she speaks, and only stops to take a bite. I look at her, and I can see the string of life pulling her back into the past. There was a time when she went to a lot of funerals. There are not so many, any more. People she would not have spoken to when she was younger are now her friends by virtue of longevity; visits from great-grandsons are missed. They should come over more often, so she can tell her friends how tall and clever they are.
“He is a smart boy, at a good school. What he doing?”
“I’ll tell him to come over,” I say.
She nods. “Good.”
I have finished my coffee while Nanna is barely half-way through, still I stand and make another. I like being alone with her. She might say bad things behind my back, but I rarely rehear the words we have spoken. Sometimes I do hear judgments that she refused to pass in front of me, but that she would feel in her heart.
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| Contents > Coffee at Nanna’s by Danuta Shaw |