It was cold on the way to Grandma’s house. Mom had plucked Tye and Jordan from their beds at some still-nighttime hour of the morning and loaded their drowsy, pajama’d bodies into the van. She placed a chalky government-issued breakfast bar on each of their laps, kissed their foreheads and slumped into the driver’s seat with a sigh that sounded like it was intended to be her substitute for coffee. It was a four-hour drive, and Mom refused to start the journey any later. Tye went straight back to sleep once she started driving, but Jordan stared glazed-eyed out the window. He peeled the thin plastic around his breakfast bar and started gnawing on it. Chunks crumbled off and sat flavorless on his tongue. He imagined he was eating a big stack of pancakes; the kind Dad used to make years ago. He would put a fancy blueberry sauce on top that made them taste like Grandma’s blueberry pie. In his hunger, Jordan was beginning to miss those pancakes almost as much as he missed Dad.
Grandma’s house was always full of junk. Her hoarding had come in handy, though. Her freezer was stocked to the brim with food. Everyone in the city burned through their freezers after the grocery stores closed down, and Grandma lived far enough from the city to avoid getting robbed. This meant that she now owned a small deep-frozen fortune that Mom was about to inherit.
Jordan watched his window view slowly change from walls of gray buildings and streetlights to an open expanse of unfamiliar darkness. The only light came from the van’s dashboard. The only sound came from the smooth rumble of the tires on the road and the soft clatter of empty suitcases in the trunk. The lack of city lights and noises made him uneasy. After about an hour, the sun rose. He stared at it, slowly letting his cornea fry as the summer warmth began to take hold of the day.
After a while, Tye woke up. His left eye opened, then his right, but even that stayed half-closed. He swung his head to the left to look at his brother.
“How clos’re we?” he asked.
“I dunno,” Jordan replied, not looking away from the window.
“Mom!” said Tye, “How much longer?”
“Two hours,” she exhaled, “Eat your bar.”
Tye made a sound that was a cross between a whine and a grunt.
Eventually, Jordan began to see buildings. The morning sun shone down on Grandma’s neighborhood two short rows of large, old houses. Mom pulled into the driveway of a salmon-colored mini-mansion with an overgrown flower garden. Jordan wouldn’t have known this one was Grandma’s if not for the pink mailbox at the end of the driveway with a peacock painted on it. When he was eight, he had thought it was pretty, but now, at his big age of twelve, it just looked tacky. Tye was eight now, and Jordan wondered what he thought of it.
“Woah!” said Tye, ogling the mailbox.
Jordan soon realized that Tye was not appreciating the mailbox, but rather a grasshopper resting on top of it.
They hauled the three big suitcases up the leaf-ridden steps, and Mom rang the doorbell. They waited a moment and heard shifting and clanking within the house.
“I’m coming!” they heard Grandma say in her familiar sing-songy voice.
The door flung open and the unyielding scent of mothballs hit their faces. Grandma spread her arms wide to yank both Tye and Jordan into a tight hug. She grasped onto their shoulders with surprising strength and took a step back to gawk at them. They gawked right back at her. She was significantly thinner, and her dark brown skin looked splotchy and loose on her long face. Her eyebrows were nearly gone, which made her eyes pop. They were slightly yellow, but still filled with that ferocity Grandma always had.
“Boy, you kids are stretchin’!” she barked before pulling them further into the house and welcoming Mom inside.
“Corinnn,” she smiled sweetly.
Mom deflated into her arms and whispered “Hi, Mommy.”
As the two women hugged, Jordan and Tye stood awkwardly, watching their mother turn into a little girl for a moment. Grandma ended the hug by slapping Mom on the back.
“So you’ve joined the dead husband club, huh,” she declared with a laugh.
The air became thick with all the words Mom chose not to say. She gave a slight chuckle and Jordan wondered if Grandma’s sense of humor was the reason they only visited her every few years.
Grandma led them through her junkyard of a hallway to the kitchen, where three big sandwiches were waiting. Real meat and fresh vegetables. She no longer had the strength to care for her garden, so these were from the local farmer’s market. It was the only one for miles. Jordan had seen it on TV: people lined up to enter the white-walled fortress that imprisoned rows of produce and farm animals. The boys ate quickly and without saying a word. Mom took small bites and complained to Grandma about the city while also trying to convince Grandma to move in with them before she became bedridden.
After eating, Mom sent the boys downstairs to begin sorting through the freezer, while she talked with Grandma upstairs.
“Don’t worry about taking too much, I’ll be dead soon anyway!” Grandma laughed as they headed downstairs.
As the boys dug through the frozen treasure trove, tossing box after bag after box into the suitcases, Tye came across something. It was a shallow bowl, made of what looked like pizza dough.
“What’s this?” he asked, holding it lazily in his hand, ready to toss it into the “leave” pile.
A memory flashed in Jordan’s mind. The last time they had visited Grandma— four years ago. A summer afternoon. Mom, Dad, Tye and him sitting on the backyard porch. Waiting anxiously for Grandma to return with pie made with fresh berries from her garden. The special blueberry pie that Dad later mimicked in his pancakes.
“It’s the bottom part for pie! Maybe there’s frozen blueberries to use,” Jordan said, diving into the freezer. Tye gasped and joined in.
He found frozen mangoes, strawberries, pineapples, peaches, and even blackberries, but no blueberries.
“Damn!” Jordan said, throwing the bag of frozen blackberries at the ground.
“We don’t say that word!” said Mom, startling him. She stood rigidly at the top of the basement stairs.
“Sorry,” Jordan said. He said ‘sorry’ as frequently as he said ‘damn’, because Mom always caught him.
“What are you looking for?” said Mom, stepping down the stairs toward the packages of frozen food strewn across the floor.
“Blueberries. We’re gonna make grandma’s pie.”
“Pie!” said Tye, holding up the crust.
“Okay,” Mom said with a chuckle, “Go upstairs and talk to Grandma, I’ll finish up.”
Jordan didn’t appreciate her tone. She said ‘okay’ like she didn’t believe he could actually make pie. He was going to prove her wrong. He was going to make the best damn pie in the world.
He took the crust from Tye and safely tucked it in a suitcase. The boys raced each other upstairs. Jordan won.
Stepping and climbing over things, they followed the sound of Adele’s music to find Grandma sitting in the living room on her big brown recliner, unraveling yarn from a sweater. She was swaying her head and singing to herself.
“Grandma,” Jordan said, “Do you have blueberries? Like, from the market?” He felt stupid asking.
“How rich do you think I am boy?” she said with a snort, still focused on the yarn.
Jordan knew she was very rich, considering the sandwiches she had prepared for them. However, he also knew that Grandma was the type of rich who only bought things on sale and was forever scared of being poor again.
“Why do you want blueberries?”
“To make your pie!” said Tye.
“Can we have the recipe?” Jordan said.
Grandma chuckled and said “Okay,” the same way Mom did. She reached over the side of her chair for her notepad. She scribbled down the recipe and tore off the page.
She handed the paper to Jordan, and said “Go play in the backyard. Take your mind off this pie.”
The boys found their way to the back of the house, climbing over old furniture and random boxes to get there. Jordan forced open the dusty back door and ushered a grinning Tye outside with him.
In the backyard, the grass was tall and even taller weeds grew thick between it. They walked to the edge of the creaky porch and stared at the monstrous mess of green. Grandma’s garden had gone to ruin after she got sick. It looked nothing like the fresh, tidy plots of her neighbors. They looked over to their left and saw Mr. Golby, the rude old man who Grandma always complained about when she talked to them on the phone. He was in his garden watering bushes— blueberry bushes. The fence between Grandma’s backyard and his was definitely jumpable.
“I’m not going,” Tye said.
“Don’t be a baby! C’mon!”
“No!”
“Ugh!”
They watched Mr. Golby go back inside. Jordan took a step into the grass but turned his head back briefly.
“If you don’t come with me, you’re not getting any pie,” he said, sticking his chin up.
Tye exhaled loudly and followed him, squinting his eyes as he stepped into the jungle. The boys struggled their way through the grass until Tye felt something crawling on the side of his neck. He yelped and slapped at his neck as he ran back to the porch.
“Such a baby,” Jordan scoffed as he continued on. He rolled his eyes at Tye and tried to focus on being annoyed so he wouldn’t feel his heart beating faster and faster as he approached the fence. He climbed over it easily and dashed a few feet to the bushes. He began to pick the berries but froze when he realized he had nowhere to put them.
“Damn!” he whispered, looking around.
Then he saw Tye, dangling an old watering can over the fence, looking like he was about to throw up. Jordan ran to get it, then took to the bushes, ripping off handfuls of berries and dropping them in the can.
“Hey! Hey!” shouted Mr. Golby, stepping down the stairs of his porch with a broom in his hand.
Jordan’s eyes widened. He hugged the can and scrambled back over the fence. He and Tye ran back through the jungle and into the house, scaling Grandma’s obstacle course on their way to the living room. They were nearly there when Jordan felt a sudden force on his legs. He tightened his grip on the handle of the can and landed on his chest.
He looked back to see Tye on his legs with a busted lip and grass in his hair.
“I tripped,” Tye said.
“Now, where’d those come from?” Grandma said. She was standing over them, staring at the blueberries that had rolled out the can.
Jordan stood up. “Backyard,” he said, making no mention of which backyard exactly. He felt a pang in his chest as he spoke.
Grandma raised an eyebrow and said, “Should I ask whose backyard?”
Jordan told the truth and Tye said, “Yeah.”
“Hmmn,” she said with a smirk. Then her smirk changed to a scowl. She smacked them on the sides of their heads.
“Don’t go on stealing from anyone else. Hear me? You can be like your daddy, but not…” her lips stiffened, “Don’t be like him in this way.”
The boys nodded quickly. When Mom came upstairs with the suitcases, Grandma told her that Mr. Golby had given them the blueberries.
When saying their goodbyes, Jordan and Tye gave Grandma the longest hug they had ever given her. Before getting in the car, Jordan let Tye put a handful of blueberries in the pink peacock mailbox.
At home, they helped mom load the food into their freezer. Tye ushered Mom out of the kitchen so that Jordan could make the pie. After two hours of making a mess in the kitchen and a feast of microwaved foods for dinner, Jordan took the pie out of the oven.
He had to use aspartame instead of sugar, shortening instead of butter and citric acid instead of lemon juice, but nonetheless, the pie had come together. He cut three big slices and put them on plates, grinning at his creation before coaxing Mom and Tye to take a bite with him. They stared at each other, letting the flavor sink in.
They began laughing.
It was the worst damn pie they’d ever had.
*Edited by Fiction Editor Jola Naibi
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