The Company We Keep. Mary Monroe
a matching love seat, and a La-Z-Boy dominated the cozy living room. Doilies that Grandma Stewart had made and shaped with starch and beer bottles covered the dark oak coffee table and the end tables and lined the windowsills. High-back chairs faced the big-screen TV in the room that was also a dining room where meals were served on a long, low wooden table covered with a crocheted white tablecloth. Brocade draperies covered the windows in every room except the kitchen and bathroom. Everything in the house could easily last another twenty years before it fell apart. Grandpa Stewart had built this house that Teri loved so much many years ago with the help of some of his church members. And just like it was with Teri, this house also felt like home to a lot of the church members, too.
This was a typical late-afternoon dinner gathering, served buffet style so it was every man, woman, and child for himself. It didn’t take long for every single person to have a plate in hand. Old, stout Maybelle Hawthorne, wearing a white floor-length frock that looked like a bathrobe, had a plate in each hand. Both contained generous mounds of food threatening to spill onto the freshly waxed linoleum floors. Some folks stood in groups of three or four, talking as they ate. Others sat or meandered throughout the house.
The destination for most of the males was the room with the big-screen TV where a previously recorded Lakers game was on, featuring Dwight Davis. There was almost as much emotion displayed in the living room as there had been during Reverend Upshaw’s fiery sermon. This was the “down-home” atmosphere that kept Teri focused and balanced. This was where her character had been formed. This lifestyle had made her the caring, hardworking, no-nonsense person she was today. No matter what happened in her future personal life, this was what she would always measure her sense of values against.
Grandma Stewart had spent most of the day and half of the night before “cooking up a storm,” as she had declared. In addition to a deep-fried turkey, five Crock-Pots full of collard greens, four platters of corn bread muffins, six mac and cheese casseroles, and enough yams to feed a small army, there were six huge pots of black-eyed peas—more than enough for every person present to have several helpings. Grandma Stewart didn’t care how much everybody ate. And she made it clear that she didn’t want anybody to leave without eating some black-eyed peas.
“Everybody knows that if you want a New Year to start off right, you got to start it off with some black-eyed peas,” Grandma Stewart announced, spooning peas onto a huge plate for herself. Black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day had been a family and cultural tradition for generations. For a woman who liked to cook and eat rich food, Teri’s grandmother was a petite woman with an attractive but chubby face that resembled a chipmunk. Black moles dotted her warm brown face. Her husband was only slightly larger with a mole-like face, a head that resembled a coconut, and sparse, wiry white whiskers on the sides of his face that looked like they belonged on a cat. Teri had her grandmother’s eyes and her grandfather’s full lips, but she had inherited her five foot seven inch height from her mother’s side. One of her biggest sorrows was that her maternal grandparents had both died before she was born so she’d never know what else they’d passed on to her.
Teri enjoyed good southern cooking as much as everybody else in the room. And even though she didn’t think of herself as a superstitious woman, she ladled more peas onto her plate than anybody else. There was nothing else on her plate, not even one of the golden corn bread muffins that her grandmother had just removed from the oven with steam still floating above them like miniature clouds.
“Girl, I know you are not going to bypass that turkey and those greens,” Grandma Stewart commented, frowning at the contents on Teri’s plate.
“The peas are enough for me right now,” Teri declared, stirring a few drops of hot sauce onto her meal.
“Well, if all you are going to eat are the peas, you’re going to wind up with enough gas to light up Florida. Are you all right? You look a little peaked. I hope you didn’t stay out too late last night. I woke up and called your house around eleven-thirty last night and you hadn’t come home yet. I hope you are not running around with the wrong crowd, drinking and doing whatnot. You know how we worry about you, with you still out there by yourself as manless as a nun…”
CHAPTER 10
By herself? As manless as a nun? Teri was so sick and tired of everybody constantly reminding her that she was still by herself. What in the hell was wrong with a woman being by herself? What did she have to do to convince people that she was doing just fine by herself? The fact that she never complained about being alone should have told them something.
“Grandma, you don’t need to worry about me. I can take care of myself.” Teri occupied a seat next to her grandmother at the table in the TV/dining room. She recalled how she had badgered Nicole the night before and now she knew why Nicole had been so irritated. She felt the same way now.
“Your mama used to say the same thing and look what happened to her. I don’t want you to end up dead. I want you to settle down and get married so me and Grandpa Isaac won’t spend eternity worrying about you, too.”
“Getting married won’t save me. It didn’t save my mother,” Teri reminded. “Let’s change the subject.” Teri leaned to the side and kissed her grandmother’s puffy cheek.
A few minutes later, Grandpa Stewart left his seat in front of the television set. He shuffled over to the table where Teri had just finished eating her black-eyed peas.
“Girl, you need to eat like you got some sense,” he complained. “Let me dip you out some of these peas. Black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day mean money.”
Teri didn’t protest as her grandfather piled more peas onto her plate. “And don’t you worry none about gas. Sop up some turkey gravy with a piece of that corn bread before you go home. It works better than charcoal pills when it comes to dealing with gas,” he told her, burping like a baby, excusing himself between burps.
“Uh-uh. I take back what I just said about peas meaning money,” Grandpa Stewart said, shaking his head as he reached for his own plate, which he promptly filled with peas. “Corn means money. Peas mean good luck,” he said with a grin. “That and a little gas if you overdo it,” he added with a chuckle. He sniffed and dropped another spoonful of peas onto Teri’s plate. She thought she would scream if she heard another reference to gas.
“I’m not that hungry,” Teri said again, rolling her eyes at her grandfather.
“You always did eat like a little bird,” Grandma Stewart gently complained, then chewed on a deep-fried turkey leg.
“It’s her nerves if you ask me,” Grandpa Stewart suggested, both of his cheeks full. He was a good match for his wife. She looked like a chipmunk. He looked like he had the mumps. Juice from the peas glazed his bottom lip like lip gloss. He sat down hard in the chair on the other side of Teri, groaning like a man in pain.
Teri rolled her eyes up to heaven. A few minutes later she followed her grandmother into the living room with Grandpa Stewart close behind, holding onto his plate and grumbling all the way.
“Isaac, Teri’s just trying to hold on to her girlish figure like all the rest of these youngsters,” Grandma Stewart said, giving Teri an affectionate pat on the butt. “Baby, I need to show you something.” Teri gave her grandmother a puzzled look as she followed her out of the room.
“Trying to keep a girlish figure my foot. Her nerves are what keep her from eating right. And prayer is the only thing that can help that,” Grandpa Stewart said in a gentle voice. He had stopped in the middle of the living room floor. As soon as Teri and her grandmother disappeared, he plopped down into a chair and that was where he planned to stay until his bedtime.
“Amen to that,” said Old Man Carson, who occupied the seat directly across from Grandpa Stewart.
“Well, I’m praying that there’s some corn bread left.” Grandpa Stewart turned to see Teri’s young cousin Rudy running into the living room with an empty plate. Normally, eating in the living room was off limits. And that was a rule that Grandma Stewart enforced with vigor. But today was an exception. There were more than two dozen guests