What You Can't See - Bonnie Smetts

I’m finally sitting outside this house that the Records Department said is my grandma’s, white with a lawn and driveway that cuts to the side so you can’t see what’s down it. Big trees in front of the house so I can’t see what I’m walking into. Seems like there’s lights on so somebody’s likely to be home. Looks to me like my grandma got someone’s taking care of her yard, the plants trimmed like basket balls or something, and the rocks that ring the plants look like it’s somebody’s job to keep them in line. And all I can see of the porch is that it’s painted a nice green, one like you’d see in a magazine, kinda gray and kinda green all at the same time. And she’s got herself a swing, one on the porch like this is some kind of ad for country life in Nordeen.

I’m barely breathing because this wasn’t what I was expecting of someone who’d been my grandma. I’m not sure they’d given me the right address at the Records. Given how my momma and me lived, this can’t be what I’d been expecting. Another run down trailer, or worse, is all I’d prepared myself for. Not this. I’m sitting in front, in Randy’s car, this time she let me borrow it, so I’m half worn out from being nervous just driving her car so now I’ve got my breath up in my head trying to relax in front of what I didn’t expect to find. My nerves are jangled and I seemed to have lost the ones that give you the courage to do things you normally don’t want to do. I wished I smoked, like this is when you’d take out a cigarette to relax, but I don’t have that to do. So I’m just sitting here, spying on my grandma, or at least this must be her. But this makes no sense. Lacey curtains and yellow flowers in pots along the walkway. Makes no sense that this would be the woman who’d had my momma, and why they hated each other so much that I’d never even seen this woman. I wouldn’t have had to spend all that time with the Baptists if I’d known I had a grandma already.

But I can’t sit here all day and I can’t expect Randy to lend me her car again any time soon, or me to have the nerve to walk up to this door and see what’s inside. My nerves are ripping me up and I never had to get calmed down like this before. I’d been used to things flying at me and my dodging them, or the men at the diner thinking I don’t know what’s going on when they ask if I’m free later. But this is different and this is something I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to do.

OK, Rawling, you gotta open that door. You gotta take a big breath and squeeze that handle down and hear that creak and feel that pebbly road under you nice shoes. One, two, three…