Mother's Day Niani

Niani Peebles

Creative Writing

Short Story

Mother’s Day

It was a warm mother’s day and I was living with my grandmother in Brooklyn. It was decided by her and my mom that I would stay there until school was finished, since I was doing so well. My mother, sister, and brothers resided in the Bronx. My seven cousins were lined up sitting on my grandmother’s porch. They all lived in the upstairs apartment of the house. I was eleven and my mood had taken flight since my cousins were allowed to speak to me again. My aunt Cathy didn’t like me much, so she would often prevent communication between us with the silent treatment. At times when we were playing with each other, she would stand at the screen door and just stare at me. I couldn’t see her eyes clearly through the screen, but I felt them.

My cousin James, who was two years older than me, became my best friend after his sister Crystal, who was my age, took a liking to boys. He was interesting and had a countless amount of jokes to share. I sat down on the step beside him.

“You know grandma wants me to fix her shelf for her, and she gonna pay me twenty dollars.”

He was good with his hands. It made up for his bad grades and behavior at school. It blew my mind as to why my grandmother would assign him such a task. She knew what else he could do with his hands. I mean, he was my cousin but I couldn’t deny that he was an all out thief. I would unsuccessfully hide gifts that my mother would send for me and they would disappear. He wasn’t the only one. At least two more of my cousins had the habit of stealing.

“Oh yea, that’s good. You could probably buy your mother a mother’s day gift from the drugstore with that.” I replied.

My grandmother’s room was something that my sticky fingered cousins didn’t see often. They were not allowed the luxury of my grandmother’s bedroom with its big soft king sized bed that made you fall asleep like a breast fed baby, it’s soft, fluffy pillows that nursed a sore head back to health, and the sweet scents of her designer perfumes. Those perfumes rested on a shelf close to her bed, against the wall. It was the shelf my cousin James was supposed to fix. It was also where she kept a tin box filled with money for her Popular Club Plan members.

“James, you ready to fix the shelf?” My grandmother came to the front door holding a dish towel, cooking again.

“Yea” he replied annoyed.

As he went in I stayed outside and enjoyed the weather. I watched my older cousin Nakia talk about strangers that passed by. I secretly hoped that the strangers would turn back and knock her lights out. When James was done fixing the shelf, we walked to the drugstore together to get the gift. I was excited for him and wondered if anything could light up my aunt’s hollow eyes, or even put a smile across her lips.

“These ones would be nice.” I helped him pick out a bunch of white and pink flowers that were wrapped in plastic and a big pink ribbon.

“You should get a card too.” He picked a card and gave the cashier his twenty dollars.

That night I had just taken a bath when I saw my grandmother walking around the house looking upset and disheveled, her gray hair standing up and looking all spiky.

“Where the hell…” She rambled on, opening and closing her dresser drawers.

“What are you looking for grandma?”

“I’m looking for twenty dollars that went missing from my box. Where the hell could it be?”

I started to help her find the money, looking underneath her bed. I began to feel nervous because my cousin was the only person I could think of with twenty dollars.

“I need to find that damn money!” she was getting angrier by the minute and began to look in my dresser drawers. I didn’t believe that she would suspect me.

“Grandma, I didn’t take your money. I would never do that. I don’t steal.”

“Well somebody got the damn money!”

I had to tell her what I knew. James was the last person I knew with a twenty dollar bill.

“James had twenty dollars that he said you gave to him for fixing the shelf.”

I longed for my mother at this moment, I wished I was with her instead of there.

“What, pass me that phone!”

She called the upstairs apartment to where my aunt and cousins lived. I couldn’t hear the conversation because I slipped down into the basement. The next morning I was to walk with my aunt and cousins to school like I usually did. They walked ahead of me the whole way, not saying a word.