Page 29 of The Sweetest Devotion

It smelled like brown sugar ham, one of my grandmother’s famous recipes next to her renowned potato salad.

“What y’all got goin’ on in here?” I said as I made my presence known and stepped further into the house after my mother let me in.

“Is that Keith?” the voice of my grandmother, Betty Jean, filtered through the house as I recognized her location in the dining room.

I made my way to her to greet her with a hug and a kiss. Betty was at the dining room table, with a late-night mug of tea in front of her. Her face lit up at the sight of me and that itself made me smile.

At eighty, Betty was a ray of sunshine in this dark world. Nothing kept her down or angry, a trait I wished I’d inherited. Then, I wouldn’t have battled with my depression for over a year. Wouldn’t have walked around with that perpetual chip on my shoulder. I was working on it, little by little. I washere, not home like I’d usually go after work.

“Hey, Betty.” I gave her a hug and planted a kiss on her cheek, which she returned hard and long as she often did. When I was a boy, she was always emphasizing how important it was to “love hard.” She hugged you like she didn’t want to let go, told you you were handsome or beautiful, smart and funny, and squeezed extra hard on those tough days when you weren’t feelin’ it.

“Big Man!” Betty professed as I stood away from her embrace. She’d been calling me that since I was a little boy. “What you doin’ bein’ so tall, Big Man?” she’d asked me when I’d gone on a growth spurt that never seemed to be ending when I was six.

“I’m just stoppin’ through,” I let Betty know. I glanced out the room toward the kitchen where I could see pots and pans still out from their dinner. “Smells like a feast up in here.”

“Gon’ and get you something.” Betty waved me off as my mother came and joined her at the table.

I shook my head. “Nah, I’m cool. I’ll heat somethin’ up at the crib.”

“Boy, if you don’t get you a plate,” Betty snapped.

Of course. “Yes, ma’am, yes, ma’am.”

Betty Jean was not to be played with by any means. The kindest, sweetest soul, but she wasn’t a fool.Everybody in the neighborhood had love for her, because of her no-nonsense approach and supportive nature. I didn’t have any blood cousins, but the block I grew up on had everyone feelin’ like Betty Jean was their adoptive grandmother.

“Want me to help you?” My mother was beginning to rise from her place at the table and I shot her down. For as long as I’d known my mother, she was a hard worker, doing what she could to take care of me, and then Betty Jean when she’d stopped working. At fifty-two, my mother was still a schoolteacher, and because I knew she would be going to bed soon to get up early for her class in the morning, I wasn’t about to let her lift a finger for me.

I helped myself to the kitchen and made my own plate of Betty’s ham, my mother’s collard greens, and a portion of the potato salad it had been too long since I’d had. After grabbing a glass of water, I went back to the dining room and sat across from my mother and adjacent to Betty.

“You’re looking good,” Betty observed as I ate some of her ham.

After last night, I had started off my morning feeling lousy and like a piece of shit for what had gone down with Kennedy in that office. But then she’d come back, telling me she’d liked it—that she wanted more, and as much as I couldn’t wrap my head around it, I did feel better. I was no closer to a hundred percent, or my old self, but I was solid.

“Feeling a little better,” I spoke up. I tossed my grandmother a smile. “This ham never disappoints.”

She smiled. “Take some home with you.”

It wasn’t an offer I could refuse, so I didn’t.

“You seein’ anybody new?” Betty asked.

“Mom!” my mother fussed as she scolded her own mother.

Betty rolled her eyes. “I’m just asking, Sherry, dang.”

My mother rolled her eyes and shook her head. To me, she softened up, concerned. “How are you doing, Keith?”

I shrugged as I forked at my greens. “I’m straight.”

And unlike the many times before when I was asked this question, I was telling the truth.

My mother and Betty Jean gave me my space when I’d first gone into the dark. Something that I’d needed at the time. I didn’t want to be nurtured or talked to. I’d wanted to be alone.

Sometimes, when I was close to the edge, feeling like nothing, I thought of them and came back down to Earth. The thought of them kept air in my lungs and a reason to believe in my heart.

It had been a rough year since my ex.

These two women kept my ass in line. There was a rough patch in my teen years, and by the grace of God, my mother had saved me from succumbing to the streets of Bedford Heights. I could never repay her, and I just hoped my love was enough.

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