Lucky Strikes

“Granny, are we gonna make the pie for your birthday or not?” Shanice is asking me.

“I done told you at least a hundred times, girl: I don’t roll nobody’s crust or cut up no kinda apples.” I love this child to death, but she is getting on my last nerve. Can we make this? Can we go here, can we do that? She think I’m young, and I had to remind her that as of today I’m a certified senior citizen, so cut me some damn slack. I’m exaggerating. Some. I guess I’m just used to complaining and glad I got somebody here to listen. Right now, I’m laying across my bed, halfway watching Oprah and reading my birthday cards. I just took a shower and gave myself a breathing treatment, and now I’m trying to sneak in a little hour or two nap before we leave for the bowling alley. It’s been one helluva day.

“I told you you should’ve just let me make you a cake,” Shanice says from the living room.

“First of all, you don’t tell me what to do, missy, and, besides, it’s my birthday, and I don’t like cake. They always too sweet, too thick, and too dry, and especially with these Kmart teeth I got in my mouth right now. I like pies and cobblers, and a bread or rice pudding every now and then.”

“Then can we get a frozen one?”

“You know how stingy them white folks is with the apples?”

“Not Mrs. Smith’s,” she says.

She just won’t quit, will she? “Hers is the worse. But I’ll tell you what. We’ll get one on the way to the bowling alley and leave it in the car to thaw out and buy three or four apples, which you can cut up, and when we get back home the crust should be soft enough to cut open, and then we can add some cinnamon and brown sugar and lemon juice and vanilla and a few dabs of butter to spruce it up and make it taste like we made it from scratch.”

“By the time you do all that, Granny, couldn’t we have just made it from scratch?”

“Why don’t you go sit your little narrow behind down somewhere and find something to do to keep you occupied? No. On second thought, go get Granny’s bowling ball and put it in the back seat of my new car, would you?” When I hear myself say this I can feel my cheekbones tingling. I love the sound of that: “my new car.” Paris is too much sometimes, I swear. When you got money you can buy damn near anything you want to without even leaving your house. All you need is a phone, a credit card, and Federal Express.