Through the screen door I said, “Paige?”

She didn’t look at me. “I know, David. Go watch TV.”

Mom didn’t come out of her room for the rest of the day, and Grammy showed up after Paige cooked me dinner. Grammy always popped up unannounced, and on more than one occasion Mom would see Grammy pull in the driveway and would shut all the lights off and take me to her room and tell me to be quiet, that she didn’t feel like visiting that day, and I had to sit there on the itchy carpet with her and listen to Grammy knock and knock and knock, and I imagined she was putting her face to the little window on the door, looking in, looking for us. “We went for a walk” was what Mom always told Grammy when she saw her next.

The door was open, and so Grammy came in. I hopped off the couch. “Hi, son,” she said. I gave her a hug. Paige turned off the sink faucet and dried her hands.

“When’d you get here, doos?” Grammy said to Paige.

“A little while ago.”

Grammy walked over the linoleum with her shoes on and gave Paige a hug that said It’s nice to see you. “Where’s your mom?” she said.

“She’s not feeling well.”

Grammy looked up the hallway.

“Something she ate,” Paige said.

Grammy said, “Mm-hmm.” She stood in the doorway, and Paige asked if she wanted to sit down. “No, no,” Grammy said. “I was coming to see if David wanted to go to the evening service at the church.” She looked at me, and in looking at me I was compelled to say yes. She was my Grammy after all. But I didn’t want to go alone with her, not because of her but because it was church.

“I’ll go if Paige goes,” I said. Paige dropped her head and shoulders, shook her head. She went to her bedroom and changed.

Grammy’s car was a puttering, two-door piece of rusted metal. I’d thought Paige’s car was bad, but Grammy’s was something else. The engine made this whining sound every few minutes, like a bomb siren. Her turn signals worked, but on the dashboard it didn’t say if they were on or off, so sometimes she drove with her turn signal on for miles. Maybe she knew; maybe she was messing with other drivers. Also, the radio turned on and off by itself, and after we drove in silence past the small health clinic and the large tin-looking community building and the tribal offices tucked behind thick pine trees and the tan-brick school and the football field, we pulled into the church parking lot and the radio kicked on and blared out Meredith Brooks’s “Bitch,” and Paige bobbed her head, telling Grammy to turn it up, but she flicked the radio off.

“Michaganasuus,” Grammy said. This shitty thing.

We got out of the car, and Grammy hurried in front of us. Paige walked by my side and whispered about Goog’ooks. Evil spirits. “They follow Grammy around,” she said to me. “That’s why the radio turned on.”