I dial area code 918 and wait.

“Hiya, honey.”

“Hiya.”

It doesn’t bother me when Mema calls me “honey.” That’s what grandmothers are supposed to do. It’s a grandmotherly word.

“How’s things?” Mema asks like we’re just shooting the breeze.

“Really?”

“What?”

“You want to hear about my day?” I say.

“Well, I don’t want to talk about things here. Honey, this place they’ve got your grandfather is a morgue. It smells like baby wipes and cigarette smoke. Lord, the amount of smoking that goes on outside this hospital, by nurses and doctors, mind you, makes you wonder all over again at the state of our health care.”

“But you don’t want to talk about it.”

“No, I do not.”

I can hear how tired she is. It travels down the line ahead of her words, and I want to reach across the miles and hold her hand. I watch the snow still falling outside and curling up all fluffy on the windowsill like a cat. We sit together in the quiet. I want someone to take my hand too.

“How’d neuro go?” she says finally.

“Good. I’m off the meds.”

“Well, praise the Lord and pass the potatoes! Your mother must be through the roof.”

“She cried.”

“ ’Course she did. Her baby’s in the clear.”

“She cried about you tonight.”

“Well, she’s a crier.”

I don’t tell her I want to cry too.

“Mema, how are you really?”

There’s a long enough pause that I have to stop and check the phone for a signal.

“Oh, honey. You’re a child. You shouldn’t be worrying about this.”

“Should is for suckers, Mema. You’re the one who told me that. Tell me really.”

“Should is for suckers. I stand by that, but this kind of truth isn’t for young ears.”

It kills me when she defaults to my kid status, because she’s one of the only people who treats me like an adult. But I know Mema’s in her own tailspin of worry, just like I am, so I stay quiet, waiting it out until she starts talking again.

“Baby, your grandpa’s just about done me in this time. He’s okay, but I hate looking at him laid out in this hospital bed.”

And there it is again, another picture in my head I never wanted—Grandpa in a white bed, under white sheets and white lights, looking like a shell of himself. All those age spots from too much sun mixing with the bruises. I wipe my nose on my sleeve and clear my throat.

“I heard he found the keys.”

“Yeah. I hid them in the pantry, but he got turned around going to the bathroom and found them.”

I hear beeping in the background. It’s steady, which seems good. And then a man’s voice, muffled.