Patty Cake by Andrea Dixon

My grandmother is Rubylene Patricia Williams Webster, though everyone called her "Pat." My grandmother is full of life, always twittering about her home, handing out decrees to be executed by her husband, Hosea, by her children, by her grandchildren, by her friends and family. My grandmother is a boss. It is a quiet, somewhat soft power my grandmother had over her world. She constantly gave instructions, but rarely demanded a thing, when calling out "Hosey, be sure to trim the azalea bushes." She is of average height for a woman, all butterscotch-colored skin, with beautiful elegant limbs, hands and feet, which despite her hard work retains an ethereal grace, corns and all. She spent her days pacing about a tuberculosis clinic near the local hospital, and then a public housing project, where she completed paperwork, and took on headaches. After a long day's work, she walks into her suburban home, gently opening and closing the screen door, yelling as my seven-year-old self rushes past her. "Don't slam that door!" she calls out. When the door inevitably slams, she issues a loud shriek, though she says no word in particular.

The electric flytrap glows blue in the darkness of the den, where her husband, her Hosey, sits watching the flickering of the big screen television (one of three in the home) and hearing loud death-cracks of ill-fated insects. Hosea, a tall handsome dark-skinned man, even with wrinkles surrounding his features, his eyes turning pale blue with age, has made a portion of dinner, and she will make some sides, or at the least, plate the meal. Though they are both at home, they will not eat together. Hosea eats either at the minibar, or on the couch, while she eats at the breakfast table, watching him. It is summer, and it is hot, sticky-hot.

Pat is known as "Patty Cake" to her grandchildren and she adores them, though she has little time to enjoy them with her work. Her relationship with Hosea is rocky at best. They married young when Pat was 20 years old. This was a disaster for her family, the Williams family, as she was heading off to college when she became pregnant. Pat went off to college for a single semester, before returning home to get married and give birth. Her flirtation with Hosea developed quickly, and this birth, the birth of my mother, is struck by complications. My mother is a big baby, and she was born breech. The problems leave Pat in the hospital for weeks, recovering from the bleeding. This daughter is spurned immediately by the family. She is unexpected, and in many ways, unwanted, as with her dark complexion, she integrates the Williams family. The Williams were a light-skinned well-to-do family in Mobile, Alabama, a city as Southern, color-struck, and segregated as American cities get. Mobile's history includes a group of black, religious and political leaders meeting Martin Luther King Jr. at the airport demanding that he take his freedom-fighting elsewhere. It is in this city, one of the first major slave ports in the States, where Pat was born, lived and died.

With a child and a husband, and a slew of siblings living locally, Pat began adult life in the city of her birth. As a grandmother, the way I know her, Patty Cake is biscuits cooking in the oven, smothered in Alga syrup, brimming with Crisco. She is the framed images of her parents, Big Daddy and Mama Dea, on her vanity. She is trips to Disney World, one every couple of years, darting ride to ride, never tiring, chasing me, her first grandchild, one cruises, as I fight her grasp. Patty Cake is my first and best coffee, and "Daughter, let this grand-baby have a sip! She loves coffee! It's mostly sugar and milk anyway!" She is the silk robes and kimonos on her back, and the gold, leather slippers on her feet. She is thonged sandals, a particular love of hers, and coral-colored nail polish, appropriate for fingers and toes. She is the squirrels she feeds while seated on outdoor furniture, offering bread to them, spraying repellent on me: "You know how the skeeters love you, Andi!" She is me, kneeling at her bedside, rubbing her feet as she drifts to sleep, table lamp on throughout the night. Patty Cake is red velvet cake, and Cheerios, both of which existed in abundance in her home. Patty Cake is sheer stockings, a white skirt-suit, and white lace, which she wore to church every Sunday, to sit on the ladies' board, usually arriving a few minutes late. She is leather-bound Bibles, and daily devotions. She is the Pope's annual Christmas celebration on television, and a perfectly made bed. "Don't you get on my spread... I just made this bed up. Did you make your bed?" She is late-night arrivals to their Mobile home, pulling into the driveway around midnight, hugging, kissing, laughing. She is gumbo, Heart's chicken, honey, biscuits, and salty-sweet fried corn, on the stove. She is Patti LaBelle on the stereo, gladiolas in a vase, and those neatly trimmed Azalea bushes along the drive.

She is clean, chlorine-bleached sheets, rose potpourri, and greasy curling irons. She is spic and span, and whirring dishwashers, shoes never worn, clothes never worn, guarding her stash from her three daughters. "Daughter, don't you take my shoes. I haven't even worn that one! What do you have behind your back?" She is dentures, and Poli-Dent, artfully inserted and cleaned, rarely found outside her mouth. Patty Cake is long summers spent before the television, pitter-pattering around the house, back and forth from the refrigerator. She is sandy-brown sew-ins, and twin-sized, though differently colored moles, one beside each nostril. She is a squishy tummy, perfect for a pillow, and back rubs with rubbing alcohol for summer's end mosquito bites. She is diluted apple juice, and stomach aches, and meds for ulcers, we think... She is the butterflies in her stomach, hospital visits, and trips to Atlanta, for diagnosis at Emory University Hospital. She is surgery, after surgery, cutting her innards to achieve... something... She is vomiting bile and blood in her final months and days, retching without speech as tubes enter and exit her body. She is a wink to her daughters as she struggles to communicate. She is the result of one survived bout of colon cancer, and the defeat of ovarian cancer, the defeat of butterflies. She is the tears at the funeral home, her grandchildren crouched outside, comprehending, or not, her loss, swatting at mosquitoes and tears. Her grandchildren sit bounded by tall Mobile grasses on a concrete stoop, me between two younger cousins. My arms wind about them, squeezing their shoulders, cooking in their ears, as good granddaughters do. And now, she is the memories we share around kitchen tables, invoking her name, red-eyes crying and open hearts laughing.