in my house.
“You got PB&J?” asked the girl.
“I do.” (That peanut butter is a peculiar favorite of mine, that I mix it with vanilla ice cream—I did not mention.)
“Can I have one?” she asked.
“Certainly,” I said. “Sit right here & watch whatever you like.”
I handed her the remote and walked into the kitchen & there I found whole milk & crusty white French bread & raspberry preserves & Skippy peanut butter. I poured her a tall glass of milk and spread the peanut butter & jelly thickly onto the bread and then I took a soup spoon out of the drawer and helped myself to a mouthful of Skippy from the jar. & then I went into the freezer and helped myself to a mouthful of ice cream. & then cold hot fudge from the refrigerator. & then my stomach started rumbling badly so I opened my pantry and got out a bag of potato chips and ate as many as I could very quickly just to quiet my gut.
From the other room I heard her murmuring & laughing & assumed she had returned Junior Baby Love’s phone call.
When I was finished, I waited until I was certain she had finished her conversation. Then I walked back through the swinging kitchen door & through the dining room & into the living room where Yolanda was waiting expectantly & watching a soap that I don’t watch.
“Thank you!” she said brightly. Her feet once again were sticking out ahead of her and she was bobbing them up and down.
I placed the sandwich and the milk on the table before her & she ate the sandwich very meticulously and left the hard crust on the plate. Her little tooth marks had crenellated the remains.
In silence we watched the soap opera. At one point Yolanda said “You know what’s going on?”
“No I don’t,” I confessed.
“She’s sleeping with his son,” said Yolanda, pointing at a tight shot of a middle-aged female character and an older man. “But he don’t know.”
“Oooh,” I said, but I still couldn’t follow.
After a moment I asked, “What are you finding upstairs?”
She shrugged, her eyes glued to the television. “Not too bad,” she said. “Lotta dust.”
Yolanda saw the picture of Kel Keller today and asked who he was and for just a moment I was tempted to say he was my son but then I realized the preposterousness of that, how she would know in an instant that nobody who looked like him could have come from anyone who looked like me.
“My nephew,” I said.
“Cute. How old?” she said, and I have to admit that I was proud, absurd as that is.
“Seventeen,” I said, but really I was guessing because his mother did not tell me his age.
“Too young for me,” said Yolanda. “I got two years on him.”
I saw she had finished her glass of milk completely so I asked if she would like another.
“I’ll get it,” she said, & hopped off the couch to go into the kitchen. After that she went back upstairs. & that was the end of our conversation for the day, except that on her way out she came to me with a book she’d found upstairs and asked to borrow it.
I was delighted until I saw what it was: some awful romance novel from the 1960s that was not mine & that I had never seen in my life. & I felt as if Yolanda had found out a sad secret about my mother that I was not prepared to confront.
“You can keep it,” I told her, wanting it out of my sight, & she put it into her little purse.
I did not see Junior Baby Love waiting for her outside this time. & I realized I don’t even know where Yolanda lives, nor anything else about her.
• • •
I wrote out a transcript. It went, “Charlene, this is Arthur. I know it’s you, Charlene, and I’m worried. I want to help you. Can I help you?” I waited a week & called Charlene again & there was no answer. Then I waited another week & called Charlene & there was no answer.
• • •
For a month Yolanda has been coming regularly & the two of us have gotten to be friends. One day she came trotting down the stairs with some photograph albums she had found in a particular room (I knew right where they were—in a bookshelf in a guest room on the third floor) & she was smiling, & she told