What Nona Knows

Once upon a time in a western suburb of Minneapolis, a mother and father had to go “out”. They’re daughter, a little shrimp of a kid who still had a sparkle in her eyes, wasn’t allowed the privilege of going “out”. (This remained a site of mystery and fascination.)

I was that shrimp, of course. I remember bouncing alongside their waists, begging to be brought to this magical place and even pulling the puppy-dog pout, although that never works in my family. And then, horror of horrors, they pop on my brother's light-up Velcro sneakers and tug on his colorful windbreaker.

"He gets to go?" I was utterly insulted. As the older one, I was highly superior, obviously.

"We're taking him Out with us," stated my father.

"Why? He's not even in Kindergarten." This was true. He was only four at the time, not even coming up to my shoulder. In my expert opinion, if you weren't in at least Kindergarten, you were a Nobody. Where was the justice in this world if a Nobody had permission to go Out when the older-and-therefore-greater sister had to stay at home?

I racked my brains for a solution and had one of my rare ingenious arguments. My trump card, if you will. "I can't stay home alone yet,” I tried. “I'm not big enough." To express my point, I hunched over to the height of my brother, who by now was bundled up in hat-and-mittens like it was an Ice Age.

"Someone's coming to stay with you," my mother told me, bending down and showing me her shiny watch. "They're coming soon."

This brightened my day slightly. I loved my babysitters because I could get them to give me chocolate and let me watch television. I was a manipulating fiend back then. "Who? Who is it? Who?"

My mom and dad didn't give me an answer because, just then, a little station wagon pulled up our driveway. It parked, and the driver’s door opened with a more-force-than-necessary push. It was Nona, my grandmother. I could almost hear the Jaws theme playing in the background.

There's one thing you have to know about Nona. You don't cross her. My dad has always told me stories about how she outfoxed him and brought him up the right way. When we visit her, we eat all the green things on our plate first, brush our teeth until the gums are raw, and make our beds like army soldiers. I once tried the bouncing quarter trick like I'd heard about before, but I didn't know how to flick it right, so it just flopped over on the sheets. Nona had me tuck the sheets tighter that time.

"N-Nona's watching me?"

"Isn't it a lovely surprise?" Apparently they took my quaking fear for concealed excitement.

I shot daggers of jealousy at my brother, who wasn't even looking at me. He was much too busy playing with the zipper on his jacket and kicking the heels of his shoes together so they lit up with flashing red lights.

Nona walked in through the garage door. She's taller than my mom, and shorter than my dad, and from my four-foot vantage point, that's all I could gather. She had short hair like a flapper that she dyed different shades. Usually, it was auburn, a color I had learned about from reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I gave her a big squeezing hug, trying to reach all the way around her with my little stick arms. No success.

My mom, dad and brother were just about ready to sneak out the door, as if I wouldn't notice. Stamping my foot wouldn't work. Whining definitely wouldn't work. The puppy-dog pout wasn't even an option. So I had no choice but to let them walk away, leaving me with Nona.

"Hello, Cosette," she said, in that grandma-ish voice. "What are we going to do while everyone's Out?"

I shrugged, knowing she’d give me some options in the next sentence.

"How about a card game?” She took my by the hand and, with her other, dragged her Mary Poppins carpetbag that held all sorts of mysterious items (and possibly torture devices). “What do you know how to play?"

"Go Fish," I answered, eyeing the bag cautiously.

"Go Fish it is, then!" She stuck her wrinkled hand within the depths of the bag with a magician’s attitude and pulled out a dog-eared deck of cards, held together with a rubber band.

I can't really remember who won, only that we played many rounds and kept a tally of who was winning on a little yellow post-it. I'm sure she let me win most rounds, but I couldn't have known it. She would have made sure to win a few herself so I wouldn't catch on.

"I'm hungry." I announced while she shuffled the deck for the millionth time.

The cards made a satisfying click against the wooden table as she made the pile neat. It always fascinated me how she could take a messy deck with the cards sticking out in every direction and smooth it out with just a few turns.

"What should I make?"

Nona is an excellent cook. She watches the food channel, drinks wine with every dinner and spends half her day in the kitchen. It's her and Noni's dream to go to Italy someday. She's the one who makes every Thanksgiving turkey and has prepared all of the Christmas hams I can remember. She tells me it's my responsibility to learn how from her someday, so that when she's good and gone the family won't starve.

"Oh...nothing." I pretended to be thinking. "I could just have some chocolate."

You have to understand my addiction to chocolate. Not only is it comparable to the ambrosia of the Greek Gods, but it was the bread-and-butter of my childhood days. I was famous for it. I still am, I guess. You don't mess with me and my chocolate. Just like you don't mess with Nona. It's a law of Nature.

I can imagine her eyes lighting up and sparkling, knowing exactly what I was really up to. From back then I only remember crossing my fingers under the table and hoping that she'd give in.

Her answer comes. "Alright."

Amazed by my good fortune, I show her where we keep the chocolate: bottom cupboard by the refrigerator. Probably not the smartest idea my parents have ever had, putting it within my reach.

I pick out three silver tinfoil-wrapped pieces of Hershey's chocolate. Not the kisses, but the ones that are shaped like little 3-D trapezoids that we bought in bags. I showed them to her, waiting for more approval.

She shook her head no. "You can have one."

"Can I please have two?" I'd learned you were always better off asking please. No point in bringing out the fake tears with Nona.

"I don't know, can you?" This was another game of Nona's. Teaching proper grammar.

I caught my mistake right away. "Please, may I please have two, please?"

She stared at me fixedly with those intense eyes. I don't know what color they were, even to this day, only that they lock on you and make it impossible to tear yourself away. We compromised. "You can't have three. You can have one. When your mom and dad get home, we'll ask them about the second one. Fair?"

"Fair." I watched carefully as she handed me back one of those precious little treasures, placed another carefully on the center of the kitchen island, and one back inside the cupboard.

I unwrapped the nugget of deliciousness and ate it in small little bites like one of my friend’s guinea pigs. The silver wrapper went in the garbage. The garbage can was at the edge of the island and had one of those lids where you push a pedal with your foot and the lid pops open. One day on April Fool’s day, I crammed myself in there (minus the garbage) in the hopes that the next unsuspecting person looking to toss their trash would find me popping out like a jack-in-the-box. Unfortunately on that particular day, I didn’t have enough patience or oxygen to carry out the joke. What? Sorry, sometimes I get distracted when I’m thinking about chocolate.

"Cozy?"

"Mm-hmm?" I mumbled, savoring the last traces on my tongue.

"I'm going to go take a shower. Will you be alright out here by yourself for awhile?"

"Uh-huh." But I was really thinking 'who takes a shower at someone else's house'? I didn't say this out loud, of course. You don't question Nona.

For a good 10 minutes, I busied myself with a coloring book, drawing thick lines with fat Crayola crayons that had glitter in them. I carefully shaded the bold characters printed on the page, making sure not to stray out of the lines. The whole entire time, my eyes darted on and off that piece of chocolate sitting on the counter. The wrapper was smooth and shiny, and light from the sconce continued to glint off the rounded corners with a mesmerizing twinkle. One of the bottom flaps was even open at an awkward angle, like it was begging to be opened...

I couldn't say no to chocolate! It was my eternal weakness, my Achilles’ heel. Ever-so-slowly, ever-so-carefully, I reached my arm out and grabbed it. The magnificent had happened; the world hadn’t ended. Nona hadn't come barging down the stairs. So my logic figured that it wouldn't end either if I took a little nibble.

The crinkly sound I received from peeling away the wrapper was almost sacred. It was music to my ears. Hesitantly, I bit off a corner.

And maybe took another taste.

One more little bite couldn't hurt.

Suddenly I heard the shower turn off and my adrenaline spiked. Shoving the massive (or so it seemed now) hunk of chocolate that was left into my tiny mouth, I quickly shuffled over to the garbage can and pushed the wrapper deep underneath layers and layers of garbage. The lid shut, the metal muffled by the garbage bag lining it. I had just barely tossed another chocolate on the counter, mouth wiped, when Nona's sock feet turned the corner.

“What a nice rinse.”

Who says that? “Oh…” I didn’t know what a person should respond with that, so I did the safest thing, changing the subject. “Look at…Look at what I made.” I pointed at my masterpiece.

She lifted up the drawing I'd been working on. She smiled to herself and put it back down among the mess of crayons. I watched her every move she was a predator, like I was her prey.

She must have read something in my face, though, or she has X-ray vision and could see the inner workings of my brain. It's also possible that she just has that motherly sixth sense from raising a house full of kids on her own.

Her eyebrows spiked up and the toes of my right foot crawled across the hardwood floor to overlap the toes of my left. Without a word, she took 7 steps, exactly seven, I remember, over the garbage can, and pushed the lever with her foot. Just like with her Mary Poppins bag, she surrendered her liver-spotted arm into the dangerous depths of the garbage, leafing through the layers of tossed waste.

Who digs in the trash on a hunch? That'd be Nona. Man, she's good.

I don't know how she knew. To this day it is a mystery. But there was no fooling Nona. She pulled out that stupid betraying square of silver paper and held it up in her lined hand for me to see.

I felt my eyes widen. Whatever it was that had exposed me, I did not know and it certainly did not matter right then. She had sensed my guilt and then pulled the evidence, dangling it in front of my face. And then she had the nerve to say these words: “What’s this?”

That calm accusatory tone! It slid up and down my spine. My tongue swelled in my mouth and I could only shrug lamely.

She shook that accursed wrapper slowly between two aged fingers. "What did I say about this?"

Another guilty shrug.

Swiftly for a sixty-something year old, she was next to me, shaking my wrist. "I said to wait until your mom and dad came home. Did you eat it when I was in the shower?"

Each emphasis punched me in the gut because it was all true, all of it. I couldn't keep staring into those eyes. I answered instead to my own fumbling twisting fingers. "No." Even I could tell that my reply sounded all too much like a 'yes'.

She put the wrapper in her pocket and walked away, shaking her dismayed head. I felt horrible, causing her that consternation. It was not so in the actual event, but in my memory the kitchen lights started to dim so the lighting was comparable to the lights of a solemn cathedral. I might have let a few tears slip out, but they were hot shameful tears that I would have wiped away quickly with the back of my hand.

When my mother and father came home, she didn't even mention it. I just kept on coloring with my sparkly crayons, pecking her on the cheek when it was time to say good-bye. I guess she figured it would do more damage to let me soak it all in and wonder what she was up to and basically just go crazy thinking about it. It worked. I haven’t ever forgotten. She’s a genius, my Nona.

That day I vowed I would never let myself feel like that again, ashamed. I probably should have learned the lesson 'do what you’re told' or 'listen to your grandmother' or even 'just eat one', but lessons of obedience went in one ear and out the other in those days.

No, instead I took away this lesson: I need to learn how to lie.