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Already I am exhausted-so many of them, so demanding, pulling me into meaty embraces and age-old, petty squabbles. She points to an empty chair and I sit, shrugging out of my jacket. “Can I do anything to help?” Maria arches an eye brow but shakes her head. We walk down a long hallway to the kitchen, where the air is thick and hot. The walls are heavy with pictures, many of them black-and- white. I stand awkwardly in the hallway, my hands tucked into my armpits. Maria has changed from scrubs into a denim skirt and a red silk camisole. Maria’s address is written in block letters and numbers, even her sixes and nines. On the stoop she says, “I cook,” and I say, “I eat.” She presses a tightly folded piece of paper into the palm of my hand. Maria nods toward the front door and I follow. My grandmother was not incorrect in her evaluation of Maria’s ass but Maria is attrac tive, not much older than me, dark brown skin, white teeth, soft sweet-smelling skin. Maria and I smoke in the small backyard, leaning against a brick wall. On the first night, my grandmother falls asleep watching the evening news. They talk about the islands where they were born, the warmth of suns they once knew. They love to argue about the shows they watch. She brushes my grandmother’s thin, silver hair each night before bed. Maria treats my grandmother like her own. Despite my grandmother’s concern about the size of Maria’s ass and her unwillingness to call Maria by her given name, they get along quite well. She has reached that age where she lacks tact.
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My grandmother tells Maria this regularly. She has been dying for nearly twenty years but no one lives forever. She makes such pronouncements with regularity. I’m visiting because my grandmother told my mother she didn’t want to die without seeing her youngest granddaughter one last time. She says, “I could say the same.” The way she looks at me makes me uncomfortable. Information travels at alarming speed through the intricate gossip network of our family. When we meet, I tell her I already know everything there is to know about her. Maria tells me this story when I meet her while visiting my grandmother, who lives with my aunt, next door to another aunt and down the street from more aunts and a few uncles. She calls the aide Maria so now we all call the nurse’s aide Maria, too. She didn’t like the woman’s real name, said it tasted strange in her mouth. M y grandmother, eighty-seven, has changed the name of the nurse’s aide who tends to her.