I heard my grandmother call out for me. I hurried to her, my spirit distressed, still reeling from seeing her cry for the first time in my life. She pointed to the chair in front of her. I sat down, searching her face for a sign of her present disposition. I was thinking, "What will she do? What will she say?" She looked calm and collected.
It had been raining hard less than an hour before. The weather in San Juan, Trinidad, hovered around 89°everyday in October 1986. Punctuating the boiling atmosphere every two hours was a downpour of hot rain that saturated the urban dust in the streets and engorged the humid air. Most of the time, the rain lasted about ten minutes. However, it always made me stop whatever I was up to and pay attention. Today was no different. The torrents of rain interrupted my final preparation of the enormous, customary Sunday meal. Again, it had made me stop, look up, and stare out the open louvered window.
Just then, the doorbell rang. The sound reverberated through me, pierced my consciousness, and startled me. I walked from the kitchen to the front door. I knew who it was. My friend has come every Sunday afternoon since the start of the semester. We ate together that day. Then she pulled out her schoolbooks. She was never good at math or English, and I was a straight-A student. I did what she called tutoring, which was always doing her homework. After I completed her assignments, she left. For the sixth week in a row, this ritual was happening.
After my friend left, my grandmother came to me, her gait halting through the pain of arthritis that permeated her legs. She walked down the long corridor to my bedroom, where I lay reading. Her tone was gentle when she stood in the doorway and admonished, “Karlene, it does not seem fair that every week you are doing her homework for her.”
I erupted, not unlike the rainstorm from earlier. A surge of anger rushed out of me in an instant. I shrieked, “She is my friend, Granny! You would not understand because you have no friends!” The last four words were pellets aimed straight at the woman who raised me. Seeing the tears in her eyes and rolling her cheeks shocked me. In that instance, I regretted what I said. Turning my back to her, I looked down and away.
Without a word, my grandmother went back to her room.
After about twenty minutes, but it felt like hours, Granny had called out to me. After I sat down, she explained that she had friends. She named them. I knew all these people They had been with my grandmother for a while. I recalled now their joyful interactions. Then, she told me, in a matter-of-fact tone, “Your friend is taking advantage of you.” She reasoned, “If she is true, she will not stop being your friend if you stop doing her work.” She also pointed out that I am not helping her by doing the work for her. Granny looked past the insecurity from which my angry outburst spewed. She urged me not to stand in fear. Then, I cried.
Granny was right my friend never let me go. More than ten years later, that same friend was working on her Master’s degree. She called me one day and asked me to get information for her thesis. I smiled. Then reasoned, “You can get excellent sources of information just by searching google.com.” And in that moment, my heart swelled with love as I remembered my grandmother.
Even now, I could see that the rain was starting.