I had reached the professor's house when I noticed her red Tesla in the driveway. After I got out of my car, I headed inside the house, slamming my mother's front door in satisfaction, and lazily dropped my shoes at the foot of the coat rack stand.
"Professor! I'm home! Where are you?!"
"In the kitchen, love!"
"Ugh! Don't even ask me how my day is going! What I need is a drink right now! That is why I bought a bottle of vino from Pak's!" I announced, removing the bottle from the bag while clutching my paper bag with my seaweed chips inside.
I kicked off my sneakers and headed into the kitchen, failing to see that my mother had a guest sitting on a barstool next to her.
My head was solely interested in which wine glass I would put my beverage into rather than who my mother had over the house.
"Oh, I see you have a guest."
From the back of the woman's thin salt and pepper hair, I couldn't tell who she was. All I knew was that she was an older woman hence the shade of her hair and her terrible posture. Moreover, her varicose veins were apparent. When she finally turned around, I became face to face with my grandmother, Sylvia.
"Nanny, hi!" I exclaimed in joy, putting my belongings down on the counter and embracing her with both hands.
"Oh, my sweet Sallie. How are you? How's school?" she asked, rubbing my back as I inhaled her familiar raspberry scent that had the pleasure of blessing my nostrils for twenty-one years now.
"I'm great. My GPA went up by two points," I responded with glee because Lord knows I had been plugging away with math lately ever since last semester. I don't know what happened to me, I used to be a math genius in high school, and now I can't even do a problem without taking out my Ti-84 plus.
With extra credit and office hours, I was able to get a B+ in my Calculus class as a final grade. My grade in Pre-Calc during the spring semester was a C. For most days, I understood the material, but when it came to the homework, I didn't have the faintest clue of what I was doing. I would have to email a male classmate about a problem, and he would send me a picture of his answer.
Judge me all you want, but that class had so many concepts to it, it was hard to keep it up with. Hell, the whole thing was a croissant with thin layers. Besides, I didn't feel bad for not doing the homework on my own because while he was giving me the answers to math homework, I was giving him the answers to history homework.
In my opinion, I believed that Pre-Calculus was harder than Calculus itself. It's crazy when something that's supposed to prepare you for something else is difficult to comprehend.
"Oh, that's good to hear."
When we pulled away, I placed my right arm around her and asked her the millionaire dollar question that I had been floating in my mind mid-hugging.
"So, nanny, what are you doing here? I thought you only leave Florida for Christmas. It's November; remember Thanksgiving, the holiday that should be celebrated to honor Native Americans who died from genocide and the 1600s pandemic."
She rolled her eyes, "Ugh. Don't even remind me of our atrocities. It makes me sick to my stomach. God knows we're paying for it with our wrinkles and sunburn."
"Salinger, your grandmother is here to stay for a couple of weeks. Her apartment flooded two nights ago. Uncle Bobby picked her up yesterday from the airport."
I nodded in understanding. "Oh, nanny. I am so sorry to hear that," I expressed my sympathy, rubbing her back and leaning in to half-hug her.
"It's alright, Sallie. Even I am upset about my things getting submerged; I'm glad that I have insurance on everything I own there. Hopefully, everything should be recovered and replaced."
In spite of the fact that I did not get to drink with my mother and eat seaweed chips while I ramble about the decline of my math grade, I managed to sneak in a bit of rant with my nanny.
She never judged me or spoke over me while I expressed my feelings. All she did was listen, and sometimes that was all I needed. It was someone's ears to vent to about my long day at work or college.
Not someone who would hear what I have to say and then wholly disagree with what I said by giving their opinion. (Yes, I am talking about my mom.)
"Thank you for helping me get set in, Sallie," my grandmother expressed her gratitude towards me from my bed in my bedroom.
If anyone was wondering, my mom had failed to inform me that she had given my 74-year-old grandmother my room to sleep in instead of my sister's a day before.
When I asked her why she didn't tell me sooner, she argued that everything happened last minute, my room was bigger than Maeve's old room, and that it wouldn't be a big deal since I had two homes.
"Are you serious, mom? You think Brown is my home away from home? You think I like it there?" I clamored in disgust as I watched my mother take a pile of dark clothes out of the dryer in the laundry room.
"Well, technically, it is your second home, considering you live ten minutes away and you have your own room?"
"I do not have my own room, mom. I share a room with Claudia, my roommate."
"Claudia's a nice girl. I thought you liked her," she replied in a worried tone, picking up the white laundry basket from the side of the washer machine.
"I do like her, but I also like my own space too, which is why I come here to sleep in my own house in my own bedroom to get away from everyone and everything. Think of it as a detox. I mean, it's bad enough I have to share a shower with like thirty other girls on my floor, and now I have to share a shower with one more person under my roof."
"You mean my roof, Salinger. I pay the mortgage, and that person is your grandmother, who needs a place to stay."
"I know that, mom. But...space is very sacred to me. I hold it close to my heart like Catholics hold rosaries."
My mother sighed in frustration and tossed the hot, lavender-scented clothes in the basket. When she closed the dryer door, she said, "Well, then, you can sleep in Maeve's room."
"No way," I refused, putting my foot down because Maeve's room was the last place I wanted to sleep in after my mental breakdown.
I needed familiarity and comfort. Maeve's room is none of those things.
"What do you mean, 'no way?' There is nothing wrong with your sister's room."
I crossed my arms, raising my eyebrows in disbelief that my mother did not know her own daughter.
"There are many things wrong with Maeve's room, the main fact being that...oh, I don't know, it's Maeve's room."
"You are so dramatic," she shook her head, chuckling as she sat the basket on top of the dryer machine.
"I am not dramatic."
"So, what, you think your sister has a disease?" she rhetorically inquired, praying that I wouldn't answer that. Boy, was she disappointed.
"Maybe, not one disease, but several sexual ones." I'm not saying that my sister is a slut, but she had a lot of sex in this house and in her room, which is a major reason why I do not want to sleep in there. My mom knew this because it all happened under her roof.
One thing that I can say about my mother is that she always wants my sister and me to be open about serious topics. If we wanted to drink or have sex, she wanted it to happen while we were under her roof rather than at some random guy's house, and we put ourselves in a situation we cannot get out of.
The professor scowled at me in displeasure and stopped what she was doing to scold me.
"Stop that, Salinger! Stop that, right now!"
I saw her face turn red as smoke rose out of her ears.
"Stop what?! I'm not doing anything!"
"Yes, you are! You are acting like an entitled brat. Your father did not raise you like that."
"That's because he was never here."
"You know what I mean," she spat.
She knew I wasn't lying about my father not being in the picture when I was growing up because of his occupation, and I'm not saying that I grew up not knowing my father, but I grew up not knowing him.
He indeed was never around to see me grow up into the smartass I am today. Everything is virtual and never a reality.
"Look, you have two choices. Either you suck it up and stay here, or you march your grumpy butt back to campus and sleep there in your dorm."
She left me with an attitude that grew onto me and made me hop on top of the washing machine, not realizing that it was open and my butt fell right in.