Remember This Part

4. A Stubborn Old Lady Is Being Stubborn, Shockingly

Alex.

"Abuelita, what are you doing?"

I'm not really asking as much as scolding. She's standing on a stool in her small kitchen, one hand stretching toward a cup. She looks over her shoulder at me and pastes on a smile.

"Well, good morning to you too, Alex," she greets me. I rush forward and gently cup her elbow, ushering her down from the stool. This woman wants to give us both a headache, apparently.

"You shouldn't be up there," I chide.

"Oh, don't be so uptight," she replies with an eye roll. "When you washed the dishes last night, you put my favorite mug on the top shelf. I was just trying to get it down."

"You should've called for me," I argue while giving her a suffering look.

"You were asleep."

"Then you can wake me up," I continue, rubbing my neck to ease the ache in it. Admittedly, my grandmother's five-foot-long loveseat isn't the most comfortable place to spend the night. I was hanging off at both ends.

I let out a weary sigh and pluck the mug off the shelf. She takes the dark blue ceramic cup in her hands and looks up at me expectantly, probably waiting for me to apologize for my attitude.

"You were in the hospital," I remind her. "Would you please just lay down and relax?"

"Alex," my grandmother begins softly. "You take good care of me. You've always taken good care of me. And I thank God everyday for you. But right now, I am fine, and I will continue to be fine. Okay? You have to stop trying to control everything. It's just not possible. Besides, I'm tougher than I look."

I exhale slowly and look down at her. Her head barely comes up to my chest, and she's so small and thin. She's right, though. My grandmother has been through a lot of hard and horrible things. And she's always come out the other side with an iron will. I should give her more credit.

"Fine," I relent. "Can I at least make you a cup of tea?"

"I was going to make you do that anyway," she mutters with a grin. I take the mug from her again and watch her as she shuffles into the living room. Luckily, it's only a few steps away from the kitchen. I guess that's a benefit of such a tiny apartment.

As I wait for the water to heat up in its kettle, my gaze wanders to the fire escape outside the kitchen window. When my brothers and I were little, we would hop onto the grated platform and climb up to the apartment above, where a striped cat was always sleeping lazily in the sun. His name was Pumpkin, I think. And Pumpkin was a good cat. He never got mad at us, even when one of my younger brothers pulled his tail. But his owner, Hugh, was always chasing us away and cussing us out.

We decided to make the whole thing into a game. We'd sneak up the fire escape like spies and try to play with Pumpkin as much as we could before getting caught by Hugh. Honestly, though, getting caught was just part of the fun. My brothers and I...we were a bunch of fiendish brats. Well, at least two of us were. These days, I honestly feel bad for Hugh. I don't even blame him for complaining to my grandma's landlord. Technically, my grandmother was in violation of her lease. She had three kids sleeping over at her house almost five days a week. Fortunately, the landlord—like most people in town—adored my grandmother. So she decided to look the other way—as long as my siblings and I promised to stop climbing up the fire escape.

My grandmother's punishment wasn't light. She took away our TV privileges, our desserts, and our favorite Mario game for a month. At the time, I thought that was completely unreasonable. But Abuela was right. If we kept getting in trouble, the landlord would be forced to kick us out. And if she did that, my mother wouldn't be able to keep working the night shifts at the hotel because she'd have to stay home to watch us.