Page 16 of When I Thug You Like That

“I’m just making sure.”

“I don’t need you to do that. I keep a bottle in the fridge for my grandbaby.” She twisted the cap off of what appeared to be a new container of oat milk and pulled the seal off.

I nodded my approval.

“Yeah, I got this, boo,” she assured me, pouring the milk into a cup and placing it in front of Baby Jay.

The sound of the front door opening pulled my attention.

“Baby!” my father called out.

“I’m in the kitchen, love,” she sang sweetly.

Baby Jay’s eyes widened. His attention left the cup as he shimmied his way down the chair and onto the floor.

“Grandpa!” he yelled out, running toward my father’s voice.

“Ayeeee!” My father rounded the corner just as Baby Jay bumped into him. “Wassup, baby boy?” He swooped him up on his shoulder with one hand and held a Trader Joe’s shopping bag out to my mother with another. “Wassup, son?” He greeted me.

“What’s good, Pops?”

My mother took the bag and kissed him lovingly.

“What y’all doing here?”

“I just stopped through after the tour with this guy at his new school.”

“Okay, okay. It went well?”

“Yeah. I’m leaning toward enrolling him. Gonna have a conversation with India and make a final decision.”

“Hmph,” I heard my mother say from behind me.

“Wanna go outside to playground, Grandpa,” Baby Jay requested.

“Let’s go then.” My father obliged. “Don’t come lookin’ for us. We’ll come lookin’ for y’all.”

I laughed as they walked out the back door to the backyard. My father took his grandson/grandpa bonding time serious, and I never stood in the way of it.

“Aight, Ma. What was that?” I turned back toward her and leaned against the wall.

“What? The hmph?” she asked with her back to me as she busied herself putting away whatever my father had brought home from Trader Joe’s.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, that was to you saying you were going to have a conversation with India about the school decision.” Her reply was straight up just like I knew it would be.

My moms came from that ‘tell it like it is’ era where they didn’t care if some true shit hurt your feelings. If it was worth saying, it was said.

“What’s wrong with that?”

She paused and sighed, turning so that she was facing me. “Did she go on the tour?”

“Nah.”

“Did she know about the tour?”

“You know she knew, Ma.”