Love Me Tender by Audrey Couloumbis

that had loosened in her sleep and now hung in loops around her head. The woman looked like she had never opened the door on such an unwelcome sight as Mel and me.
    I reminded myself this was just Mel's mother and she didn't look like a morning person. Mel isn't a morning per-son either. We'd driven through the night, was all.
    In a flat, tired voice, the grandmother said, “He's left you.”
    Mel put her hands protectively over the Belly. She said, “As a matter of fact, Momma, the girls and I came to see how you are.”
    The car door slammed shut and the grandmother glanced past us. “I'd ask you to park that behind the bushes,” she said, like the car was part of a scary movie she was watching, “but I don't have enough bushes in one spot to hide it.”
    Mel said, “Then it's in as good a place as any.”
    The grandmother was pretty rude, even for six in the morning. We weren't looking our best, I knew that, but then neither was she.
    Kerrie came up on the porch, carrying her sack of toys like she had every confidence we were staying. One look at the grandmother's face and she slipped her hand into mine. I shook Kerrie off, but not in a mean way. I wanted us to look strong, to be strong. I hoped she got that.
    Each year, the grandmother gifted Kerrie and me with a Life Savers Christmas box of different-flavored rolls of candy. By mail. Only the return address showed where it came from. Daddy would always say to Mel, “We can just drive over there,” like she lived only a few blocks away.
    Mel always said, “Over my dead body.”
    I knew the history on this, but Mel and Daddy were married now. How long could Mel's mother stay mad that they didn't get married sooner? And how long could Mel stay mad that her mother got mad?
    Daddy would try again. “One sight of the girls would soften her right up.”
    “Don't bet on it.” Then Mel would send this woman a Christmas card, tucking my picture and Kerrie's into it. It was not something I ever brought up, but if someone had shoved a microphone in my face and said, “Who do you think is to blame?” I'd have guessed it was Mel who was still mad and cheating Kerrie and me out of a quality grandmother experience.
    Until now.
    Kerrie piped up then in her little voice meant to remind people she's a child. Because Kerrie is, unlike Mel and myself, petite, people put up with it. “Could I use your bathroom? I really need to tinkle.”
    Because she's cute, some people even encourage it.
    “Do you mean you need to pee?” the grandmother asked.
    Well, hoo-ray.
    Kerrie nodded meekly.
    The grandmother stepped back and motioned with one hand. “Go all the way down the hall and through the kitchen. There you will find the johnny house.”
    Kerrie looked her in the eye and said, “Does that mean it's outside?”
    The grandmother lowered her voice an octave to say, “Definitely not.”
    Kerrie walked right inside, like one of those kamikaze pilots she watched on the History Channel. She didn't cower in the least.
    The grandmother waited until Kerrie had disappeared from sight before asking, “Is there something wrong with that child?”
    Mel said, “Why do you ask?”
    “She's short.”
    Mel said, “She's a child.”
    “She knows it only too well.”
    “Just be nice to her,” Mel said. “She'll quit it a whole lot sooner.”
    The grandmother's eyes grew round. “Be nice to her?”
    A point for Mel, who added, “You're a little daunting at six in the morning, Momma.”
    “That's the nicest thing you've said to me in years.” Witty, the grandmother.
    Most kids wouldn't want this woman for a grand-mother. I wasn't sure I wanted her. But something about her struck me as, well, interesting.
    “It's what kids do when there's another baby on the way, that's all,” Mel said. “She's pretty sure babies must be irresistible.”
    “Not to me,” the grandmother said.
    “Probably she'll figure that out. Are you going to let us stand here and catch our death, or do we all