There Is No Nana Here

Hello? Is this Nana June? No, sweetheart. You have the number wrong. Six-twelve, the first September. Peas cooling by the stove. He says he is called Eli and he is seven years old. He asks if I like dinosaurs, if green ones lived near snow. I tell him, “There is no June here.” He says, “All right. Do you know?” Next Sunday it is spelling. The next, a missing tooth. I hold the cord across my lap and listen from the kitchen stool. Each time I say, “Wrong number.” Each time he says, “That’s strange. Mama wrote it on the calendar and told me not to change.” Behind him, someone shuts a drawer. A woman says, “Your coat.” Two quiet words across the line. I know that softened note. There is no Nana here. You have the number wrong. But tell me what the red stars mean. I can listen for that long. There is no Nana here. That’s what I make him hear. Then I mark another Sunday and leave the telephone near. By October he reads chapter books but skips the longer names. He hates the crust on apple pie. He sleeps with one hall light awake. He says his mother hums off-key when bills are overdue. It is the same descending phrase she sang at twenty-two. I keep nine torn-up envelopes beneath the flour tin, Christmas cards addressed to her that pride would not let send. On Sunday ten he does not speak. I hear his breathing shake. Then, far behind the receiver, my daughter says, “It’s safe.” There is no Nana here. The lie has learned my voice. It sits between a child and me as if I have no choice. There is no Nana here, yet every week I stay. I know exactly who is calling. I am frightened she will say my name. Mama says the number isn’t wrong. She says June is really you. She says you didn’t want a grandchild. Is that still true? When your mother stood here pregnant, I folded both my hands. I made fear sound like good judgment. I blamed the life she planned. She left my key beside the stove. I let the front door close. Then seven years became a sentence neither one of us had chosen. I knew her voice that first September. I knew her breath behind your own. I called myself a stranger so she could not call me cold. Eli, I was never uncertain whose small weeks you brought me through. The number was not wrong. The wrong was mine to tell you. There is a Nana here. Her name is June Marie. Put your mother on beside you, but keep one ear with me. There is a Nana here. If both of you still choose, I cannot give back seven Christmases, but I can stop refusing you. There is a Nana here. Eli, I am here. Are you going to hang up? No.