Against the Wall

I Don't Know You

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Excuse the Mistakes, everyone, but it's late and I too sleepy...

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The bags crowded my arms, and it felt like they were filled with lead. I trailed behind Grandma Aggie as she strolled through the mall, trying to adjust the bag hands so they didn't cut so hard into my skin. Unfortunately, I wasn't at all successful.

For a 67-year-old woman, Grandma Aggie loved to shop. She'd let me sleep in until ten o'clock, and then I was swept away to the mall. We'd visited store after store, buying things like clothes, shoes, and electronics including a cell phone and alarm clock.

Apparently, my grandfather had been wealthy, and he'd left her with a lot of money, which seemed to be burning a hole in her pocket. According to Grandma Aggie, she "finally had a grandchild to spoil!"

At about five o'clock, Grandma Aggie declared that we were finished, and we made the trek back to the car to load it up with our goods. As I piled into the passenger seat next to Grandma Aggie, she turned to me and asked, "How about an early dinner?"

"You read my mind," I replied with a smile, and we pulled out of the parking lot. About five minutes later, we pulled into an Olive Garden, and my mouth started watering. I hadn't had Italian food, my absolute favorite, in so long. My seatbelt was off and I was hopping out of the car before Grandma Aggie even had the chance to turn off the ignition.

We were seated immediately, and I enjoyed the feeling of the clean wooden chair. The last restaurant I'd eaten at was a crappy McDonald's in a city, and the booths had been cracked, dirty, and covered in something I'd suspected to be vomit. The seats in Olive Garden were definitely much nicer.

"What can I get ya'll to drink?" asked a perky waitress, her ponytail bouncing as she talked.

"I'll get some peppermint tea," said Grandma Aggie without looking up from her menu.

"I'll have an iced tea, please," I replied, and the waitress nodded before flouncing off to another table. I watched her for a moment before scanning the menu, looking for something stuffed with cheeses and slathered in marinara sauce. After deciding on the baked ziti, I folded the menu and looked up to see Grandma Aggie staring at me.

"What?" I asked self-consciously, "Is there something on my face?"

"Oh, no. Sorry," she said, blinking. "You just... You're the spitting image of your mother. The same light brown hair and bluish green eyes; it's a little weird, truthfully."

I smiled at the comparison and laced my fingers together under the table. "What was she like?" I asked. "I don't really remember her."

Grandma Aggie leaned back in her chair and knit her eyebrows together as she sorted through her memories. "You're mother was very intelligent," she stated. "She was always getting top grades in all her classes and she was a hard worker; never taking anything for free." Her eyes clouded, and she frowned as a thought seemed to cross her mind. "I never understood why she went down the path that she did."

"What do you mean?" I asked confusedly. Grandma Aggie opened her mouth to reply, but the waitress loudly interrupted with our drinks and breadsticks. After we gave her our food orders and she left, Grandma Aggie seemed to become transfixed by her napkin, and I could tell she was holding

back. "What do you mean?" I repeated, this time using my serious voice.

"I changed my mind," she replied simply.

"You can't just do that!" I said, now getting a bit angry. "You started saying it, and now you have to finish what you were going to say."

Grandma Aggie sighed and dropped her napkin on the table. "After college, your mother stopped coming home. She barely talked to me, and two years after her graduation, she called me up and told me that she was getting married to a man she'd been with for the past nine months. I didn't even know what to do! My only child had contacted me after six months to drop a bombshell like that. I thought she was being stupid, and I told her so."