Practicing What You Preach. Vanessa Davis Griggs

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СКАЧАТЬ pretty early in life. My grandma said it was due to all those fast-food meals we ate all the time instead of home-cooked ones like she cooked for her children back in the day.

      “When you grow chicken legs and wings the size of a turkey in that short amount of time, you know there’s something unnatural,” Grandma would say. “If you grow food on steroids and you feed it to your body, what other results do you expect to get? Back in my day, we used to say, ‘You are what you eat.’ Well, the result is gonna really show up later in life if you young folk aren’t careful and don’t stop eating so much junk.”

      My mother never paid much attention to what her mother had to say, at least not on that subject. “Mama, fast food is called fast food for a reason,” she’d say.

      My brother Diddy-bo, who is two years older than me, and I would sit quietly and listen to Grandma and Mama as they argued about stuff like that. I believe that’s why Mama worked so hard to help get Grandma married off and out of her house.

      Diddy-bo and I would find ourselves confused about the two of them, mostly our mother. When we were in church singing, “Give me that old-time religion,” Mama would always sing the part about it being good enough for her mother therefore it was good enough for her. Diddy-bo brought that to Mama’s attention after a church service once when Mama and Grandma were going at it big time about something they didn’t agree on. Mama told Diddy-bo she was talking about Jesus when she sang about it being good enough for her mother, and not Church’s Chicken versus chitterlings or collard greens cooked with hog jowls or fatback.

      “Ewww!” Diddy-bo and I said in unison. “Chitterlings!”

      The thought of chitterlings still causes my nose to turn upward. Grandma lived with us for about two years, and in that time she cooked chitterlings for each of the three New Year’s Days she was at our house. Apparently, chitterlings were just one of many New Year traditions or superstitions Mama allowed that Grandma religiously subscribed to and practiced.

      We had to have our Christmas tree completely down before New Year’s Day to ensure that bad things didn’t come to the house during the year. Grandma would cook either collard or turnip greens because if you eat something green on the first day of the year, it brings green (money). Black-eyed peas (what Grandma called black folks’ caviar) were for good luck. No female could step foot into the house until a man had crossed the entryway first. That, according to Grandma, was to ward off bad luck from entering the house for the brand-new year. You couldn’t wash clothes on New Year’s Day, because if you did, “You’ll wash someone out of your life,” Grandma would say. “Wouldn’t want to lose anybody we love this year, now would we?”

      Chitterlings didn’t have any notable significance other than it happened to be a staple Grandma looked forward to. Like ribs, chitterlings were said to have their roots in the days of slavery when black folks took what was normally discarded and managed to make a meal out of it.

      All Diddy-bo and I knew the very first time we smelled that so-called southern “delicacy” cooking, when we were ten and eight, respectively, was that it stank to high heaven. After we learned what it was, I fully understood the source of its smell. Mama said the only thing she didn’t like about chitterlings was cleaning them, and the way the odor got into her draperies and lingered in the house all day.

      No kidding?!

      Still, Mama happily and excitedly ate a plateful of chitterlings and always went back for seconds, sometimes thirds.

      “Some people prefer to put mustard on theirs, but I like mine with hot sauce,” Mama said. “Diddy-bo, get me the bottle of hot sauce and bring it here.” When he did, she shook a little hot sauce on the gray matter bunched on her plate, cut it up, put a forkful in her mouth, closed her eyes as she smiled, then looked up and moaned the way I do whenever I eat a superbly made peach cobbler.

      Diddy-bo is not my brother’s real name, just as Nae-nae is not my best friend’s real name nor Peaches mine. Diddy-bo’s name is Spencer after some famous actor from my Grandma’s day named Spencer Tracy. Nae-nae is actually Denita Wilson. She’s named after her daddy Dennis and her mama Anita. And me? Like Denita, I was sort of named after my father Melvin (whom most folks called Mel) and my Aunt Lisa. So I’m Melissa. Mama said I always went delightfully crazy whenever I ate peaches when I was a baby and I was as pretty as a peach. I guess Peaches just stuck.

      Diddy-bo likes to tell me that I grew into my pretty.

      When I think back on what a real brat I was (Diddy-bo says I still am), I can’t help but think about how special my brother truly is. He doesn’t let anyone mess with me, that’s for sure. Ask Cass. When Diddy-bo found out Cass had borrowed my two-thousand-dollar stereo system and refused to give it back after he broke up with me, Diddy-bo paid him a little visit. I don’t know what Diddy-bo said or did to him, but when Diddy-bo brought my system home to me, he asked me to say an extra prayer for him.

      And people wonder why I love my brother so.

      Chapter 3

      While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.

      —1 Peter 3:2

      Marcus showed up fifteen minutes early for our date. He looked amazing—different than before. When he visited my boss, he mostly wore suits and ties. For our night out, he wore a lightweight pullover sweater with a geometrical design and pecan-colored slacks. He wasn’t as lanky as I’d thought. And those nerdlike glasses he always sported? Gone.

      “Why aren’t you wearing your glasses?” I asked as we rode to the church. I thought for sure that after coming to my door to get me he would have put them on to drive.

      He looked at me and smiled. “Oh, so you noticed?” He glanced away from the road to look at me.

      “Well, yeah. I’m pretty observant. So you must wear contacts.”

      “No. I wear glasses if my eyes become strained from too much reading. And I happen to read a lot. A lot. But mostly I wear them when I want to appear more serious.”

      “Glasses make you look different, that’s for sure.”

      He tilted his head toward me and grinned. “Is that a good different or a bad different?”

      I shrugged, trying to make him think it really wasn’t that big a deal. “Just different, that’s all.” I looked over at him. With the help of streetlights, I was able to see his eyes again, and they were just as gorgeous as I remembered. I’ve never seen eyes that sexy on a man. I turned my gaze away from him. “Me? I have to have glasses to see,” I said. “Fortunately, I’m able to wear contacts, too. But I’d love not to have to wear glasses ever.”

      He didn’t respond immediately. I wanted to look back over at him, but I fought the urge and continued to focus my attention on the road ahead.

      “Well, I suppose it might stem from when I was a little boy. Everybody in my family wore glasses except me. It was something I was a little envious about,” he said. And although I didn’t see it, I heard the smile in his voice. “My mother used to think I was nuts because I wanted to wear glasses when I didn’t have to.”

      “Then aren’t you being a bit dishonest by wearing glasses?” I turned to him. “If you really don’t need them, aren’t you merely using them to misrepresent yourself?”

      “No, I don’t think I’m misrepresenting myself. My doctor prescribed СКАЧАТЬ