Grandma stood over her stove, dabbing her sweat from her forehead as she began to plate pieces of fried chicken. The curtains in the windows billowed with air, hot and sticky. The rest of us set the table with utensils, salt and pepper and a place mat for each one of us, plus one extra.
Grandfather always taught us to set an extra place for a soldier who went missing, who couldn’t be here in the states with us to eat. A huge gust of wind blew through the house and brought the rain along with it. Grandma and I hurried to the front to close the windows. As we did, I saw someone catch her eye outside. An older black man with muddy, wet khakis and a tattered, white tee-shirt was slowly walking by. Grandma’s eyes widened and her eyebrows shifted as she walked out the front door to talk to this man. I turned to see if the family was watching.
It was then that I caught Grandfathers look on his face. He had never grown comfortable with the way the world had changed through the 1950’s. His face tightened as Grandma came back in with the man trailing her. She raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips at Grandfather as if to say “Be on your best behavior.” He raised one back. Grandma had invited the gray haired, wrinkled, black man to sit in the extra place we always set at the table. It was the first time I had ever seen it full. Grandma asked no questions about where he had come from or why he looked the way he did. She sat him at the table and as we passed around the plate of chicken. Everything got quiet, eyes darted around the table. I met Mom’s, Mom’s met Auntie’s, Auntie’s met Grandfather’s, whose eyes stared down at his plate.
He put his hands down on the table and pushed his chair back. Standing, food in hand, he shoved his chair back in. The blow to the table made it quiver. We all stared around the room again as Grandfather stormed to the den. The seat for the soldier was now filled with a man who looked like he had fought a war of his own; a war that was still silently going on even that night as we ate with the black man and Grandfather sat in the den.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 28.01.2010

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