Maya

The afternoon following my mother's funeral, Maya stepped into my grandparent's living room, then stopped just over the threshold. She was holding a bouquet of fresh flowers in her hand and whistling as if she were a bird. A rose-colored scarf wound around her head.

Mother's wake was in full swing and Grandma Sylvie's and Grandpa Ed's one-bedroom apartment was stuffed with everyone from church; the hideous, overscented displays someone had brought along from the funeral home; and the food everyone had brought: a whole ham, deviled eggs, and fruit salad. It was early August and my grandparent's air conditioner was broken. The room smelled of overheated bodies and rotting flowers.

When they saw Maya standing at the open door, just about everyone stopped talking. I wasn't sure why, but I guessed it was because she was black and the crowd was all-white. Grandma Sylvie looked up from the tea she was pouring and held the pot suspended in midair, her lipsticked mouth shaped into a small "o." Grandpa Ed choked on one of the bite-sized sandwiches a church lady had brought. They both stared at Maya.

No one moved until Reverend Davies eased himself up from Grandpa's comfy chair and slowly made his way over to the doorway where Maya stood. "My dear," he said, placing a hand on each of her black cheeks. "Welcome home. It's a shame about your sister."

My younger sister Trish and I were seated on the couch with one cushion safely separating us. We stared at each other. How could a black woman we'd never seen before be mother's sister? Everyone knew Reverend Davies was too old to preach. He'd come special that day to give Mother's eulogy because the new minister hadn't known her since childhood like Reverend Davies had. Figuring he was mixed up, we rolled our eyes.

Maya thanked him, then entered the room and started moving towards Grandma and Grandpa. Everyone stepped aside and made a clear path for her. She handed Grandma the bouquet.

"I picked them in my garden this morning," she said. "I brought them all this way on the plane."

Even without hearing about a plane, I could tell the bouquet hadn't come from anywhere around Michigan. It had one flower in it with a wide-open multi-colored beak, like a talking bird; white lilies with orange pistols; and flaming pink blossoms.

Grandma Sylvie accepted the bouquet and stared up at Maya's rose-colored scarf. "Maya," she whispered. The room was so silent I could heard the soft sounds of the kisses Maya placed on each of Grandma's cheeks.

"Who is she?" Trish whispered to me, leaning across the seat cushion so no one would overhear.

"I don't know," I said.

We watched Maya step through the crowd to Grandpa Ed. Slowly, the guests resumed eating and talking, like when a substitute teacher called for silence and it lasted five minutes before the whispers began, then audible voices, then all the way back to a full roar of talking.

"Who is she?" Trish asked again.

"I don't know," I said, louder this time because no one was paying attention to us. "Ask Grandma or Grandpa. Ask Reverend Davies."

"No way," Trish said and moved back over to her side of the couch and hid her face against the armrest.

I watched Maya kiss Grandpa Ed on each cheek as she had Grandma, only now I couldn't hear the sound. No one I'd met before kissed cheeks and I wondered if she was from another country. She didn't look like any of the church ladies and it wasn't just because she was black.

She was dressed stylishly in a black pantsuit trimmed at the edges with rose velvet that matched her scarf. All the church ladies dressed in flowered, summer dresses and some of them wore pink plastic headbands to hold their hair off their faces. Maya was taller than most of them and she walked like she was someone important.

She scanned the room, as if seeking out someone who was to have met her. "Where are the girls?" I heard her ask Grandpa Ed.

Trish must have heard too because she popped her head back up and crossed her legs.

"On the couch," Grandpa said. "They're on the couch."

It took Maya a while to reach us because the guests were paying her less notice and she had to ask a few to excuse her as she passed.

She smiled at us: a smile that was both bold and shy at the same time, then settled down on the seat cushion between us. She kissed my cheek first, then Trish's. "You poor girls," she said. "I'm so sorry to hear about your mother."

Her statement had real emotion in it, unlike the fake sympathy I'd heard in my Sunday school teacher's voice earlier that day. Maya seemed like an adult who wouldn't talk down to me. My nose pinched in the way I'd grown used to over the past two years.

Maya smelled sweet--like her bright and unusual flowers. Through the crowd, I could see Grandma Sylvie snipping the stems and placing them in a vase that was too small for them. Even so, they looked better than the bunches of carnations that were starting to stink up the apartment.

The sweet smell of the bird woman made me remember back to a Christmas when my father still lived with us. Dad and I were home alone after school when a delivery truck rattled up to our house and the driver carried two heavy crates to our door. The boxes were postmarked from California, and I couldn't understand who had sent them--we didn't know anyone in California.

"Wonder what this is all about," Dad said, slicing into the first box with his pocketknife. He cut so hard he broke apart one of the green fruits inside. "Avocados!" he said. The other box held large crimson-purple balls with a knob on each end. I weighed one in my hand and it was as heavy as the softballs I pitched to the neighborhood boys. Even Dad didn't know what that strange fruit could be. I had to take it to school, and my science teacher was finally able to identify it as a pomegranate.

When Mom came in the door with Trish, they were chattering away about preschool. Then Mom saw the boxes of dark green and crimson-purple fruit. "What the--" she said. Even before Dad left and Mom became super religious, she didn't swear in front of Trish and me. She read the return address and whispered, "Maya."

Dad nodded his head. Apparently, he'd known who sent the unexpected present all along.

"Who's Maya?" I asked.

"My sister," Mother said in the same low tone she'd used before.

I didn't understand how Mother could have a sister we didn't know about. Everyone at school and church knew that Trish and I were sisters and when they met one or the other of us, they'd always say, "Oh, Aimee's little sister," or "You're Trish's big sister, aren't you?" I couldn't imagine us ever getting separated so that people didn't identify us together.

Until that moment when she sat down on the couch between Trish and me, I had only the vaguest idea of Mother's sister who lived in the faraway state of California, the land of unknown fruits.

Of course, Mother hadn't told us that her mysterious sister was black. I figured that was why everyone was acting so weird around her. After all, how had my grandparents given birth to a black daughter? Is that why she had moved away? Was she the older daughter or the younger? And what if my mother had come out black? Would everyone have treated her like they were now treating Maya?

"Aimée and Trish," Maya said. She pronounced my name funny; I heard it as the initials "M.A." She didn't have an accent, or anything; she was really saying my name a new way.

"Aimee," Trish said. "Her name is Aimee." Then she stood and ran to Grandma Sylvie.

"You two looked lonely," Maya said, looking me directly in the eye. "There aren't any other kids your age."

I didn't know what to say. She was right, I didn't have any friends my age and I hadn't had anyone to talk to since Mom made me defriend Paul West, my orthodontist.

"It's a scary crowd, isn't it?" she said. "Don't worry, though, we'll get through this."

I didn't exactly know what she meant by we, but I did feel better that she was on my side.

We didn't talk a lot. A couple of times she leaned over and asked me who different people were. Once she asked if I wanted any food and I said no. I watched her walk to the table, select a few deviled eggs and carrot sticks, then return to the sofa without speaking to anyone beyond "excuse me."

"It feels safe here on this couch," she said.

I nodded.

The other guests slowly trickled out. Our neighbor, Mrs. Cummings, promised Grandma Sylvie and Grandpa Ed that she'd send another ham.

"Goodness," Grandma Sylvie told her, "we don't need any more hams."

My Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Northrup, said goodbye without looking at me; she adjusted her plastic headband and stared at the wall behind me. The rest of the adults gave me oversweet smiles on their way out the door.

The only person who said goodbye to Maya was Reverend Davies. Leading himself with his cane, he approached the sofa and said, "Can I have a word with you outside?"

Maya stood and inched out behind him. In the hallway, she closed the door so they were out of earshot. When she returned from their talk, her face looked brighter.

She and my grandparent's program director were the only people left in the room, and we all sat and stared at one another.

My grandparents lived in an assisted living complex. They had their own lives, but other people were paid to clean their apartment; cook their dining hall meals (which is why Grandma was so upset over the idea of another ham); drive them to their errands; and entertain them with music, and sometimes dancing, in the evening.

Trish and I had stayed at their apartment two times--once when Mom had her operation, and again when she went to the hospital to stay alive--as guests, but we weren't allowed to live there permanently. They didn't have room for us anyhow. I was already too tall to sleep on the davenport so I lay beneath it with my feet under the coffee table and my head butting up against the buffet. Trish was smaller and fit on the sofa above me. All night long we listened to our grandparents suck in raspy breaths from their bed in the other room.

We paid five dollars per meal to eat in my grandparent's dining hall. The food was gross, but I didn't have to cook, do the dishes, or make lunches like I did at home. Before her treatments, Mom had stocked up on groceries. I learned to cook by going into her bedroom for directions, going out to the kitchen and doing as much as I could remember, then returning to the bedroom with questions.

The only good thing about Mom being sick was that I had more freedom to do what I wanted. When it rained, she no longer tried to make me wear my raincoat.

I loved my grandparents, but I was almost fourteen and I didn't want to live with them.

The program director finally broke the ice.

"Do you know," she started, then paused. "Do you know if your daughter made any arrangements for the girls?"

Dumbfounded, first Grandma Sylvie, then Grandpa Ed shook their heads "no."

We needed a different kind of assisted living than my grandparents.

"Then I'm going to have to call a social worker," the director told my grandparents. "We can see about arranging foster care, but the girls might get split up."

I had never thought that far ahead before either. What was going to happen to us? They couldn't split us up.

"I'd hate to see that happen," the program director said. "Aren't there any other family members?"

I don't think she recognized Maya as part of the family because she was a different color. We didn't think of her ourselves because we barely knew her.

No one knew where my father was. He had disappeared five years before with one of his students and together they founded a cult.

"I'm prepared to take the girls," Maya said. "I have a home in California."

"Maya?" Grandma Sylvie said, her mouth shaped into another "o."

"Heather used to call me," Maya said. "It's what she wanted. Reverend Davies says she specified it in her will."

The program director stared at Maya. "I have to go call the social worker," she said and rushed out of the apartment. She was just like the church ladies, only she was probably too busy butting into everyone's lives to go to church. Why was she so eager to get us into foster homes where we could get separated? From the books I'd read, kids in foster homes were mistreated a lot. I'd already lost my father, and now my mother; I wasn't going to say goodbye to Trish too. Besides, we had an aunt. We didn't know her, but how bad could she be?

Maya puffed out her cheeks and slowly exhaled. "Okay," she said. "This is about what I expected."

No one moved.

Trish looked like she was about to cry.

Suddenly, Maya started acting like a church lady. "Can I help you clean up, Sylvie?" she asked, all chipper.

Grandma jumped up and headed into the kitchen. "No, I've got it," she said. We watched her cover food in SaranWrap and jam it into their apartment-sized refrigerator. Trish took the opportunity to race to the bathroom. I knew she was in there crying.

Just as suddenly, Maya returned to her normal self. "Sleeping quarters look tight around here," she said to me. "Would you like to stay at my hotel?"

I wondered if her room would have air conditioning.

"You sure about that?" Grandpa Ed asked, frowning at me.

Suddenly, I shivered. What was the big deal about Maya? Had she done something bad that no one was talking about? Why did everyone seem afraid of her?

"It's up to you, sweetness," Maya said in her bird voice. She pulled her black jacket away from the heat of her skin. "I just want to get into an air-conditioned room. I'm not used to this heat."

"Yeah, I'll go," I said, but I wondered how come she wasn't used to the heat. Wasn't it hot in California?