Doomsday Rebirth novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Baba

Ezra's grandmother lived in a brick memory-care home in Slavic Village.

Her room was on the second floor, with a window box of plastic geraniums.

Everyone called her Baba, including the nurses.

She was eighty-four, with a white braid pinned around her head and a lap blanket she kept folding into squares.

I brought a covered dish of halusky with bacon and cabbage.

In the Terminal I had learned that the old ones eat when you cook for them.

Baba ate it with her eyes closed.

"This is right," she said. "Who made this?"

"I did."

"Hm. You have a good hand." She opened one eye and pointed her fork at me. "You moved the wardrobe."

Ezra, in the chair by the window, stopped yawning mid-yawn.

"Baba, how do you know that?"

"My husband's grandfather built that stair for the firemen. The wardrobe stays. The cistern stays dry. This is known."

She turned the fork toward him.

"And you, you don't cut yourself where people can see."

"I haven't cut myself in a while."

"You never bleed right. The doctor said so when you were a baby, and your mother said never tell."

"I'm telling now, because she isn't here and you've got a nice girl."

I put my plate down very carefully.

"I'm not his nice girl," I said.

"Hm," said Baba, and went back to her halusky.

Her mind slid out of the room a minute later.

She asked Ezra if he'd done his homework, and he said yes, and she told him to wear a coat.

In the parking lot he stood by the passenger door, not opening it.

"She's never said that before," he said. "Not once."

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