Before she died, Grandma made me promise that I’d take care of her house. How could I say no? She was the only person in this whole world who didn’t look at me and see a good for nothing loser.

Mama didn’t even tell me who my daddy was before she up and left for good. He never bothered to find me either, so I guess he didn’t care about having a son. Grandma, Mama’s mother, had more going for her than any of us. She ran a flower shop up on Tyler Road and pretty much supplied all the weddings and funerals in our two drugstore town. It was enough to keep us in red beans and rice and nearly enough to keep up her little house on Avenue Z.

That house was her pride and joy and it was well-maintained when Grandpa was alive. He didn’t ever have a steady job–working construction when he could get it and handyman tasks when he couldn’t—but he did take care of that house. He power-washed and painted it every few years, replaced any rotting wood, mowed the lawn, and trimmed the bushes. After he died, though, Grandma couldn’t do all of that, not alone. Me, I had enough trouble taking care of myself. Nobody wants to hire a man who didn’t even finish high school and can’t install Sheetrock or use a T-square. Grandpa wanted to teach me all of that, but I was too busy hustling a few grams to buy that gold chain so I could attract a girl with an eye for shiny things.

The only class I cared about in high school was auto shop. I can fix just about anything wrong with a vehicle as long as wasn’t built after the years started to begin with twos. Computers and gadgets on these newer cars make them too tough to work with. Maybe I could have still gotten a job as a mechanic, except for my bad habit of taking the boys up on their offers to have just one more drink all the way up to three a.m., which made it a feat to drag myself out of bed at a reasonable hour.

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