Page 2 of Broken Grump

“Oh, ‘lee-tool’ mouse!” he’d call out as soon as he walked into the front door. This nickname was given to me as a baby after he visited me and my parents in the hospital. And I guess I couldn’t stop twitching my nose around . . . like a little mouse.

Suddenly, my nostalgia is interrupted when I feel someone giving me a small bump on my shoulder.

“Hey, Addie. How are you holding up?”

Erin has a small paper plate full of assorted fruit, vegetables, and stale sugar cookies. Unlike me, she seems to have an ample appetite despite the occasion.

All I can do is sigh as I look at the casket again, slowly blinking as I look at my dearly departed grandfather.

She puts a carrot chip down and pats my back. “I know.”

“I just hate open caskets.”

Erin tucks some of her short, light brown hair behind her ear, nods, and sucks air through her teeth. “Me too. But it’s what the family wanted.”

The corner of my mouth curls up, and my annoyance is only capitalized. I can hear my mother’s fake whimpering, filling up the corner of the mansion’s dark and cold parlor room. And don’t get me wrong, the morgue-like atmosphere is one she prefers—whether there’s a dead body inside of it or not. She wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

I told myself I’d never return to this insufferable place. But, here I am.

The open casket is the reason my daughter, Luna, is not here. She loved Abuelo Sal just as much as I did. And after I found out about my mother’s plans, I fibbed and told her it was an adults-only event. It was a stupid lie. I know it. But it was all I could think of at the moment. So I promised myself to tell her the truth once I return to Phoenix.

Then, as if she can read my mind, Erin, while resuming her snacking and crunching, inquires, “How is Luna holding up?”

I take a breath.“She’s fine. Sad. But fine.”

My cousin’s head tilts and her lips roll on each other. “Right. It’s a hard loss for the entire family.

I clench my jaw and my fists, but I try to conceal both from her view.

That isn’t fair, Addie,I remind myself. Ever since hearing about his passing, I’ve struggled with this strange feeling that I should be entitled to grieve the most. I mean, out of everyone at this memorial, I can bet that I spent the most time with him.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that he was the figurehead and the patriarch of our family. So, his death is a definite huge loss forallof us.

With a sniffle, I refocus and graciously step away from my cousin. I head back over to the poster boards, which Luna helped me put together at the last minute.

Oh, shit.I notice that one of the red, paper orchids that I hot glued in the corner of my favorite picture—where he’s young, shirtless, mustachioed, and smoking a cigar—is falling off.

Thankfully, Luna thought ahead, and she had me stuff some double-sided tape into my purse. So, I take some out, apply it to the back, and readjust it.

I swear, sometimes it feels like she’s the one parenting me. But I assume most mothers experience this from time to time, especially when their children are as smart and thoughtful as mine.

Suddenly, my shoulders arch back as the distinct smell of my mother’s Chanel perfume hits my nose.

“Mother,” I say emotionlessly, without turning around.

“Ad-ri-ana,” she says, carefully enunciating every syllable.

For someone born and raised in the neighborhood of Watts—a place where you have about a one in twenty-nine chance of becoming the victim of a crime on the daily—she sure puts on a convincing show that she belongs in Holmby Hills.

“Addie,” I correct her. Nobody calls me by my full name. I don’t necessarily love it.

She just simply ignores me. And when I finally decide to face her, her chin is held high up in the air.

“Mother,” I repeat while folding my arms over my chest.

Her beady and judgmental eyes are surrounded by thick lines of eyeliner, and her thin lips smiles in red.

Then, her head snaps over in the direction of her father-in-law. “He looks good, no?”

---