The Phone Call

My granddaughter call me from foreign. She gone up to Canada five years now. Every time she call, is the same thing: “Granny, you should rest more. You shouldn’t be at the market in this heat.”

Rest. The child want me to rest. I been resting forty years — that is what the table IS. She think because she cannot see me, I must be suffering. I tell her, baby, the suffering is YOURS. You up there in the cold paying eight dollar for one little coconut drop that don’t even taste right.