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JJ Miller is ten years old and his favorite person in the whole wide world is his Grandpa.
(JJ calls Grandpa other things, but only when it’s just family— Abuelito, when he’s trying to get him to teach him a no-no word or give him dessert that Mama and Ima won’t let him have. Zayda, when JJ’s sleepy and reverts back to what he called him as a little kid, before the kids at school told him that it was weird to call Grandpa anything else.)
In school late November, he’s given the assignment to find a Jacksonian he looks up to and interview them. Of course, after school he runs to Grandpa’s house and knocks on his front door. The door creaks open after a few long moments, and there he is, leaning on his cane with a smile on his weathered face.
Grandpa is a little weird, but Mama’s always said it’s because he got hit badly in the head before JJ was born. Grandpa’s hands fumble with little things, like the little white pills that he takes every morning and the half-blue ones he takes every night. He speaks like nobody JJ knows, with a small slur and words that skip amongst one-another. It’s never hard for JJ to understand, though, because a defeated sigh and a wink from Grandpa and JJ knows exactly what he’s trying to say.
Every night, Grandpa sleeps with a clear plastic mask over his face that Mama checks and checks again, as if it will fall off or something. She’s tried to explain to JJ why he needs it, something about his only working lung, but JJ’s never really understood. When he was younger, the mask scared him a little, not to mention the heavy noises from the machine beside Grandpa’s bed, but now he barely notices it. It’s not like he’s around when Grandpa’s sleeping, anyway.
Grandpa’s head also bothers him, sometimes badly enough that Mama will stay the night in his house across the street to watch over him. On nights like these, JJ will stay up in his room and sit next to his window, waiting for the kitchen light in Grandpa’s home to go out. When it finally does, he will softly sigh and flop into bed. His dreams hold a faceless person who strikes bloody blows that form the cracking scars across Grandpa’s face.
On better nights, Grandpa and Mama and Ima and Dad and Tio and Tia and Olive and JJ have a family dinner, often at Tio and Tia’s house because the table there is so large. On these nights, grown-up laughter roars in the kitchen, flushed and joyous, and Olive drags JJ to her very pink room and tells him about the boys in her foraging group that are cute or not-cute. JJ sits and listens dutifully, because otherwise Olive will tickle him mercilessly. When they finally sit for dinner— hands reaching outstretched for hot dishes and anecdotes being exchanged in a flurry of Hebrew, Spanish and English— JJ always sits on Grandpa’s left side.
“I learned a joke from Izabella at school today! Conozco un buen chiste!” JJ exclaims one night, and Grandpa turns to listen expectantly. “¿Cuál es la fruta mas paciente?” JJ asks.
“Qué?” Tio asks from across the table, though his mouth is full and Tia smacks him lightly for it.
“Es pera,” JJ shrieks happily, then dissolves into giggles. He’s laughing so hard he misses Mama mouth to Grandpa, ‘Eight out of ten’ and his agreeing nod in reply.
JJ spends every Sunday at Grandpa’s house when Mama and Ima are on patrol together, looking through his cassette collections and old photos. Many are of Aunt Sarah, who JJ will never know, and she seemed very pretty. On his best days, Grandpa will talk about Sarah. Even when he doesn’t talk about her, Grandpa’s stories have an audience in JJ— especially ones about the Before. Space-ships and universities and vacuum cleaners and antique stores; JJ soaks it all up and then runs to tell his parents everything he’s learned. Sometimes Grandpa gets details wrong, because of his head, and Ima hastily fixes the stories before JJ can take them to his friends at school.
JJ is Grandpa’s favorite. He knows this because Mama says she’s never heard Grandpa speak about the Before so much, even before his head got hit, until JJ. JJ makes sure everyone knows it, though the disappointing response is always something about how JJ is Grandpa’s only grandchild so of course JJ is, by default, his favorite.
“Si,” JJ always agrees, “But I would be his favorite even if he had two, right?”
His parents just chuckle, and he glowers. (Still, the way Grandpa’s eyes crinkle at the edges when JJ talks his only working ear off is enough for him.)
On Saturdays, market days, JJ’s grandpa walks the mulched streets of Jackson with the rhythm of a heartbeat. Ba-dum, his steps go, ba-dum, as his cane takes every second step with his left boot. (The cane he made himself, Mama told JJ, when he was in a wheelchair for a year. He toiled away in their living room with Mama’s help, carving the wood with trembling hands. He’d cut himself on accident, many times, but together they finished it.) Anytime Grandpa’s out in Jackson, Tio, Tia, Mama or Ima walk with him. When JJ’s older, he’ll be allowed to help Grandpa on his own, but for now he only tags along with whoever’s out that day.
The people of Jackson, Wyoming adore Grandpa, maybe more than JJ does, so often on market days booth owners will push goods into his hands and refuse his proffered payment. Mama will only pat Grandpa’s shoulder when he tries to argue and pull him away while thanking the seller.
Last year Olive ran away from home because she was angry with Tio and Tia, but she didn’t run very far— Grandpa opened his door to find her on his porch in thirty degree weather. Grandpa bundled her up in blankets and listened intently as she cried about how confused she was all the time, though only after a quick message to Olive’s parents over his walkie-talkie so they wouldn’t worry any longer.
(After that, Olive was grounded for three months, but she and Tia did stop arguing so much. Mama said that Grandpa raised two teenage girls and knew by this point what they needed to hear.)
That walkie-talkie is for emergencies, like the time Grandpa couldn’t breathe and Mama left the house in a rush, frantically calling for Tio to help. (JJ wasn’t allowed to go to his house that weekend.)
Mama and Grandpa have this way of talking to each other with only their eyes, a language that JJ, for once, does not know. He’s a little jealous of it, but Ima laughs and says that ‘those two’ have always understood each other better than anybody else. Years ago, before JJ, they crossed the country together because Mama could’ve been a vaccine. JJ doesn’t know much more than that, because Grandpa doesn’t like to talk about it much, and Mama cries in her room with her door closed too often for JJ to try to ask.
It’s weird for JJ to know that there is so much history in his family that he does not know the details of, only that it holds emotions and pains that he’ll never understand. This is why, when he sits and interviews Grandpa for his project, he asks not what that history is but what good came of it.
Grandpa talks for hours, limp tongue and stutters unnoticeable under the words he speaks. JJ listens, captivated, as he talks about people he’ll never see, never hear. Tess and her rough voice and her gentle hands; Sarah and her beaming smile. Grandpa tells JJ the good moments, stories that JJ will hold tightly to, long after Grandpa is gone. Stories that, because of their existence, won’t allow Aunt Sarah or Tess to die. Stories that JJ writes in his paper, so that everyone in school will know the kindness in Miller family like he does.
He gets an A on the project, and the graded paper goes up on Grandpa’s fridge. Mama’s lips grow tight when she sees it that night, but she only ruffles his head and whispers, “Good job, potato.”
JJ beams.