She thought about that for a long time.
“Grandma would’ve stood up,” she said.
“Grandma would’ve stood up before the plane left the gate,” I said, “and she’d have been much less polite about it than you were.”
“Was she scary?”
“She was the least scary person I’ve ever known and nobody ever took anything from her.” I put the carrier back in the closet. “That’s the thing I want you to have, baby. It isn’t loud. She wasn’t loud. She just didn’t have a version of herself that agreed to be moved.”
Maya nodded, slowly, the way she does when she’s filing something.
“I don’t either,” she said.
“No,” I said. “I noticed.”
She keeps the purple backpack too.
Stars on it, faded now, too small for thirteen.
It’s on a hook in her room, and I asked her once why she doesn’t put it away.
