I held up my hands in defense, as I closed my eyes tightly and waited for her to hit me.
“What you doing?” she asked with just as much feeling as before.
I opened just one eye to see, that she was standing there, looking dumbly at me.
“Micah not going to hit you.” She said laying a hand to her heart.
“W-well, I would be more likely to believe you, if you put down that pot.” I said with more bravery then I was feeling just then.
The heavy lady then burst into a loud, rumpus laughter, that seemed to rebound off the kitchen walls like cannon fire.
“Ooooh you are brave boy, no?” she said, while setting the pot down on the stone counter.
“Okay! Micah put down pot. Now you tell Micah why you in Micah’s kitchen.” I noticed each time she said Micah, she would thump her round belly.
“Uh,” I grunted while trying to find something to say, “Is that your name? Micah?” I asked.
“Yes, am Micah and scrawny boy,” she pointed a sausage like finger at me, “is in Micah’s kitchen.”
“Ok, I get it. So you are my grandparent’s maid?” I asked and boy oh boy, you would have thought I had uttered some kind of racial slur against her.
She began to rant in some language I didn’t understand, while angrily returning the copper pot to the soapy water in the sink.
And then she scared me as much, if not more, then I had scared her before. She came charging at me with a large ladle in one hand and a dripping wet rag in the other. She stopped short of running me down, held the ladle right up to my nose and continued to spew angry foreign words at me.
“I’m sorry Micah,” I said, with quite a bit of fear pouring out with my words, “but I don’t understand what you are saying.”
She stomped her foot the way my mother had done only a few minutes before, but when Micah had done it, I felt the floor beneath us shake.
“Micah no maid!” She said as if she were speaking a curse upon me and as though I hadn’t heard her the first time she all but shouted right into my face, “MICAH NO MAID!”
Scared? Yep, I was scared. Terrified even and though I tried to stop myself, I felt tears welling up in my eyes and I got a hard lump stuck in my throat.
“I-I’m sorry!” I stammered and she must have sensed that I was close to tears, because she suddenly became calm and smiled at me.
“Ooooooh, now look. Micah has scared scrawny boy thing!” she said and I flinched, as she threw her arms around me, nearly suffocating me in a bear hug. I don’t think she meant too, but that darn soup ladle clocked me in the back of the head. My face had become buried in her breasts, as she squeezed me so hard, I thought my head was going to pop right off my shoulders.
When she released me, I gasped for air, as she said, “You scrawny, but you good boy, so Micah no kill you today!” and she pinched my cheek really hard.
“But I no maid!” she said, brandishing that ladle in my face again, “Micah is chef.”
She lowered the ladle and turned, as though she were about to return to washing her pots. “Micah cook good food that make scrawny boy grow big and healthy. That what Micah do!”
I had a sudden flashback to that repulsive fish stuff that had been placed before me earlier and if that is, what Micah called good food, then I didn’t want any part of her cooking again.
“Micah can’t keep calling scrawny boy, Scrawny Boy. What they call you?” she asked me with the queerest grin.
“Alvin,” I answered strongly and hit my belly the way she kept doing every time she referred to herself.
“Aben?” she tried repeating.
“No Al-Vin,” I corrected her.
“Al-Ben?” she tried again, trying to sound it out the way I had done.
“Close enough.” I muttered and smiled.
“Al-ben like Machewie that Micah cook tonight?” she said, while plunging her hand into the soapy water.