Chapter Seven: A Good Pot of Red Sauce

Because Nanna had “time on her hands” she started picking me up at school right after her shopping spree at Marshals.
It was so embarrassing. I’d be at my locker and I’d hear “Gianna.”
I would think, “Oh, my god, it can’t be, my grandmother can’t be here. How the hell did she get in here?”
Turning around slowly from my locker, I would see her coming right toward me. You could not miss her, orange vest and all.
And then there would be a chorus of voices from onlookers, “Gianna!” They were mocking me, giggling that a freshman in high-school still had her grandma picking her up. The next day, upper classmen I did not even know came up to me in the cafeteria and said, “Oh, your grandma is so cute, and boy can she talk up a storm!”
“Nanna,” I would say through clenched teeth while trying to nudge her to the back door, “why are you here?”
“I thought we could go for some ice-cream.”
“It’s 30 degrees outside,” I barked.
“Oh, well let’s go to McDonalds.”
In the car, I would tell her that I was way too old for her to pick me up.
‘Well, I thought I was doing you a favor.”
Of course she was doing me a favor, but I was not going to admit this-- it was warm in the car and I figured getting a Big Mac out of the deal was worth all the harassment I was going to get at school the next day.
“If you are going to keep picking me up, can you please wait in the car for me?”
She ignored the question and backed out of the round about without looking where she was going.
“Why do you look so sad?” Nanna said as we drove to McDonald’s. The same McDonalds we have been going to since I was in the first grade, the one on Western and Howard Street.
“No reason,” I said as we passed the playground where I use to play softball.
But that wasn’t really true. I was sad because I wanted a friend I could call a best-friend. I wanted to feel what I felt when I stepped out on the softball field and all my friends: Angie, Sarah, and Maria played a game of softball—no cares, no insecure, no stupid name calling, just all of use having a good time.
“Are you sad, Nanna?”
She didn’t say anything. In fact, we hadn’t really talked about Aunt Connie, and no one had said anything about her and the restaurant. I was already in bed most nights when my Mother got home.
The other night I overheard my mother talking to my father telling him that business was bad. There just weren’t enough people coming in at night to pay the bills. And some customers were complaining about the food, especially the red sauce, and how they thought Carla’s was a Spanish restaurant, and how they had driven across town thinking they were going to have a traditional Spanish meal. The thing was, our lunch clientele understood our uniqueness, because they all loved my grandmother’s lasagna smothered with her red sauce, full of mushrooms and onions. The professors and faculty of Loyola just wanted a good hearty Italian meal. They could care less what the sign read outside
I wanted to tell this to Nanna, but I knew it wouldn’t make her feel better, just worse. She didn’t want to hear that her daughter Connie was failing.
So, for the first time in my life I kept my big mouth shut and instead poked at my sister, making her whine, feeling great satisfaction as I put on my head phones and clicked on my walkman.
“Take those things off and talk to me,” Nanna said.
“Why? I got nothing to say.”
“You never got anything to say.”
“Nanna, my brain hurts. I need to relax from all the studying I do at school.”
“Oh, please!” Nanna said with a laugh
We all started to crack-up as Nanna steered the car into the parking lot of McDonalds.