My grandmother's house smelled of gravy, and not just on Sundays when we had the big family dinner but every time I went to her house. I had to go through Aunt Laura's downstairs apartment to get to my grandmother, who lived on the 2nd floor. We couldn't just pass through. We had to go in and sit in the kitchen. There was always something to eat and we were expected to sit and talk and eat. There were no short visits with Aunt Laura or grandma, who I called Monie. My father affectionately referred to her as chicken legs, a term I never understood. As far as I can remember there was nothing skinny about Monie. So we would sit in the kitchen with Aunt Laura and eat and eventually Uncle Andrew would show up and it was possible I would get to see my older cousin Andrea, who was an absolute enigma to me. She had the longest , straightest, most beauitful hair I had ever seen and one day when I inquired about it my mother told me Aunt Laura ironed it. What a shock that was to me. I didn't know you could use an iron on anything other than clothes and I though it must really hurt, and of course this made Andrea all the more fascinationg and mysterious to me. Aunt Laura had had a good deal of trouble with her pregnancies and so she spoiled her two kids rotten. Everyone in the family talked about it. Andrea would barely acknowledge me and eventually would make a hasty exit and it was never explained to me where she was going or what she was doing. Eventually we made it upstairs to see Monie. Her apartment was much more barren than Aunt Laura's and the simplicity of it seemed to indicate a different sort of life. Aunt Laura was married, with spoiled children and fine things. She didn't work. But my grandmother had no husband and raised three kids on her own while working. She was a worker. That's what they said about her. Said it ran in the family. She had a black and white tv in the faimly room that was less than impresssive than my color tv at home. And there were those tv trays you pull out so you can eat in front of the tv. Everything in the kitchen was outdated and linoleum. Cold, hard floors. Monie's house was cold but it smelled like family. It was more austere than what I had become used to living in a house with a backyard. But there were always english muffins. And not Thomases. I liked the kind she bought, generic but I remember being puzzled that there was some other type of english muffin besides thomas english muffin. When I became bored with tv or whatever games she had I would go into her bedroom and there were dozens of small trinkets to amuse myself with. Monie didn't play with me, she expected a well-behaved little girl to entertain herself, which I did. If it was nice out sometimes we'd take a walk to the local dinner. Monie didn't drive. She'd ask me what I want and I would say I want both a hotdog and a hamburger. And she would say "You're eyes are bigger than you're stomach" but she would buy me both anyway. She always wore a kind of hankerchief over her hair to cover it up. It seemed like once you got to a certain age you were required to do this. Next door to her house was a candy store which seemed to house an endless array of treats that always seemed just out of reach to me. Even if I were, on some special ocassion, permitted to enter the candy story and purchase some small item, it always seemed like I was missing out on so much more.