Sable Monroe

There were moments with my grandmother when I realized she wasn’t the same woman I knew back in Jamaica.

At first, it came in small, confusing ways.

One day, she was convinced that something had fallen out of her skin. She kept pointing, insisting we look. I didn’t see anything. My brother didn’t see anything. My mother didn’t see anything either.

But to her, that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

It meant we were all against her.

The argument that followed was loud and messy. She felt disrespected. We felt frustrated. Nobody understood what was really happening.

After that, she didn’t want to ask us for anything.

Later that day, she said she was going to the corner store. It was only about two blocks away. The weather was in that in-between space—cool, but not cold. The kind of day where you feel like you can manage on your own.

Normally, even with her limp, it wouldn’t take long.

But she took longer than usual.

Then longer than that.

And then it started to feel wrong.

I remember standing there, waiting, trying to tell myself she was fine. But something in me already knew.

When the police car pulled up in front of the house, my first thought wasn’t about her.

It was about my stepfather.

I thought something had happened again.

But it wasn’t him this time.

It was her.

They helped her out of the car, and she was crying.

She had gotten lost.

Two blocks away from home.

The officers said they figured out where she lived from the pill bottles in her purse.

That was the moment it really hit me.

Something wasn’t right.

And whatever it was, it wasn’t going away.