She looks me in the eye and with some urgency says
I left Barbados on my birthday
I’m trying not to cry as the tears well up in
her eyes.

I came because I wanted my children
to have a better life.
She tells me this over and over
And I am thinking

About leaving home
And becoming Black American to whites
And immigrant trash to Black Americans
Coming to America

To suffer at the hands of family
To March with the King
To watch your son sent to war
To watch your husband die too young.

She tells him:
She’s my only granddaughter.
I was there when she was born.
She is grandma, swelling with pride.

I fear she knows I didn’t know
to have pride in her
all the times I should have shown it
but didn’t know how.

And now her vocal chords are weakening
her voice fading
with urgency she asks:
do you remember how to make cod fish cakes?

This used to offend me.
I have to learn just because I’m a girl?
But now, I realize,
none of that matters.

In her unwritten recipe lives
a little piece of Barbados
the island she left on her birthday
so that I could become.

And I know
I will learn to remember
if it’s the last thing I do.