Turkey Day With The Belues

"Skylar, will you chop some celery for me? Three stalks, please."

"Sure Mom." I reached for a knife, grabbed the celery, removed three stalks, washed them and began chopping them. In about three hours, dinner would be served. My parents' home would be full of Smiths, Belues and assorted other extended family and friends; plus, JG. Yeah, I invited him over. I felt nervous about him meeting my family for the first time. The night before, I told him about some of my most idiosyncratic family members.

"Aunt Wanda likes to think she's still just as fine as she was in her teens and twenties, but, she's almost fifty and will more than likely be inappropriately dressed. She'll try to flirt with you. Uncle Bobby drinks too much and has a hair trigger temper, do not, I repeat, do not, engage him in a conversation about politics. He thinks the Bush family are devils incarnate and that the Clintons and Kennedys parted the Red Sea. Aunt Thelma gets easily offended if you don't speak to her, so, please make a point of singling her out and saying hello to her. My cousin Timmy is transitioning to Tatiana. He hasn't had the surgery yet, but, he obviously looks like a man in drag because he's like 6'3", has man hands, not to mention an Adam's apple. Try not to stare. I have a seven-year old niece, Briana, who's autistic. She hates loud noises and is prone to outbursts of screaming. And--"

"Sky, please, it's going to be okay. You've been around my family countless times and we have similar issues. Babe, chill." He kissed me on the nose.

"You don't understand."

"Of course, I do. It's going to be fine. You worry too much."

I know he's right; yet, I am so nervous. The menu was the usual Thanksgiving fare: turkey, ham, chitterlings, gumbo, corn bread dressing, macaroni and cheese, potato salad, mashed potatoes, collard greens, lima beans, green beans, green salad, dinner rolls, corn bread, Aunt Mattie's famous sweet potato pie, Mom's German chocolate cake, Aunt Martha's jelly roll cake, Nana's pound cake and Uncle Solomon's banana pudding. I know I'm leaving something out. JG has no dietary restrictions and he gets along well with everyone he meets. He's just an all-around nice guy. However, he's a white man and his last name is Greer. That name carries a lot of weight in this small town of mine. I invited Mom, Dad, and JG to lunch a week prior so they could meet and be familiar with each other. JG and Dad hit it off nicely with their mutual love for outdoor sports and blues music. He charmed my mom; coincidentally, they had some acquaintances in common. But, of course, JG knows just about everybody.

Finally, dinner was done and my sister Darla began setting the tables. I put butter in the mashed potatoes and in the gravy, then, got the cranberry-orange sauce I made the night before out of the refrigerator. I pulled off my hostess apron. People were starting to arrive and it was getting noisy. The guys and a few ladies joined Dad in the den to watch the game; Mom and the rest of the ladies were still in the kitchen making last minute preparations. The kids were either in my old bedroom playing video games or outside playing. Aunt Wanda showed up overly made up, wearing a too short olive colored mini dress with tan suede thigh-high boots and long, wavy orange colored extensions. She looked a hot mess.

"There's my beautiful niece Sky!" She runs over to me and gives me a hug and a kiss on my cheek, reeking of Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds, which begins to make me feel nauseous. She then stands back and looks at me from the top of my head to my feet. "You look bigger; are you gaining weight?"

"No, Aunt Wanda, I weigh the same as I did last year. (In fact, she told me I was too skinny then). How's Tiffany?" I ask. Tiffany is her one and only daughter with whom she's estranged from on occasion. Much like her mother, Tiffany is also all too consumed with her social life.

"Oh, she's fine. She says she's gonna stop in today, but, she can't stay long."

"Of course." (I doubt if she stops in at all). I like those boots Aunt Wanda."

"Do you? I got these half-off at Bloomingdale's. So, what's up with you?"

"Working, trying to finish grad school, the usual."

"Your mom told me about your boyfriend coming by." (Here we go.)

"Yeah, I forgot about that." (sarcasm) The the doorbell ring and I just knew it had to be JG. He's always early, never late. My mom yelled, "Why, hello JG, welcome to our humble home, come, let me take that and introduce you to everyone."

So, it begins. Aunt Wanda lept to her feet and ran into the living room. I heard laughter and Uncle Bobby ask JG if he was related to the Greers that owned the department stores and I heard JG say, "You could say that," then, changed the subject to the game. JG never likes to discuss his family background. The deflection worked.

"And, of course, you know this lovely young lady."

"No, never heard of her." We both hugged briefly, he kissed me lightly on the cheek.

"You finally made it," I whispered.

"I came when you told me to," he whispered back,"So, how are you?"

"Great, now that you're here." We both agreed to keep the PDA to a minimum around family. Uncle Solomon led the prayer (which went way longer than it needed to) and people began to eat. In traditional fashion, the men sat back down in the den to finish watching the game, the women scrambled to serve the older relatives first, their husbands/boyfriends, their children, then themselves. The single people fended for themselves. I considered myself a single woman and fended for myself. JG followed suit. The two of us were talking, eating and laughing with a handful of cousins and aunts, until Aunt Ida Mae called me into the kitchen.

"Sky, why you aint fix your man a plate?"

"You mean JG? He can get his own plate," I shrugged.

"You fix your man a plate next time. I don't know what's wrong with you young girls these days." I simply replied, "Yes, ma'am", rolled my eyes as I shook my head once when I was out of the kitchen.

"Is everything okay?" he asked.

"Fine," I replied, smiling. Aunt Martha noticed JG's preference of hot sauce on his collard greens and commented on it because I guess it never occurred to her that some white people like hot sauce, too. We all ate like swine the whole evening. JG had brought a cheesecake with warm raspberry sauce in a jar and that dessert was the bomb. Apparently, he had been raised to believe it's bad manners to show up empty handed to someone's home when invited for dinner. He even got in on the cutthroat spades game against my advice and managed to win a few hands. I totally suck at spades, so I watched over his shoulder. I nearly died of embarrassment when Aunt Maureen said JG was a good looking white boy and we would make pretty babies. JG squeezed my hand and winked. In usual JG fashion, he won everyone over and my mom invited him over for Christmas dinner (!). We left together at the same time, walking out into the cold night air. He reached for my hand as he walked me to my car.

"So, you survived meeting my family. What do you think?"

He chuckled a little, "Your family is great, Sky. I enjoyed getting to know everyone; and it was fun. More fun than I would have with my folks, for sure." We stood facing each other.

"Goodnight, Sky babe."

"Goodnight, Jamey."

When I called him, Jamey, he pulled me towards him and kissed me tenderly. That was his mother's nickname for him; I don't know what possessed me to do that.

"Call me and let me know you got home, okay?" he said in that deep, southern accented tone of his that makes me melt.

I smiled, "Okay." I was truly, madly, deeply in love with Jameson Gregory Grant Greer IV.