Bacon and Eggs

My grandmother would have made breakfast early that morning, to beat the heat before it billowed in through the open windows and filtered itself through the screen door. Her hair would be pinned up in a neat chignon with a few whips escaping from the morning draft she new would dwindle into the heat that would bloom like her hydrangeas on the front stoop, poufs of orange and marigold, she feels the heat blossom prematurely today as she lights the burners with a long stick match that she keeps next to the dishcloths, folded neat and stacked in the drawer next to the sink. She will retrieve pans from the sink and wipe a single trail of perspiration off her brow with the back of her wrist. She’d grease the pan the same way she bathed her children when they were infants, quickly, efficiently, leaving no crevice free of soap.

Bacon was expensive so she stuck to sunny side up eggs, using what was left over to scramble some with toast for herself, though she loved to dunk her crusts into the yolk. And when the eggs were done, cubed potatoes were thrown into the same pan, sopping up the already hot oil, salt and pepper from the eggs in their starchy goodness. She’d stand there in her housedress, never bothering with an apron.

“Just another thing I’d have to wash. Why bother?” By now my grandfather would come through the screen door, shirtless and barefooted, leaving his soiled boots from the garden next to the doormat. He’d retrieve a pitcher of orange juice he squeezed himself, pour a glass and throw in an ice cube or two. He’d offer it to my grandmother, kiss her hand and she would feet him some of her eggs with her free fingers.

*

They finish breakfast standing. Her hair begins to curl near the nape of her neck, strands dampened by a heat that has punctured through a tepid morning. The house is swollen with a sticky sweet humidity. My grandmother washes soiled dishes in the shallow bin on the sink, pausing to dip her fingers under a cool stream of water, stopping to smear them near her temple and a crossed her collar bone.