Between You and Me

Prologue

This was the worst day of Johanna's life.

Her favorite...no, correct that, her only grandmother had passed away. Her GiGi was her favorite person in the world. She was her best friend. She talked to her about everything. They were several generations apart, but they understood each other.

"I miss her so much!"

"Me too." Her older sister, Zee, was at her side, rubbing her back as they watched their grandmother for the last time as she lay in her casket.

Peacefully asleep, that's what she wanted to think she was doing.

"At least GiGi is with the rest of her family." Zee tried to comfort her with that.

Her GiGi Mildred, or Millie as most called her, lived a grand old life. Married young at eighteen, widowed young at forty-seven after having four children. Her father plus her two uncles and one aunt. Her oldest son died in a car wreck at seventeen. Of her seven siblings, she was the youngest and the last one left.

"I just wanted more time with her."

Yes, she was selfish. GiGi had a whole grand life, with her children and grandchildren. But to her, she was the one she could count on more than her father who was in and out of her life.

The rest of her family on her father's side she was not close with. She was raised by her mother only. Her mother never married her father, who stuck around long enough to have two daughters but not long enough to take care of them. Johanna and her sister Zee were around their father's side of the family only because of her grandmother.

Her GiGi made it a point to be in their lives, getting them on the weekends once a month when they were younger and every weekend in their teen years. When she decided she wanted to go to college, it was her GiGi that helped her pay tuition her first year.

Then just like that, she was gone. Passed away from a sudden heart attack the week of her finals.

"You know you two were her favorite," her aunt Rita said, putting her arms around them both.

She wiped at her tears.

"Thanks, Aunt Rita," Zee said, who was the spitting image of their aunt. She looked more like her than their mother or father.

Johanna felt she was a mix of both her parents, with a petite frame like her grandmother. Small in stature at only five feet one, and slim with not many curves. She loved her body and never complained about it once. Other issues about herself she would change if she could.

"Come on to the house for this repast. You know the whole neighborhood is going to put together a fix for us. They loved Ma like she was everyone's ma."

"I don't think I can eat anything..."

"You need to eat something, you look like skin and bones. What would your GiGi say?"

Johanna chuckled a bit through tears. "She would try and fatten me up." The funny thing, her GiGi was the same size as her all her life.

"I could eat," Zee said.

After everyone viewed her grandmother for the last time, next they headed to the burial. It would be at Jefferson Barracks in south county, far, far away from where her grandmother was born and raised in St. Louis' The Ville neighborhood.

To say she hated funerals would be putting it lightly. Not that she had gone to many. This was only her second one in her nineteen years. The first was her mother's uncle which she did not know very well when she was thirteen years old. So this one hit differently.

When they finally made it to the house she liked to call a mini-mansion, there was already a car-lined street all down the block. GiGi Millie was loved by all, and she lived in the same house since her mid-twenties when she moved there with her husband.