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Who Have Money Is Very Strange People
- University Press of Mississippi
- Chapter
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In the apartment she shared with Kenneth, Azi Torres said, "Kenneth can't find out right now. It would be too complicated. He can't stand Jeff." She was speaking about the fact that she and Jeff had gone to Chattanooga, Tennessee, a month before and gotten married. "Jeff says to try and live here a while and we'll see. Kenneth is jealous about Jeff because Jeff is rich, and Kenneth work. Can you imagine being jealous about?" Incredulous, she said, "I am be jealous about Michael Jackson? Because he is rich and he has nose like aah." She pinched her nose. "That's some attitude that I no like." Before they married, Jeff had felt compelled to introduce Azi to his grandmother. For months, Jeff had told Azi she should meet the widow of the man who built the businesswhose profits the family now enjoyed. Several times he had said, "Let's go meet my grandmother," but had backed out. Each time, Azi had recalled her sister's eerie prediction about Jeff's grandmother. "I never believe Jeff," she said, "and when I come back from Florida, he said I want to take you. I think he wants his grandmother meet me, the approval for she like me or not, what impression she has of me. Show the baby. I always hear from him, 'Oh, I take you and meet my grandmother,' but he never did, so I didn't believe. I thought at the last minute he would say no, let's do another day, but I was preparated with one nice dress, more serious. My hair was made, was not messy, won't be like you see today. I was well dressed and put lipstick. I didn't put makeup because I can't stand. I just put a little bit." Azi dressed Robert cutely, worried that this wealthy matriarch would Who Have Money Is Very Strang People 166 W\)o Have Money Is Very Strange People recoil at the thought of her great-grandson being a Grady baby. The grandmother lived in a mansion in Buckhead,Atlanta's richest neighborhood . "Her house is really beautiful," Azi said. "Inside something else, and have an elevator. Is not funny? My mother's house have steps. I ride in the elevator when I get there with the baby. Is very nice. Telephone inside. One of the women, housekeeper, the secretary, answer the door, and he went upstairs and talked to his grandmother first and then they went there and called me. Then he said this is my son, and he put in her arms. 'Oh, ohohoh.' She was very surprised and very emotional. She looked him, and he was laughing and laughing. He did just exactly right, look like he knew. He said, I will make these people melt their hearts. She said, 'Jeff, how come you hide something so adorable?'" Azi imitated Jeff's grandmother with a high-pitched voice. "She's treating me very well, understand? We talk little bit. Jeff said, well, Grandma, this is something that I should tell you a long time ago, and now we gonna get married. She said I am so happy for you. It's good you have to take care of this child. She was in love with Robert completely. You feel that she mean it." Then the grandmother asked the question: "Where was he born?" Azi thought about Grady's reputation, about this woman's stature in Atlanta, and she thought about her sister's message from a spiritist medium . She said, "Grady Hospital." The grandmother replied, "Grady saved my life." She said that twenty-four years ago she was in an automobile accident. The woman next to her was killed, and no one expected her to live, either. Her body badly damaged, she was whisked by ambulance to Grady, where she was treated and healed. Azi also found out that, like her, the grandmother had eloped. "She wasn't pregnant," Azi said. "She just did. Then I know that she likes me. Uh-oh, he make poo-poo. She is one of the wealthy people in this city, but she is not a snob. She is just very wealthy because her husband left her heck of money. He's dead long time, and then she is a woman that is on a board of a lot of things. The woman worth eighty million dollar. She mention about Jeff's mother, like she no behave well, her...