Born a Crime

By the time the cake arrived, everyone had agreed that Grandmother should give the first toast, though nobody agreed which language she should use. She stood at the end of the table with one hand on the back of her chair and looked at Sana.

“You will help them,” she said.

Sana had expected this. Half the cousins understood Grandmother easily. The others understood enough to laugh a second late, then looked at Sana to see whether they had missed something important.

Grandmother began with the story of a neighbour who had brought a basket of oranges to the wrong house for three years. The aunt beside Sana corrected the year. A cousin at the far end asked what had happened to the oranges. Grandmother ignored both interruptions and continued.

Sana translated between sentences. She shortened the names of streets that meant nothing to some people at the table. She explained that the neighbour had not been forgetful exactly; he had been stubborn about the first mistake. When Grandmother reached the part where he finally recognized the right door, she used a phrase that made her sisters laugh into their glasses.

“What does that mean?” asked Daniel, who had arrived late with two bags of ice.

Sana paused. The closest version in English sounded sharper than Grandmother’s voice had. It would make the neighbour foolish in a way the original did not. Grandmother was watching her now, amused but not rescuing her.

“He had been carrying the oranges so long,” Sana said, “that he began to think they belonged to him.”

Daniel laughed. So did several people who had not understood the first version. Grandmother lifted her glass, then added something else in the original language. Two cousins near the window asked each other what they had missed.

Before Sana could answer, the aunt beside her said the cake was melting. Chairs scraped back. Daniel began handing out plates with the bags of ice still at his feet. Grandmother continued speaking over the noise, and Sana caught only part of the next story.