Biscuits

I made biscuits today...I thought of my Granny Viv. She always had something cooking on the stove, always something to eat. Chicken and dumplings. Soup. Chocolate cake with that homemade, slightly crunchy frosting.
  Biscuits.
Is there a more perfect food? I submit there is NOT and I thought that while I mixed the flour and shortening and milk. I sprinkled the counter with flour and rolled out my dough, folding softly, kneading slightly. "not too much, they'll get tough" I hear in my head. My mama's voice? My granny's? My own? I am not sure as flour, roll, knead, then cut. I don't have a biscuit cutter, I use an old soup can I cut both ends out of and washed good. How do I know that? Cut. Put on the cookie sheet. Cut. Scooch that one over to make room for it's brother. I put them in the oven and clean my flour mess as they cook.
  Biscuits. Smell them, they are almost done. Oh, another minute or two. Get out the jelly I made last summer, with muscadines I picked and boiled down for the juice.
  I pull them out, oh they are HOT but I cool them down with a glop of jelly. They are warm and soft and slightly crumb-y. I think of Granny Viv, with her cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, occasional possum, baby squirrel, and my favorite...baby skunks. They were smart and sweet, so cute. Oh, no, Lichea...you can't keep them as a pet. Go take it back to its box. I sadly take back the baby skunk and when mama takes me home daddy says GOOD LORD YOU STINK and runs me out.
  But all I smell now are biscuits and I take one to Clint, my husband of happy 23 years. He eats one and says "woman, you've just about learned how to cook!" I smile, it's our little joke. I tease he married me because I made him fried chicken, iced tea, gravy, and of course...biscuits. I was 17 and eager to show this wonderful man he couldn't live without me. How had he made it to 23 without starving? We married 5 months after we met, just a few months after the fried chicken dinner.
  We eat all the biscuits without shame and nod at each other, not speaking. We are eating biscuits and I think of Granny Viv. I have her old apron, hand mended in places. She's been gone for 7 years, she died right before my birthday in July. I was with her when she died, along with  my Papaw Derald and my mom and aunts... had sat with my aunts and uncles for the last 2 weeks as she drifted in and out of conciousness. I suctioned her, helped turn her and prayed. She told me before she died that she WANTED to die, she wanted to GO ON and see her mama. She said "you'll be fine without ME, that's for sure." I told her I would and I guess I am. I guess we all are, but all of us gals do things like she did...without even knowing. I'll eye that stack of magazines..books..and I know. There she is. "I'm grannying it up!" I'll call my sister and crow to her. Bobbie will laugh and agree and we will talk about how we are like her.
  Biscuits. Papaw loved granny's biscuits and would grab them off the pan, while they were too hot to hold and he would jostle back and forth saying "ow ow ow" while granny would shoo him toward the table and hand him something sweet...jelly or honey or sorghum..to put on his biscuit. He would smile and drink his coffee and eat.
  When granny died, we knew it was coming. My aunt Debbie had called me early that morning to say "come. It's time." I drove to the hospital, praying I got there in time. Why? Why did I have to be there? Would she know? I would.
  I drove and the song on my cd player was an old Fernando Ortega song..the title escapes me, but the words are about childhood and trying to make it back to see his mother.."keep her safe, one more night..til I get home."
  We gathered around her bed, Papaw in his wheelchair...my mom...my aunts...we sang and whispered softly.
  Papaw suddenly straightened in his chair. "She's gone." he said.
  He was right. He said "I felt her leave." I didn't feel her leave.

   I never have.

  Here’s how to make biscuits like my Granny Viv:

  First, take a big old mixing bowl from somewhere and whack it over the trash can to knock any dead bugs out of it. Fill said bowl with an amount of flour known only to you. Plop a glop of Crisco about the size of your fist in the center of the dough. Grab a wooden spoon from out of nowhere. Mix  vigorously. Reach into the fridge and get the gallon glass jar of raw cow’s milk with mystery clots floating in it. Pour some of this into the flour while stirring. When it clumps together, knock a cat off the table with your left hand and dump the dough on the table. Knead the dough while continuing to shoo at flies and cats. Sprinkle with flour to prevent sticking, until it becomes a consistency that you admire.  Begin halving the dough, once, twice…as many times as needed to make a ball of dough the size of a cat’s head. This is why they are called cathead biscuits. Pull a cookie sheet out of the oven, while also pulling out the duck’s eggs in an old cardboard box you have been incubating by the pilot light. Do NOT preheat the oven until the duck’s eggs are safely out. Look closely at the duck’s eggs to see if any ducklings are emerging and speak sweetly to the ones that are trying. Say something like “he was a good boy, he was”.  Set the box of duck’s eggs onto the floor. Grab the leftover bacon grease still in a frying pan from breakfast and dip each raw biscuit into the grease and flip over onto the cookie sheet so the grease side is up. Slide into the oven and bake til done. You will know they are done by some sort of psychic baking sense that will make you stop midsentence and pull them out of the oven with an old dishrag or the corner of your worn, mended apron as a pot holder.  Serve with butter and jelly that have been sitting on the table, uncovered, for several days and fresh eggs that you just gathered that morning, the yolks of which are the brightest, orangey yellow imaginable. Make no comment about these eggs being any different than the duck’s eggs you treat so tenderly. Sop your biscuit into the sunny, runny yolk. This will taste…like love.