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back in style. He wore blue jeans and a T-shirt bearing the Coca-Cola emblem that I recognized from a Christmas long gone. His salt-and- pepper hair had been brushed back with a few unfocused strokes. The deep brown skin poking out at the top of his head shined like a light bulb, as though he had a bright idea.
    My father might have been a fashion disaster waiting to happen, but he always smelled good. He splurged on cologne, though he rarely went anywhere since retiring. He said that   Grandmomma   Smith always taught him that you might be poor, but you didn’t have to be dirty or stinky. As was routine, I ignored his inspections and continued with my duty.
    “Hey,” he prodded, “what kind of rolls did you make?”
    “I bought ‘em   at the store,” I said in answer to his   real   question, pulling a cookie sheet from the cabinet beneath the counter.
    “Hmm,” he said with a frown on his face.
    “What’s wrong with the rolls, Daddy?” I asked him, sighing and placing one hand on my hip.
    “There’s   nothin’ wrong with them. I’m just   waitin’ for the day you start   makin’ them from scratch,” he said.
    “Daddy, I don’t even know where ‘scratch’ is.”
    “That’s the problem, now,” he said, looking down his nose at me. “How do you expect to get a good man without knowing how to cook? You watched your momma and me make plenty of meals that you claim you can’t whip up now. Don’t you know the Bible says the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?”
    Momma contradicted him. “That ain’t in the Bible.”
    “It ought to be,” Daddy said with raised eyebrows. He pushed his stomach forward indignantly and let his arms dangle at his sides. “They sure left a whole lot out if   that’s   not in there, ‘cause it’s the truth, so help me God.”
    “Well, if you would read the Bible for yourself, you’d know what’s in there,” Momma said as she spread low-fat margarine on top of the unbaked rolls.
    “See?” Daddy pointed. “Stuff like that—fake   butter— probably has all kind of chemicals and preservatives. That’s what’s   makin’ people so sick these days—givin’ everybody cancer. I swear,   we didn’t have all these problems y’all have today. Now, we had high blood pressure and arthritis and sugar, but we didn’t have all these no-name quick-killing diseases y’all have today. You know why?   Because we used natural fat, F-A-T!”
    “What else should we be using, Daddy?” I opened that can of worms knowing that he’d bring up something utterly ridiculous like using apple butter in place of light syrup.
    He proceeded to tell us, for what was probably the hundredth time, the Vaseline story. He repeated it as though he’d never shared it with us before. “I swear to God.” He held up his right hand. “One day your   Grandmomma   Smith was in the kitchen about to cook us breakfast. She barely had enough stuff to make the pancake batter—probably just some flour, eggs, water, and powdered milk, but we were   gonna   eat it because that’s all we had. Momma looked in the cabinets for some shortening or some butter to fry   them   pancakes up in, but we didn’t have any. All we had   was   some Vaseline from when she did Debra Jean’s hair, so that’s what she used. And it tasted just fine. I ain’t   lyin’! Call my momma on the phone right now and ask her! She’ll tell   ya! We ate whatever we had.”
      “Ain’t   nobody   fixin’ to call your momma.” Momma shook her head.
    “My momma told me about you light-skinned women,” he teased her. “Y’all worked in the kitchen. Don’t know anything about   real   cookin’ for black folks.” Daddy sauntered back toward the living room to watch more of his game. “But you turned out all right, gal; you grew on me after a while.”
    “Jon, please. Your momma said I was the best thing that ever happened to you. According to her, I rescued you.” She turned