The Memory Project

The Memory Project is a fictional founder drama inspired by Dr. Gina Paige, co-founder of African Ancestry. Dr. Paige’s pioneering work helping people of African descent reconnect with their ancestral origins through technology served as the primary inspiration for the story.

The man from Cincinnati was still talking about quarterly projections, but I couldn’t have told you what quarter we were discussing or what exactly was being projected. My attention had wandered somewhere between slide fourteen and slide fifteen, settling instead on the phone sitting beside my legal pad. Grandma had never been much for texting. She claimed she was “too old to have conversations with her thumbs,” which meant if she didn’t answer a call, something was wrong.

Not end-of-the-world wrong, just wrong. Maybe she’d left her phone in the garden while fussing at her tomatoes. Maybe she’d gone to choir practice and forgotten to turn the ringer back on. Maybe one of the church ladies had trapped her in the grocery store and she was currently standing beside the canned green beans discussing somebody’s nephew who’d run off to Florida with a waitress. Still, I found myself checking the screen again. Three calls, and no answer.

That little knot in my stomach tightened another notch. Grandma Ruth answered her phone. If she was cooking, she’d answer. If she was gardening, she’d answer. If she was standing in line at Piggly Wiggly comparing canned peaches, she’d answer. The woman once answered while sitting in a dentist’s chair and whispered, “Baby, I can’t talk. They got drills in my mouth.” So, when her voicemail picked up on the third call, I sat a little straighter in my chair.

The conference room around me was full of people who were being paid entirely too much money to discuss software integration. PowerPoint slides flashed across a massive screen while somebody named Greg explained why our client needed a more efficient data migration strategy. Or maybe it was a customer engagement strategy. Honestly, I couldn’t have told you. I was too busy staring at my phone. I told myself there was a reasonable explanation.

There always was, maybe she’d left it in the house while she worked in her garden. Maybe one of the church ladies had cornered her after Bible study. Maybe she’d finally taken my advice and learned how to silence her phone. Though, if that happened, I’d probably have to notify the Vatican because it would qualify as a miracle. “Nylah?”

I looked up, twenty people were staring at me. Apparently, somebody had asked a question. My boss, Robert, smiled expectantly. The client looked hopeful. The intern looked terrified. I blinked twice, then years of corporate experience kicked in. “The problem isn’t the software,” I said, standing as I gathered my thoughts. “The problem is that nobody bothered to ask how actual people are using it.” Heads immediately started nodding, pens started moving, the room relaxed, and just like that, I was back to being Nylah St. James, corporate fixer.

The woman companies flew across the country to solve problems. The woman who always had answers. The woman whose LinkedIn profile made her look far more impressive than she actually felt most days. Thirty-four years old, senior consultant, six-figure salary, beautiful apartment, Frequent flyer status. More blazers and floral dresses than any human being should legally own. Somehow, despite all of that, there were nights when I sat alone eating takeout noodles in front of reality television wondering if this was really the life, I’d worked so hard to build.

The meeting ended with handshakes and congratulations. The client was thrilled, Robert was thrilled, everyone seemed thrilled. I smiled in all the appropriate places and accepted compliments like they were participation trophies. Then my phone buzzed and my heart jumped. For one ridiculous second, I expected to see Grandma’s name. Instead, it was my cousin Denise. I answered immediately. “Hey, Dee.”

Silence.

Not complete silence, the kind of silence that comes with breathing. The kind that comes right before bad news. I stopped walking. “Denise?”

Nothing.

Then I heard her sniffle. My stomach dropped straight to the floor. “What happened?”

Another sniffle, another pause, and suddenly every sound around me seemed to disappear. The elevators, the conversations, and the clicking heels on marble floors. All of it faded away. “Nylah,” she whispered.

I gripped the phone tighter. “What happened?”

When she finally spoke, her voice broke in the middle of the sentence. “Grandma Ruth passed away this morning.”

For a second, my brain refused to understand the words. Not because I didn’t hear them, because I did.

Perfectly.

But hearing something and believing it are two entirely different things, passed away. The phrase floated around my head, passed away. As if Grandma had simply wandered off somewhere. As if she might come back carrying a casserole dish and asking who wanted seconds. As if she hadn’t spent my entire life being the one person I could always count on.

“No,” I said automatically. It came out before I could stop it. Just one word, no. Grandma Ruth couldn’t be gone. Grandma Ruth made peach cobbler every Fourth of July. Grandma Ruth mailed birthday cards with five-dollar bills tucked inside. Grandma Ruth knew every hymn in the Baptist hymnal by heart. Grandma Ruth called me every Sunday evening whether I answered or not. Grandma Ruth wasn’t supposed to die. Grandmas like her stayed forever. At least that’s what part of me had believed. The childish part, the selfish part, and the granddaughter part. A tear slipped down my cheek before I even realized I was crying.

Standing there in the middle of a skyscraper filled with polished executives and expensive shoes, I suddenly didn’t care about presentations or clients or quarterly projections. I wanted my grandmother; I wanted one more phone call. One more Sunday dinner, one more lecture about how store-bought cornbread was an insult to the Lord... Just one more.

But life doesn’t negotiate and somewhere deep inside me, I knew something had changed forever. I just didn’t know yet that Grandma Ruth’s death was about to send me on the journey that would change the rest of my life.

By the time I landed in Briarwood, Mississippi two days later, I was exhausted in the kind of way sleep couldn’t fix. The flight had been a blur of sympathetic flight attendants, untouched snacks, and people who kept asking if I was okay, I wasn’t. But there isn’t a polite answer for that. The Mississippi heat wrapped around me the second I stepped outside the airport.

Lord, some things never change. Atlanta had traffic. Mississippi had humidity with a personal grudge. The air felt thick enough to chew. My cousin Denise was waiting at the curb in her husband’s pickup truck. The moment I climbed in, she reached across the console and squeezed my hand. Neither of us spoke. There wasn’t much left to say. We spent the drive listening to the radio and watching familiar roads roll past the windows. Churches, fields, gas stations, and tiny towns with names most people had never heard of.

Everything looked exactly the same. Which somehow felt unfair. The whole world should have looked different. Grandma Ruth was gone. How dare the trees still be standing? How dare people still be buying gas and eating lunch and arguing about football? How dare life continues like nothing happened? When we finally turned into Briarwood, my chest tightened. The town looked exactly as I remembered. Flower baskets hung from lamp posts along Main Street. Miss Patty’s Bakery still sat on the corner beside the courthouse. The giant blueberry painted on the water tower had faded a little more since my last visit. Everything looked perfectly normal.

Which made none of this feel real. A few minutes later, Grandma Ruth’s little white house appeared at the end of the street. White shutters, Blue front door with sign that said, 'The Blueberry City'. Flower beds overflowing with plants she insisted weren’t weeds. The porch swing Grandpa built before he passed. For one foolish second, I expected to see her. Expected the front door to open. Expected her to step outside wiping flour from her hands. Expected her to call my name. Instead, there were cars, so many cars.

The driveway was full and the yard was full, Church people, family members, and Neighbors. Somebody had set up folding chairs under the oak tree. A casserole dish appeared to be traveling from one vehicle to another. Southern people don’t know how to process grief without feeding somebody. I swear it’s in the Bible somewhere. Denise parked and neither of us moved. “You ready?” she asked softly.

No, not even a little. But grief doesn’t care whether you’re ready. It just keeps moving forward. I climbed out of the truck. The screen door creaked as I stepped onto the porch. The exact same sound it had made my entire life. My hand rested on the doorknob. For a moment, I couldn’t turn it. Because opening that door meant accepting something I wasn’t ready to accept. It meant walking into a world where Grandma Ruth no longer existed. Aunt Loretta opened the door before I could. “There she is,” she said. Then she wrapped me in a hug. The kind of hug only Southern black women can give and comes with a 'baby.' The kind that says everything words can’t. By the time she let go, tears were already slipping down my cheeks.

I stepped inside and that’s when it hit me. The silence, not actual silence. The house was full of people. Voices drifted from the kitchen. Someone laughed in the dining room. A baby cried somewhere down the hall, from somebodies' bed. Someone yells, 'the baby's up.' But underneath all of it was an absence. A missing note in a familiar song. Grandma Ruth had always been the center of this house, without her, everything felt slightly off balance.

My eyes drifted toward the kitchen, toward the stove. Toward the place where she should have been standing. Nobody was making cornbread. Nobody was humming gospel songs. Nobody was fussing because somebody forgot a potholder. The kitchen was clean, too clean. For the first time since Denise’s phone call, I truly understood. Grandma Ruth was gone. Not for the weekend. Not for a doctor’s appointment. Gone... forever.

My gaze landed on a cardboard box sitting alone at the end of the dining room table. Written across the top in thick black marker were four words.

FOR MY GRANDBABY NYLAH.

I stopped breathing. “What’s that?” I whispered.

Aunt Loretta looked over. Her expression softened. “We found it in Ruth’s bedroom.”

I stared at the box, at my name, at Grandma’s familiar handwriting and then I took one slow step forward. Suddenly, every conversation in the room seemed to fade away. Because somehow, impossibly, it felt like Grandma Ruth still had one last thing to tell me.