27 march 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2688: a dirty dish

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“The reason you gotta make sure you wash every dirty dish is first that Mom and Dad are not with the foolery, and second, Col. Lee lives next door now and he can tell you about your whole life from one dirty dish – it's like living with Sherlock Holmes, but more handsome and touchable – he's got the Robert E. Lee attributes without any of the Confederate drawbacks included.”

“Ain't it the truth, Velma, ain't it the truth.”

Eleven-year-old Velma Trent was explaining the facts of life to nine-year-old Vertran Stepforth her cousin while she and her siblings nine-year-old Milton and eight-year-old Gracie were helping their mother clean up the kitchen. Vertran was going to be staying with his Trent cousins to help Gracie get ready for the same gifted program he was in the next year and while he was learning the ways of the Trent home, he was making a video archive of his fellow grandchildren out of Thomas and Velma Stepforth Sr.

Gracie was being the amen corner as her big sister handed out the facts of life, and Mrs Melissa Trent was trying not to laugh.

“Tell me a little bit more about that,” Vertran said. “How does anyone use a dirty dish to figure out anybody else's whole life?”

“Well, really it was the death that had to be figured out,” Velma said, “and then the way you die has a lot to do with how you live and who you have around you.”

“Ain't it the truth,” Gracie said.

“Yeah, that is a thing,” Milton said, “because George and I have nearly died a couple of times together.”

“Yeah, but, that really wouldn't take a whole lot of investigation,” Velma said. “I'm just glad y'all figured out how to live together by being grounded separately.”

“Yeah, we've had plenty of time to think, and then, Col. Lee is living up in here backing up Capt. Ludlow, so George knows he's done, and then, our Jubilee grandma is moving in. So, we're at smarten up or die measures, and we wanna live. We were thinking about parkour off the roof because all our houses on vacation are close enough together, but Col. Lee interrogated George without George even knowing he was getting interrogated, so that's done.”

“And then Capt. Ludlow is not in a good mood right now – he went off the piano on one of their big cousins,” Velma said.

“What even is that?” Vertran said.

“So you know how Capt. Ludlow is a basso profondo,” Velma said. “ He has been recorded live singing at Major Thibodeaux's funeral in the outdoor choir singing down to an E1, and Dad was there in the spread out choir singing baritone and said you could hear that last E1 through the valley – so then, to project a note like that, that loud, you gotta be able to warm up at least down to a C1 – but below C1 there's just three notes on the piano: B0, B flat 0, and A0. So, Capt. Ludlow we was in big brother Melvin's studio just casually warming up before recording 'Hashtag: Side Hustle,' and Melvin was just curious to see how low Capt. Ludlow warms up to. He vocalizes notes down to C1, but his big cooing sirens are out here reaching as high as F4 from B flat 0, and that's not counting vocal fry … so, he laughed all the way into his vocal fry at some cousin messing up today, and that was even further down.”

“Did the guy even survive?” Milton said.

“No report yet,” Velma said. “Andrew is sure they are planning Cousin Astor's funeral, but we don't have a report yet, which is kinda good, really.”

“Ain't it the truth,” Gracie said.

“Life was already dangerous enough,” Milton said. “Got Dad over here defending the house and able to shoot Cousin Darnell's tires out on all four sides of the car at the same time, got Grandma Jubilee moving in – I'mma just sweep this floor and be quiet, and then I think George and I are going to do some voluntarily co-grounding and read this afternoon.”

“I was waiting on you and George to figure this out,” Velma said. “You don't have to have double-digits in your age to read and stay out of the way of the trouble nobody needs to have around here, because these veterans we come from can be dangerous.”

“Ain't it the truth,” Gracie said. “They oughta run a campaign for the election on it: Mind Yo' Business 2020, because you will do a whole lot less running for your life around here if you just do that.”