At five o’clock the next morning, I came downstairs in my robe.
Owen was already in the kitchen.
He’d set his phone alarm for four-thirty. He was standing at Ashley’s eleven-thousand-dollar range with a box of kosher salt in one hand and a wad of paper towels in the other. My skillet was on the front burner. Steam was rising off it.
“Grandma,” he whispered. “Is this right? The video said heat it till the water’s gone.”
I came and stood beside him.
“Turn it down just a little,” I said. “That’s it. Now rub the salt in circles. Firm. Like you’re polishing a car.”
He scrubbed. Coffee grounds and old spaghetti sauce came up in a gray paste.
“Now rinse it. Hot water. No soap.”
He rinsed it.
“Now dry it with a towel. Then put it back on the burner till every drop is gone.”
He did exactly what I said.
“Now a little oil. Just a teaspoon. Rub it all over, inside and out, with a paper towel. Like lotion.”
He rubbed it in. The black iron started to shine under the kitchen lights. Deep and smooth, like a river stone.
Owen stared at it.
“It looks brand new,” he said.
“It looks a hundred years old,” I said. “That’s better.”
Then I took out the flour and the cold butter and the buttermilk, and I taught my grandson how to make his great-great-great-grandmother’s biscuits.
Two cups of flour. A tablespoon of baking powder. A pinch of salt. Cut in the butter with two forks until it looks like little peas. Add the buttermilk. Don’t stir it too much. Pat it out with your hands. Cut them with a juice glass dipped in flour.
Twelve biscuits, snug in the skillet, touching each other.
“Why do they have to touch?” Owen asked.
“So they help each other rise,” I said.
He looked at me for a second. Then he nodded like that made perfect sense.
We slid the skillet into Ashley’s fancy oven at four hundred and twenty-five degrees.
At six-fifteen, the whole house smelled like butter.
At six-twenty, Ashley came down the stairs.
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