I'm Your Angel.

Rubbing my hands against the smooth surface of the Victrola I could find the small drawer with the tips of my fingernails. I opened it, twisting my hand through the aisles of papers and knick-knacks to a cold stained glass covered jewelry box.
"Bingo!," I muttered.
I wasn't looking for treasures of jewels or antiques. No, I was looking for something every 12-year-old covets! I opened the cold box to find a small Danish tin. Grandma's secret stash of citrus hard-candies. Sure they were all stuck together in one giant clump, but I didn't care. I could eat them all... if only she wouldn't have noticed.
The sound of my grandma's footsteps up the creaky staircase leading from the basement started to get louder. I panicked, throwing the case into the Victrola.
I could see her coming from the kitchen with a smile on her face.
"You know you could just ask me for the candy, Jen," she laughed.
She walked towards me. I was still in a large shirt that acted as a nightgown, my hair disheveled and thrown from a night of restless sleep; a nest of rats and tangles she called it.
"This old Victrola is a family heirloom and it will go to your Uncle Willie one day as it was given to me. It will always go to the first born."
She opened the various compartments of the device as I stared in wonder at how intricate it all was. I couldn't grasp the fact that there were no cords or radio outlet. There were no tapes or 8-tracks, just records. Grandma handed me a booklet full of old records in parchment paper. The smell was overpowering like that of an old book store. I didn't recognize a single artist outside of Bing Crosby.
She carefully took out one of the records and put it on the player, fastened the needle and began to twist the crank on the side. Her eyes were lit as were mine at the subtle and slow sounds that were starting to come out.
"I'm going to show you how grandma dances!" she announced.
I jumped up to my feet and stood directly in front of her ready to mirror her every move.
"Now Jen, your grandma used to be quit the flapper and this is how a flapper dances," she explained.
Even at the age of 12, I new that my grandma couldn't have been a flapper she wasn't even 60 and this was the early 90s, but I decided to humor her, maybe there was a revival in flappers I didn't know about.
She began by placing one knee up in the air and slapping her foot and then placing the foot down and bringing up the next knee and slapping that one and putting it down in rapid succession. It was like an odd hambone. There she was kicking up and slapping and kicking up and slapping, all the while smiling away at me with her big brown eyes and matching curly dark brown hair. I always wondered why my grandma never had gray hairs. I often thought that maybe because her name was Rose Young, that her name gave her magical powers to stay "young."
Finally the Victrola started to mellow and the needle came to a stop just as soon as my stomach started to rumble. It was that wonderful time of any grandma sleepover, breakfast!