“You don’t know who you’re messing with,” Earl spits, his face tight with rage. “You’re playing with fire.”
“You come snooping around here again, I’ll put a curse on you.” Jessie’s words are a deep, resonating growl finished with a snort. She removes several strands of beads draped around her chest, the ones she claims were carved from the bones of her ancestors.
He retreats as Jessie moves toward him, the gold light vanished from her eyes. She waves the beads in front of his face, growling, “I said I’m gonna curse you.”
He turns and rolls the cart to the back of the van.
“Earl reminds me of someone . . . something,” Addie says, folding her arms across her chest and shivering. Earl tosses the linen-laden cart into the truck without effort, as if it were a pillow.
“Got it,” she says, clicking her fingers. “Polyphemus. He reminds me of the hideous Cyclops in The Odyssey. Polyphemus was the one-eyed giant who trapped Odysseus in his cave.” She is biting her knuckle, and her forehead is beaded with sweat.
After slamming the doors shut, Earl staggers to the driver’s side of the van, heaves himself up into the seat, and makes the wheels screech as he tears out of the parking lot. The vehicle, hurtling onto La Grande, hits a pothole. The back doors reopen, and the cart flies out. In his haste, Earl must have forgotten to secure the doors.
Braydon and Jévon reenter the diner. “What the hell is this commotion about?” Braydon asks.
“Don’t worry, boys,” I say, clasping my hands together so no one will observe their shake. “We took care of things. Business as usual.”
“Why was he forcing those rags on you?” Jessie asks, as I hug her.
“It was my fault. I signed an agreement without reading the fine print.” I pick up the contract and place it on a table. “Thankfully, we’ve customers who’re attorneys. I showed it to them, and they said the contract’s crap.” I point my forefinger at Jessie. “That dumb dude’s also scared of you.”
“Dumb? If you ask me,” Jessie says, her nostrils flaring, “he’s more like certifiable.”
“They should have received the attorney’s letter by now. We won’t be seeing him again.”
The linens and cart are scattered across the road, causing a traffic jam outside the diner. Horns are blasting, and vehicles are at a standstill on La Grande. Angus is standing on the sidewalk, staring at the commotion. He turns to face the diner, fists on hips, legs planted wide. At this distance, it’s hard to read his expression. But as he walks toward his home, he shakes his head from side to side, as if disgusted.
“Braydon. Jévon,” Addie says, grabbing their hands. “Help me get that crap out of the road. We’ll dump it on the sidewalk.” Addie turns to me. “Sam. Maybe you should call the police and have them haul it away. With all this commotion, Angus must be livid.”
The police came, we reported the incident, and they cleared away the linen and cart. After Uriah arrived, Addie retreated, closing the office door behind her.
It’s late afternoon and the students from Uriah’s class have just begun their after-school project. Some of their parents have joined them. The group is busy measuring the dimensions of the garden to determine how much soil would be needed to fill it. Not one to cede the floor, as they work, Sun Beam recites to them a blow-by-blow description of how she’s building her beloved doghouse. Once completed, all it will need is a coat of paint. That can wait until spring.
I glance at my phone––it’s time to organize the snacks and lemonade I’d made for them to enjoy after completing their assignment. Uriah and I leave Quiche and Braydon outside with the group. With one hand, he opens the back door of the diner for me. With the other, he slides his fingertips down my arm. So this is what it’s like to walk on clouds. Our hips brush together as I walk past him, and a new flame travels up my spine.
I pause at the sight of the crumpled contract on the table. Uriah squeezes my shoulder, knowing my thoughts have gone back to the incident. I pinch my lips between my teeth, feeling heat surge through me again, driving the bad moment away.
I glance at the photograph of Babcia. She would be pleased I’m with a man of such fine character. I point to her image, as if to introduce her—I so wish I could.
“My grandmother taught me how to cook. I could feel her love when I ate the meals we prepared together.” My eyes well with tears, understanding he will never know Babcia, never know her grace. “I suppose you could say I cook professionally to spread the love. This woman, Uriah, this woman is my world, part of who I am. Even though she’s gone.”
His eyes gaze above my head, distant and shining, lingering on the photograph. Then he returns his gaze to me, his forefinger tracing my face.
“Your eyes have the same shape as your grandmother’s. So do your lips, your nose, even your chin. All your grandmother’s. Her physical form may be a memory”—he lowers his hand to my heart, thumping his fingertip between my breasts—“but her spirituality rests here.”
My heart pounds under the touch of his hand.
“She’s with us,” he continues. “Right now. Your eyes, you know, are windows to your soul. At least that’s what they say. And if the saying holds truth, they’re portals to your grandmother’s, too.”
Searching his face, I have the oddest sensation that I’m not only watching him, but I’m also watching him enter my heart. Watching him meet Babcia.
I’m watching him fall in love.
Chapter Ten
Addie
I’ve just finished cashing out from yesterday and check my phone for last-minute messages—perhaps some random catering opportunity we shouldn’t pass up. Nope. Not a thing. I look out the window. There’s nothing like the beauty of October on an Indian summer day. The air is warm and the leaves are splashed red and yellow gold against a hard, blue sky.
I’ve a few minutes before my interview with a potential hire, so I tumble into social digital distraction. My fingers slide down the screen, pressing hearts, leaving comments about my friends’ lives on Facebook.
I resist liking political rants and rages. Even if our ideologies are similar, I resent armchair activists who pound me over the head with their pissed-off opinions and hate-filled tirades. Online anger is cowardly, unproductive, and draining. Quit hiding behind your screen, crafting posts with your Dorito-crusted fingers. Cowgirl up and take action.
My social media platforms gravitate to two subjects: food and children. My friends salivate over the beautiful plates from Welcome Home’s daily menu, and I, in turn, coo over their adorable children, a tug at my heart.
A woman’s life is a series of stages: adolescence, puberty, adulthood, motherhood, and menopause. Motherhood’s the only negotiable stage. But not for me. I want children. Precisely two.
You should hear the grief Sam gives me on the subject. If a single woman crossing the threshold of thirty wants to have children, using her own eggs, and she wants that family to include a husband, life in her thirties turns into a spreadsheet of tables, charts, and calculations. Land mines dot the landscape. One misstep and my dreams for a happy-ever-after could be detonated.
After all, I tell my cousin, no one can dispute the facts. Forty-year-old women have a significant decrease of egg supply, and that dwindling supply plummets by age forty-three. A bum rap for women with parallel goals of advancing their careers and having a family. Sam tells me I’m worrying about nothing. Forty is just a number and light-years away. Sam believes relationships, like everything else in her world, should be organic—never calculated. Case in point: Uriah. It’s as if he fell from the sky and into her arms. I can’t quite identify why I find the two of them annoying. She claims that if she doesn’t have children, it wasn’t meant to be. Childhood was wonderful for her, so she never wants to grow up.
So often David, too, acts like a boy in a grown man’s body. Growing up with a mother who didn’t respect a masculine point of view left him emotionally stuck in adolescence. Having a distant dad threw hi
m a double whammy. The concept of marriage scares him. He’s worried, for starters, our sex life will wane. Marriage doesn’t ruin relationships, I tell him. People do. He tells me I look as if I’m in my early twenties. Tell that to my ovaries, I respond.
Never wanting to grow up, David and Sam are Peter Pans. They laugh in the eyes of logic. God forbid either one of those two discuss the future. I’m living too much in the moment, Sam says, to wonder what will happen tomorrow. I could wallpaper our home with her annoying little memes.
An only child, I grew up being shuffled between divorced parents and boarding school, my lips barely moving while other kids sang happy songs. My only constants were my grandparents, Sam, and her family’s farm.
I pick up a framed photograph, a close-up of David’s face, and study it. If I had a daughter, she might inherit his long, dark lashes instead of my whisper of a blonde fringe. I yearn for a future with David. I yearn for stability and a family to love.
Sam says I drank the Kool-Aid, buying into Disney’s Prince Charming–Cinderella narrative. Maybe so. After all, some of the most enduring folktales have been based on mythology, my area of expertise. But I’m hoping David will buy into this story, make the noble gesture, and fight for my love. Sooner rather than later. He’s two years older than me. After forty, his sperm count will nosedive. Aside from Sam, most of my other girlfriends are on the same page. Last summer, David and I went to wedding after wedding. I had hoped he’d get the hint.
I’ve four boxes on my hypothetical spreadsheet, all with subcategories, and I’ve checked off the first box: #1 Find the right guy.
Three remaining checkpoints are yet to be completed: #2 Get married by thirty-three. #3 Have baby number one by thirty-five. #4 Have baby number two by thirty-eight.
Right guy is relative. David’s not perfect. He’s disorganized, seems to thrive in chaos, and is oftentimes silly. So in these regards, as I’ve told my friends, I’d be settling if we married.
But Mom warned I’d never find perfection, and David is a smart, ambitious, and objective man. Everyone settles anyway, she says, when married. He’s right-brained, and I am left, which makes for a healthy, ambidextrous relationship. Mom encourages our partnership—we’ve been together four years, and I know she wants grandchildren.
She continues to foot the bills for my counselor, and once a month, Mom and I meet with the therapist together. Mom confided she could never undo the wrongs she made while raising me—speaking badly of my father, shuffling me off to boarding school, marrying men I barely knew. But by being a wonderful mother to me now, and a loving grandmother to my children, she could try. Her words made me cry.
I know how hurtful divorce is for a kid—I could be the poster child for a broken home. But I’m not doomed to repeat the patterns set by my parents’ messy marriage. Although they began as lovers and ended up spiteful enemies, I won’t repeat those mistakes. Compared with other guys I’ve dated, David is Prince Charming.
Prime example—Graham Palmer. That dude was the most disgusting man I’ve ever slept with. In the end, he lied about having Babcia’s rosary—just to bait me into seeing him. He wanted to rekindle our relationship. Mom spoke to his mother, who said it was never in their safe to begin with. He probably hocked it to finance a coke deal. I will never forgive him for stealing the only tangible keepsake I had from my grandmother.
David’s never had addiction issues and is incapable of pulling such a vindictive stunt. My moodiness confuses him, but he loves me and is supportive of my ambitions. Those are the critical boxes that must be checked on a relationship spreadsheet.
A knock on the door interrupts my thoughts. Lella sticks her head through a crack. “Your interview’s here.”
“Thanks, Lella. Send her in.” She opens the door and smiles at the woman, gesturing that she enter.
I stand and unfold the spare chair that leans against the wall. Smiling, I extend my hand. She hesitates before accepting my handshake. Slim and small boned, she’s of average height and wears a simple brown dress belted at the waist with a thin black belt. I motion her to sit and then turn my chair to face her.
Without a word, she hands me her job application.
I glance at the page. “Sylvia Atkins. Sylvia. What a lovely name.” She fidgets in her seat, the corners of her mouth trembling as she attempts a smile. The color of her skin is tawny, like creamy rolls baked to perfection, and her gold-streaked hair is pulled back into a thick ponytail.
“Thank you,” she mumbles, and sits on her hands to stifle their shake. She lowers her heart-shaped face, and her next words are spoken into her lap. “My mother thought so, too.”
“Have you had any experience waiting tables?”
She looks up. “No. I haven’t. Brenda said she told you about me, that I don’t have no real job experience.” I note the cracked front tooth as she speaks.
Her social worker at the High Hope Center, Brenda, informed Sam and me of her past life. The center, three blocks down on La Grande, provides shelter and medical treatment. It also offers psychiatric evaluation, counseling, and job training for the small percentage of woman who can escape prostitution.
Sam and I don’t have the details of her past life, but Sylvia’s CliffsNotes are gut-wrenching enough. She’s from Detroit and was sold to be used for sex when she was a teenager. I’ve always thought sex slavery was a third-world problem, but Brenda says it happens all around us in America, in plain sight.
Sex trafficking is a booming industry in Michigan—most of its victims are kids between the ages of twelve and seventeen. Life expectancy for girls such as Sylvia is seven years after enslavement due to STDs, drug overdose, suicide, and homicide. Sylvia is twenty years of age, and quite fortunate to have escaped after four years of abuse.
Sam and I want to help girls like Sylvia. We’ve been inspired by Uriah’s garden project to find more ways to help younger people through our restaurant. She’d be our first hire from High Hope, so this interview will be atypical. Her application states no more than her name and the center’s contact information, but that’s what Brenda told us to expect. She said she had an instinct about Sylvia—that she was a quick study and eager to move forward. There was a flicker of a flame not yet snuffed out. Sylvia catches my eye and solemnly holds my gaze. I see not a flicker but a fire, burning and bright.
“Brenda did tell me about your past. She’s a regular here, is passionate about the center, and works nonstop finding suitable opportunities for all of you.”
“Isn’t she wonderful? For the first time since I was a kid, I’ve been given permission to hope.” Her eyes light up as a bulb turned on. “To hope high. Like the center’s name.” When speaking, she opens her mouth only as far as necessary.
“She also spoke highly of you.” I lean into my desk, trying to catch her eyes. “I’m so sorry for what you’ve gone through.”
She looks down, studying her nails. “I’m trying to take my life back.” A few seconds pass, and she looks up and peers at me. “That’s not the truth. I’m trying to become another person.” She pinches her lips together between her teeth.
“You know,” she continues, “when I was a little girl, my parents took me every Sunday, after church, to a place that reminds me of this one.” She sighs. “Welcome Home. I always thought I’d like to run me a restaurant like this.”
In her face I see the darling little girl she must have been, and when she mentioned her parents, there wasn’t a trace of bitterness in her voice. Circumstances of childhood are so random, so often bitterly cruel. What lurks in her past? How could anyone sell their child?
“If I had that place, I’d serve my favorite foods,” she continues. “Like pork chops, twice-stuffed potatoes, beans and rice. Mama also made sponge cake and coconut pie. So light and creamy. She said the flavors reminded her of when she was a girl in Brazil.” She turns her face to the side, avoiding my gaze. “When things took a bad turn for my folks, my dream disappeared.”
Working here w
ould be an abrupt change from the brutality to which Sylvia’s become accustomed. And to compound potential emotional issues, Brenda said she had the equivalent of a sixth-grade education. “Waiting tables is stressful, Sylvia,” I tell her. “It requires certain skills. Like juggling orders and remembering the names of regulars. And you have to be pleasant, even when someone’s slobbering, undisciplined child hurls salad in your face.”
She looks at me with a half smile, as if to say, Is that all you can dish out? Actually, no, I think, it’s not.
“Most of our customers are totally cool and have become friends, but sometimes the devil’s spawn waltzes through the door.” Sylvia giggles, which eggs me on. “I’m talking about those entitled finger-clicking jerks who expect you to drop everything and bow and scrape to their every demand. You know who they are the second they slither through the door, demanding a six-top for two people, informing us our soundtrack annoys.” I pantomime the type, snapping my fingers.
“And take this gem from yesterday,” I continue, raising my brows. “A customer couldn’t bother to get off her cell phone while Lella, our waiter, was taking her order. And then the woman was pissed her cream soda was too sweet. She’d been saying extra sweet to the other person on the line when Lella thought she was ordering her drink. Geez, Louise. Put away your phone already so we can get your order right.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Sylvia says, her mouth agape.
“I’m just getting started,” I say, happy she’s loosening up.
“You’ll have to memorize every ingredient we use in each of our recipes,” I continue, “including the daily specials. Several of our customers have food allergies. On the other hand, some of their issues, we’re sure, are invented. And Yelp. For God’s sake, don’t get me started on Yelp.”
The Welcome Home Diner: A Novel Page 16
