by R. J. Lewis
Ivan disappears to the back room and I tend to two more customers before he comes back out and asks, “Did Nikolai come by today?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“He bought smokes?”
“Juice.”
Ivan curses again in Russian. “When was last time he bought smokes?”
“Last week.”
Ivan doesn’t look happy about that. He makes a face and disappears once more. It’s not the first time he’s asked what the regulars have bought. He is OCD, and the slightest change in a regular’s routine sends him into stress-mode. It’s mostly because he’s competing with another store that’s just opened down the block, and he’s constantly berating me with questions, asking me if it’s possible they’ve all left him. It’s all in his head. He goes on about business slowing, but it’s the same.
I’ve learned working here that Ivan carries his emotions on his sleeve and they can fly from angry to happy in a matter of minutes. It’s why nobody lasts very long working under him, but a lifetime of instability for me makes it easy to endure instability on a daily basis with Ivan.
I don’t know if that’s a good thing.
“Oh, em, gee!” Oksana chirps, coming to stand next to me. “There are these zebra print tights online for sale. Aren’t they cute?”
She flashes her screen at me, and I blink at it once. “You want to look like a zebra?”
“They’re cute, and it’ll give me more of a European look.”
“Why?”
She looks at me like I’m dumb. “Because zebras live in Europe. That’s where these tights are from.”
“Right.”
Sometimes I want to crack her head open to see if there’s a brain and not a monkey banging cymbals together.
She taps the screen a few times and then makes an over exaggerated sigh. “They’re not in my size! I feel like a fat ass now.” With a sullen face she looks at me, and then down my body, inspecting every inch of me. “Why are bitches like you so skinny? What’s your diet?”
“Starvation,” I answer robotically.
“That’s a good diet,” she replies, appreciatively. “I tried to go hungry once, but I couldn’t make it longer than five hours without eating. It’s true dedication. How do you do it?”
I have no choice, you muppet.
I don’t say that, though. Instead, I look her in the eye and reply, “By not opening my mouth so much. Talking makes a person hungrier, did you know that?”
She shakes her head slowly, appearing suspicious. “You’re saying that to shut me up, aren’t you?”
“No,” I return solemnly. “I’m being totally honest. I don’t talk. The quieter I am the less hungry I get. It’s very scientific. Some professors in Germany conducted the experiment. You should look it up. It’s all over those fad magazines.”
Oksana is riveted. When she opens her mouth to speak, she stops herself and clamps it shut. It’s the longest silence I’ve had with her yet, and I savour it for however long it takes before she realizes the load of shit I fed her.
I clock-watch again, feeling more and more antsy. I wonder if I should go home early, but I need as much money as possible. Pay-day is not for another week and I’ve been working hard to put in as many hours as possible so I can keep building my stash of savings. I’m nervous, though. Mother seemed off today, and I’m scared for the money I’ve hidden.
“Was Nikolai in mood?” Ivan suddenly asks, returning to where I am.
I wonder what his desperation is with Nikolai. “Nothing unusual,” I answer him. “He did say to stop making me give him the envelopes.”
“Was he angry about it?”
“No, just firm.”
“What was the reason?”
“It’s unsafe.”
Ivan still looks uneasy.
“What’s the matter, Ivan?”
He runs a hand through his white hair, looking ruffled. “Benji took loan from him weeks ago. The durak has not paid him back. They are looking for him now. I warned him, Alina, dealing with Nikolai is like making deal with devil. I might have to settle it or Benji will get hurt.”
Benji is Ivan’s nephew, and he works here fulltime, usually alongside me. His absence the last couple days suddenly makes sense, and I can’t help but shake my head at the guy. He’s an idiot and I can’t say I feel any sympathy for him if he got his ass kicked by Nikolai. All sympathy fled in rage the second I had to start dealing with his little sister.
“You should let him handle it himself,” I tell Ivan. “Don’t bail him out this time.”
Ivan smiles at me, no doubt amused by my cold-hearted advice. “Oh, Alina, have you no compassion?”
Thinking of mother, I clench my teeth and bitterly reply, “No, Ivan, I have no compassion at all.”
Ivan nods in understanding. He knows what I have to deal with at home, but he doesn’t make sweet talk about it which I’m thankful for. The last thing I want to hear is how everything will be alright and I just need to be strong. I’ve been as strong as I can be, but it doesn’t mean I have the patience of a saint.
I catch Oksana looking at me, a curious expression on her face. I ignore it, like I ignore everyone else who sniffs around my life pretending they care. Really, they just want to watch the train wreck so they could gossip about it with someone I don’t know.
I refuse to be a sad story passed along and torn apart.
*
It’s quarter to six when I get off work and leave the store. It’s spitting out, so I throw my hood over my head and shove my hands into my pockets. My stomach is grumbling and my entire body is sore from standing and bending all day long. I know people work harder than me physically, but I’m constantly operating on little sleep and barely any food at all on a daily basis. As a result, I’m dizzy for a good portion of the day and hardly able to concentrate.
I walk past food joints, the smell of Mexican one minute intertwined with Chinese the next. I’m so hungry I could throw up. It’s a feeling I’m sadly used to.
At some point I find myself slowing down in front of a Russian restaurant. There’s a line-up already that’s flowing out the entrance door and there’s a good reason for it. I dined here once two years ago for a friend’s birthday and I remember the Chicken Kiev melting on my tongue, the most divine and flavourful thing I have ever tasted. To this day I dream about it, the one meal I’d spoiled myself to get, and one I’d taken leftovers home for Scarlett to taste. This restaurant is the classiest in this area of the city, a diamond in the rough because classy is not a word you would use to describe here.
I can smell the food from where I’m standing, and there’s another punching sensation in my stomach. It grumbles and the ache is like a sinkhole, growing deeper and wider until there’s nowhere in my body I can’t feel it. Hunger is a bitch of a thing, and it cloaks you with patient misery.
On a heavy exhale, I begin to look away and move when I catch his blue eyes. It’s so abrupt, my mind takes time to register, but when it does it feels like I have tunnel vision.
My heart catches in my throat at the sight of Nikolai. It isn’t the first time I’ve caught him in passing, but every time is more exciting than the last.
He’s cutting to the front of the line, his head turned in my direction, those eyes just as intense as they were this morning. He’s got a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, unlit. He pulls it out when he sees me and twirls it between his tattooed fingers, watching me curiously as I begin to move again.
Why does he look at me like that? Like I’m someone he’s trying to figure out. I’m nothing special. In fact, he could turn around and find better looking girls standing feet from him, vying for his attention.
It’s hard, but I don’t look away like I want to. It would just be obvious that I find him intimidating, and I hate to give that kind of power to a man. So I stare back as I move and pretend I don’t want to keel over from hunger, or throw up the bile that’s rising to my throat at the smell of Chicken Kiev – I swear to
God it’s Chicken Kiev and I can almost taste it!
He nods at me once in acknowledgement, and I do the same. The last thing I see of him as I move around the line-up is that smirk again, bunching up high to one side. It suits him, that smirk. Makes him look charming despite what he’s capable of.
He’s a wolf. He thinks he can have anything. I’ve seen that look on men before. I know he’s not used to hearing no, and it wouldn’t bother me if he wasn’t staring at me the way he was.
They say women have an ocean of secrets buried inside of them, but after Nikolai I don’t believe it. There’s something in his expression – cold and calculated – that tells me he could put a woman to shame with his secrets.
My heart doesn’t slow down for another two blocks.
Chapter Three.
The worst has happened. My fears have come true. I should have left work like my body had screamed for me to do all day.
I try not to cry but my throat is thick and I can barely breathe.
The cupboards are barren, Scarlett is hungry, and Mother has taken off with all of my money. It feels surreal. My hands are shaking, and I want to throw up from the panic that is suddenly swarming inside me.
Pasta and one tablespoon of butter.
That’s all that’s left of the food.
Pasta and…one table spoon of butter.
I nearly hunch over in the tiny kitchen with an arm wrapped around my stomach. Panic and hunger do not combine together well. I close my eyes and breathe, but the air is thin and my head is light.
I want to kill her.
I want to kill my mother.
I want to see her burn for this. For leaving us. Again.
The second I’d stepped inside the tiny unit and found her gone I’d known without looking that my bedroom was a bombsite. That she overturned every bit of furniture to find the money I’d hidden, money that was concealed in the hole in my pillow.
The bitch can smell the notes, can’t she? I should have hidden it someplace else.
Why didn’t I hide it someplace else?!
“Alina?”
I immediately straighten and turn to the tiny figure standing by the fridge. She’s holding her tattered brown teddy in one hand (the same one that was once mine that has lost an eye from old age) and a half-empty water bottle in the other. Her long blonde hair falls over parts of her face as she looks at me with her large brown eyes (not blue like mine).
“Hey,” I choke out with a fake smile. “I’m just making you dinner, beauty.”
Scarlett just looks at me.
She’s far beyond her years.
My five-year-old sister knows I’m bullshitting her.
A five-year-old should not know these things.
She doesn’t say a word, and she should because she’s so young and little and her mind should be picking apart my words, should be demanding I hurry; she should be running laps around me and giving me a headache because her voice is loud and she never shuts up.
But she’s not that kind of five-year-old.
She’s the kind that knows what hunger feels like and when to keep quiet. Sometimes I look at her and feel nothing but guilt and anger. She’s exactly like I was at her age. Her eyes are wide open and she’s seen too much and understands very little.
She’s the reason I stay when I longed to be far, far away.
“Go watch your cartoons,” I then tell her, and she wastes no time turning around and going back to our ancient living room.
Secretly I watch her. She climbs on to the grey worn out couch, and it practically swallows her whole. She’s so tiny and skinny, and she just sits there, her eyes on the television, her hands tight around her teddy. His name is Rumple and he’s her best friend. He doesn’t judge her, or laugh at her clothes, or tell her that her shoes are too small and she’s got blisters because of it.
She just sits there, exactly where I found her when I came home and found out Mother had been gone for who knows how long, leaving Scarlett completely alone in a bad apartment building filled with questionable people.
The thought makes me want to throw up. That bitch could have at least waited and dropped her off at Roberta’s unit next door.
Tears fall from my eyes. I turn away and busy myself, pulling out a pot and filling it up with water. My moves are mechanical because I’ve done it a million times before. My mind is far away. I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to make money to tide us over these next seven days.
I can’t ask any friends. They’re broke like me, and they’ve helped one too many times because I’m that friend. The one that asks for help when I need it and disappears because I’m always looking after Scarlett or working long hours to pay the late bills. I look like a user; the kind people warn others about. They’ve said it to my face too. Many have shut me out, kept me at arm’s length, told me that I make no time for them.
They’re so black and white and it’s not fair.
My hands are still shaking as I drop the remaining cup of pasta into the boiling water. I stare at the shells rolling and swelling with time. Then I empty it and drop it into the bowl. I grab the remainder of butter, plop it in and stir it around until it’s melted.
There. Done. That’s…that’s Scarlett’s dinner.
Pasta and a table spoon of butter.
I bury my face into my hands and sob. I have a quick pity-party. It’s under a minute long like usual, but I feel the tension lessening and the pain parting as they fall. Then I steel myself and straighten back up, knowing I have to pretend.
Pretend that we won’t lose the apartment in a fortnight when Jared asks for his rent.
Pretend there’s breakfast, lunch and dinner in the fridge to last another week.
Pretend we don’t have an alcoholic and drug dependant mother and I’m not the only person left in Scarlett’s life that gives a shit about her.
Pretending is the hardest part in my life. I feel like an imposter. A failure. I want to make it all real and true, but I can’t. I’m a twenty-two-year old loser, born and raised in abject poverty with no way out, no means to start over and – even if I did – I wouldn’t.
I will never abandon Scarlett. She is all I have, and I’m all she’s got.
In our dark world, that’s just enough to make it through the day.
*
Scarlett eats in silence, not a single complaint uttered from out of her pink little lips. I watch her and my stomach grumbles because I’m as hungry as a stray dog and that pasta looks damn good. I turn away after a while and clean up my bedroom. It takes a long time.
Mother made it into every drawer and every space in my closet. She has turned the entire bedroom inside out. Even the mattress is off the scratched frame, the sheets a ball beside a heap of my underwear.
I think what disgusts me the most is she’d gone into Scarlett’s small toy box and littered the contents everywhere, like it’s not the only piece of treasure she owns.
My anger is so thick I can taste it. It’s bitter and salty from the tears shed. It’s a welcoming emotion because it distracts me from the pang of hunger, from the depression and the feeling of losing the battle of life. The adrenaline is satisfying and gives me just enough energy to fit the sheets back over the bed and put away Scarlett’s toys.
By then Scarlett is done her food and is helping me clean up what’s left of the chaos. We clean in silence, each of us looking at one another with a solemn look of understanding. This is not a surprise, which makes it entirely my fault. Scarlett sees my struggle and rubs my arm, a small act of affection to reassure me it’s not my fault.
She’s wrong. She’s so horribly wrong.
When all is tidy, I brush her teeth and settle her into our bed. It’s a double and it’s the only comfortable furniture in this place. I snuggle up to her and put on that deep voice of mine as I pretend Rumple is talking to her, telling her he’s had another great day with Princess Scarlett. She smiles – she has this overbite that melts my heart – and it’s just en
ough to make time stand still.
These smiles are rare. My Scarlett is guarded most of the time. Seeing that smile is a balm to my heart; it makes everything bearable.
How could she leave us? Leave her?
A mother should not be capable of abandoning her children so easily. But then Mother was never really a mother to begin with.
“Can you tell me the story of the cow again?” she asks me, yawning into Rumple.
I can’t believe she never tires of this story. I made it up an eternity ago and started telling her it when she was smaller and restless in bed. I think it resonates in her the way it does in me.
“There was a cow named Belle,” I begin, “and she grew up on a tiny farm. Her owner, Pucker, didn’t give her attention. He turned the farm into a dust ball, until she had nothing to eat. She’d go hungry for days, dreaming of a better place, and wishing for a better owner to rescue her. But it took her a very long time to realize nobody was coming.”
“She had to rescue herself,” Scarlett whispers, her eyes meeting mine.
I nod grimly. “There are no princes in the night.”
“You have to find them yourself?”
“Yes.”
“So she broke out and left.”
“She wandered the empty roads alone, and it was scary. She didn’t know how she was going to look after herself without the help of anyone, even Pucker had given her scraps of food here and there. But she never gave up. She wandered from place to place –”
“Until she found a pasture of land rich with grass filled with other cows,” Scarlett cuts in, memorizing the line to perfection.
I smile. “That’s right.”
“And they took her in because not everyone is like Pucker.”
“No, not everyone is like Fu…Pucker.”
“And now she’s happy.”
“Yeah, she’s…happy now. All that work was worth it. Belle broke out of her home to find her real home.”
Scarlett looks away in the distance, heavy with thought. She’s dreaming of being Belle. I used to dream of being her too. Scarlett doesn’t know I made the story up when I was given a toy cow at her age. It’s survived this long, sitting in my underwear drawer as a reminder of my dreams. No matter how hard life’s gotten I can’t seem to let them go.
