by Hawke, Jessa
He doesn’t reply, instead he just stands and comes around the desk to hug me.
“I had to get you away from that crazy woman, May. I love all my children and that includes you. I do believe she would have killed you had you stayed,” he explains to me.
“Couldn’t you just have told me this?” I ask, so pleased at how things had worked out, but a little annoyed that he hadn't told me. I look at Leon and Nelson and my face shows the displeasure I feel with them for keeping this a secret.
“You know you wouldn’t have agreed to come to this big city,” he says, and he’s right. “I’ve had this place for years, have another two on the other side of town as well. I need someone to run it for me and you are that someone. This is your future, May. It don’t matter what color your skin is in this city, we’re all just people making a living. What do you say?”
“What is this place called? These boys, they don’t tell me nothin’,” I demand to know.
“This, my beautiful daughter, is San Francisco, and you’re gonna love it here, everything comes in large sizes, including your happiness.”
I can see from the huge smile on his face that he loves this place and wants me to love it too. I hope I do, I really do, but everything is so strange.
Chapter 7 A Private Apartment
“Where do they fit in to all this?” I ask as I point to my two traveling lovers, Leon and Nelson.
“They are my muscle and believe me, this place needs them,” he tells me.
“Does that mean they stay here too?” I ask, secretly pleased that I will know someone.
“They sure do, they’re all yours, Leon works the saloon and Nelson overseas the security at all my establishments, but he’s be based here.”
This is a lot to take in. I’ve been brought up on a ranch. A place where you might not see another person, other than family and workers, for days.
I look at Leon and Nelson once again, hoping they’ll offer to take me back home. Leon smiles at me and Nelson just shrugs, I can see these two are going to be no help at all.
“If these two can be by my side, until I understand everything and settle in, then maybe it'll work out,” I tell my papa. “I love you and I’ll always be doin’ what you be tellin’ me is best for me, but this just ain’t my home.”
“Well, it is now, so you’re gonna have to get used to it, May. This is gonna be a good life. You’ll be safe here and people will respect you. More importantly, your away from from my crazy wife, it really is time I left her but I feel responsible for her welfare.”
“Yeah, she made me ill with her cooking,” I complain.
“Nope, that was me, sorry. I told her she had to invite you to dinner and I got the cook to put somethin’ in your dinner so you’d be ill. I couldn’t have you going out grazing.”
It all made sense now, I could piece the whole event together. My daddy was just doing his best for me. If he’d asked me to live in a big city, I wouldn’t have come. Sending two hunky guys to escort me here had worked out mighty fine.
“I think we all need to clean up now, daddy, so where is my room?” I ask, tiredness catching up with me.
“We’ll show you to your rooms, Miss May,” Nelson says as he stands up and opens the door for me.
I hug my daddy and then follow my boys. When they said rooms, they meant I had more than one room. This place that is to be my home is beautiful. We went to the topmost part of the building, the top floor, and when I look out of the window I get a little dizzy, I haven't been this high in my whole life.
“We thought you’d like this room for your own bedroom, it has a secret stairway that leads outside,” Leon informs me.
I step inside and see that it’s huge. The decor is the same as downstairs, all deep reds and black lines. The bed can fit a few people in it, and best of all, a steaming tub awaits me.
“Come on boys, time for us to clean up?” I say.
Chapter 8 Bed for Three
“We got our own tubs awaitin’?” Leon tells me. “Besides, yours is full of sweet smelling stuff, I can’t be gettin’ in that,” he says.
“Surely one of you can stay with me?” I beg. Truth be known I don’t want to be on my own just yet.
“Miss May, this is the safest place for you,” Nelson tries to reassure me. “No one ever intended on hurting you, other than the master’s wife. Now you’re safe here and surrounded by guards. Your daddy has loyal folk workin’ for him. You have to be trustin’ him.”
“How far away are you boys, from me?” I ask them.
“There be another apartment on this floor that belongs to your daddy, we be bathing in there,” he tells me. “This is your home now and you are safe here, always,” Nelson isn’t giving up on me.
I just smile at them and hug them both before they leave me to bathe. I’ve grown real sweet on these two over the last few days, and knowing they’re gonna be around for a while yet is very comforting.
Before I get in my tub, I have a quick look around my rooms. When I open up the doors to the wardrobes, I’m surprised to see them full of clothes. Mighty fine dresses, and in the drawers is an array of underwear, such things as I’ve never even seen before, never mind warn. Some of that stuff I don’t even know how to put on. Just as I’m inspecting it all, my door swings open and in walks an elderly woman.
“Hello ma’am, I is your housemaid and my name be Rose. Now come, let’s clean that road dust from your skin,” she says as she starts stripping me.
I’m way too tired to fight her off and she soon has me in that hot tub and is scrubbing my hair in suds. Finally, she leaves me alone and I just lay in the soapy water. While I’m trying to forget all about her, she fusses around the room and choses me some clothes from the wardrobe, telling me this is what I could wear for dinner with my daddy. I’m starting to like her, she seems to know all about city life and answers all my probing questions.
I haven’t worn a gown in a long, long time and when I go through the door to the dining room in my daddy’s apartment, I note the looks on the men’s faces.
“You are so stunning!” Leon speaks to me first.
I note that Nelson is smiling, for once, and my daddy just loves me no matter what I look like.
We all eat together and it’s one of the finest meals I’ve ever eaten in my life. Maybe I’m going to like this place after all. Staffs serve us and after we finish, they cleared away the tables. They aren't slaves but are employed by my daddy, to do that type of work, the city has some mighty strange ways.
After dinner, daddy makes his excuses, he has a meeting with his accountant and leaves us three drinking fine brandy.
I smile wickedly at the boys, now we’re alone, “We’re gonna go back to my bedroom and you’re gonna take this dress off me, It’s so uncomfortable.”
They laugh at me but they do come back with me, and we have us a fine time in my new bed, which easily accommodates us all.
Perhaps life here isn't going to be too bad after all.
THE END
S
Secrets Revealed
Kid summers are the best summers.
Kid summers are when they can fully appreciate the grass around them, when the outside is infinitely more alluring than any electronic they may have aglow in the house, and when the stickiness of the days makes them appreciate the tanned skin of their bodies all the more.
Maybe that’s what their parents were thinking when they first decided to take them upstate. The trio, before they were even a trio, didn’t really know. Looking back, they would all later agree that their parents were in the grip of some kind of nostalgia for their own days of fleeting youth. They wanted the grass, the fresh dew on the blades of it in the morning, the reminder that there is still a place somewhere on this Earth where the sun rises on a peaceful morning.
They thought they found that place at Sylvester’s.
Sylvester was the Americanized version of the name that Schmuel Yavitsky had adopted for himself after about thir
ty years of living in the states. Like many Soviet immigrants who had truly managed to carve out a life for themselves in a new place, Sylvester made a business out of nostalgia. He bought a few acres of land upstate, planted some bungalows, and invited the Russian community at large to reunite with him. For money.
And boy did they come.
But this is not Sylvester’s story. It is the story of how Sylvester brought them together.
Nate, Alex, and Christina. Three independent kids who didn’t know how to be brought together. Nate was the one with the American dad, the one who had gotten married to the Russian lady looking to stay in the country and somehow lucked out. His parents weren’t crazy, and they ended up caring about each other. Even if his dad was always saying vaguely racist things about his mom, and his mom thought his dad was just a little bit stupid. He was American, after all.
Alex was long, lanky, and had what the Russians would typically call “the face that’s asking for a brick.” With brown eyes, and a mischievous dimple, he was the kind of kid who had no idea he was full of burgeoning sex appeal, and when he got older, had no idea how to handle it. Girls would come easily to him—so would many boys, but he never thought it had anything to do with his personality. When you got close to him, it felt like he would live fast and die young—so you had to hop on early to be along for the ride.
Christina was the kind of girl boys write poems about but are way too afraid to ever approach. She had long, wavy brown hair cascading down her back in careless ebbs and flows, and sharp green eyes with little furrowed eyebrows that always made her look angry. And she often was angry, or at least seemed that way, mostly because her parents’ marriage was a broken thing, with her mom in constant fear of her dad. They were at Sylvester’s because it was the one time the whole summer that her dad went away for work and she got to see the mom she knew before life had beaten her down—sunshine, smiles, and a warm, gentle neglect that left her mostly to her own devices.
It started with Christina, really. If we peek inside the sky-blue bungalow at the very edge of the little—community, shall we call it?—we can see her putting on her bright-pink running sneakers and cutoff shorts. She’s ten, but she’s got that swell of young breasts starting to form, and more often than not, when she catches sight of the way her T-shirts bulge or feels the fabric scrape against her sensitive skin, she feels the hot flash of shame deep inside of her chest. Today, she straps the armor of an undershirt underneath her top, laces the sneakers, forgoes the hairbrush, and sneaks quietly out of the bungalow.
The rooms in Sylvester’s bungalow have no locks. As she makes her way out of the room, careful not to wake her mother—it’s only seven in the morning, after all—it occurs to her how much she loves the little veranda that graces the front of the building. It’s the kind of place where, in another life, she and her mother would have baked cookies and teacakes, poured great big samovars of boiling water and leaves, and drunk tea, inviting all their neighbors to partake. Her father does not like guests. And so, even though her heart is large and giving, and she possesses all the skills to entertain in her arsenal, it is never to be. And so, with a flash of hopeless rage, Christina looks for some other way to assert control over her day.
The swing set over in the main grassy area catches her eye. Flopping the sneakers against the wet ground, she marches over to the two wooden swings, admiring herself for noticing how the early morning sunlight hits the ground and seems to light it up; she imagines the plants are talking to her, the grass is greeting her, and the weeds are empathizing with her, because they are rebels just like she is. She plants her little ten-year-old butt in one of the swings and kicks high off the ground, feet slipping a little because the ground is slick. Her vestibular apparatus is working perfectly, so all she feels is like she’s flying, and the higher she sails up into the morning air, she more invincible she is. There is nobody to tell her no.
There is, however, the crackle of the early-morning radio announcement to the whole bungalow community. Sylvester himself is announcing a morning run and “aerobics routine,” which translates into the first gossip-mongering event of the day. Christina doesn’t mind. It’s mostly grandparents who have brought their grandkids to let them run buck wild for the summer, believing in the unceasing power of fresh air. They’re banded together in Nike sweatpants, shiny navy blue material, and Adidas sneakers, trusting in the everlasting fashion that they are imparting upon the world. They have gathered on the corner of the grassy knoll and are awaiting Sylvester to lead them on the morning jog; they watch Christina sail up into the air, and she shuts her eyes and she pushes herself higher and higher, wanting to escape their eyes, even as she imagines all the things they are saying about her.
That she’s a cute little girl.
That they admire her youth and energy.
Well, she’s not cute and she’s not young. She was born old and has a sense of heroic tragedy about her. It’s about to come into play in just a few hours.
Lunches at Sylvester’s are a sad affair, although they do not feel that way to his guests, many of who come from war times when they had to dig through trash for scraps just to survive. Christina loves it all. The sardines from a can, slightly soggy crackers and cheese. Great big vats of hot gruel and stale bread. She imagines this is what it’s like to live in a combat zone, and the sense of romanticism transforms this sunny summer existence into one where she is literally living in a different time. If she eats now, faster and faster, she will be able to run out and have a few hours before the “military drilling” begins, and she loves it. It’s like she’s living her own secret life.
After lunch, she patrols the wooded areas of the community. Sylvester’s houses a basketball court, a pool table under a gazebo, and lots of cherry trees where no cherries actually grow. There are a few berry bushes buried away somewhere, and Christina knows her mom will be amongst them in an hour or so, picking away. She smiles, imagining her slightly pudgy mother fingering the black roundness of the small fruits, enjoying the gentle sensation of their flesh against her hands.
The basketball court is deserted, and a dingy old ball that someone, one of Sylvester’s minions, no doubt, has pumped full of air is lounging near a puddle of water. She picks it up, dribbles it once, twice, and tries to make the shot. She is too small and her arms are not powerful enough, and she misses the basket-less hoop entirely. Infuriated by this and unwilling to admit defeat, she picks it up and tries, again and again, relishing the sound that only that basketball can make against cement, a deceptive ringing that makes her feel like a winner, like she could take on some older boys or something, and not fail. After a while, she abandons this, because her arms begin to burn, and while she loves that burn, she has grown bored. A rustle in the bushes and a glimpse of white skin and ratty shorts gains her attention and she sets out.
She pretends she is a hunter and that whoever is out there is a gazelle. She makes sure to travel quietly, not to rustle any bushes or snap any twigs. When she treads, she is feather-light, and she silently congratulates herself on not even breathing audibly, because this makes her harder to hear. She is pushing aside branches and the terrain is getting rougher, but soon, she breaks through the trees to find a small clearing in the center of which is a gigantic weeping willow. The long slopes of its peaceful branches are hiding something, someone, and she brushes them away to find a boy about her own age sitting there. He looks up and in that moment, they are both caught, and frozen for a single, everlasting minute.
To Nate, it is like a nymph has come out of the woods. When he was on his way here, as he has been for the past two days since he got to Sylvester’s, he did not hear her. And if it wasn’t for her bright pink sneakers and modern clothes, he would have believed she was a pixie or a ghost as he first thought she was when she found him, her long hair tumbling down her back and face. Except that magical creatures rarely look this angry, and she looks guilty. She probably didn’t expect to stumble across him; maybe this was her hid
ing place, too, and he just found it?
“Who’re you?” she blurts out, after a minute, and now he knows she’s real. She’s small, and his eyes snag on the two small rounds underneath her Cowgirl Princess T-shirt, and he forces himself to drag his eyes away; he doesn’t know what’s gotten into him. Before, he always used to look at girls’ hair, how soft it was, how pretty in braids and with all those bows, but recently, he’s found himself looking at their chests and between their thighs and it makes him feel dirty and excited all at the same time, as if he’s made a giant mess and he doesn’t know how to clean it up.
“I’m Nate. Is this your place?”
“No,” she says slowly, bravely making a step into the clearing underneath the trees. “But it’s not your place, either. This whole place is Sylvester’s, everybody knows that.”
Nate shakes his head, unsure of how to explain. There’s something commandeering about her that he responds to; it reminds him of his grandma. She’s the only one he feels all right with; his parents like to have their fights in rooms where the door is closed, but he hears them all the same. His grandma is the one who tells him it’s not his fault and that he can’t change years of upbringing no matter how much he wants to. When his parents make up, though, it’s particularly noisy, and it’s the falseness of their reunions that he cannot seem to stand.
