The Summer Kitchen Read online

  “Uh-huh, so what do we do until she hits the lotto down there at Glitters? There’s only thirty-eight dollars left after the rent and McDonald’s last night.” I wished Rusty woulda skipped going by McDonald’s. If he had money in his pocket, it just burned a hole until it found its way to a drive-thru somewhere.

  “I’ll take you to Wal-Mart after work today, and we’ll get some stuff,” Rusty said. He pulled half a leftover hamburger out of the fridge and ate it for breakfast, then took a couple dollars out of the coffee can and put it in his pocket. Thirty-six dollars left for groceries now, and I needed to do more laundry today. All the clothes Kiki’d brought for her kid were dirty, and they stunk like a moldy old house and cigarettes.

  “We can’t buy enough stuff to last four people,” I said. “Not with thirty-six dollars.”

  Rusty shrugged, eating the last of his Big Mac and washing it down with whatever was left in a soda cup on the counter. “We’ll get what we can. Anyway, I told you, Kiki’ll have some money in a day or two.”

  “Yeah, I bet.” I stared at the bedroom door, wishing I could burn a hole in it like Superman, and laser Kiki’s rear right outa my bed and through the front door. She was using Rusty like a big stupid toy, and he was letting her because she was hot, even with the shiner on her eye.

  He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned up against the counter. “You know what, Cass, you could cut her a break. Her old man beat her up pretty good. She’s got some cracked ribs and stuff. She should probably be in the hospital.”

  “Then why isn’t she?” Turning my back on him, I crossed the room and plopped down on the sofa.

  “She can’t afford it. Same as you and me. She hasn’t got anyplace else to go.”

  Same as you and me. The idea stuck in my head a minute. Rusty and me were the same as some stripper who’d been knocked around by her long-haul trucker boyfriend and tossed out on the street? Mama would of had a fit. She raised Rusty and me to be decent folks, to live like normal people and have a house, and go to school, and church on Sunday, and have a kitchen with food in it. She’d be sick to see us here… .

  I didn’t mean to, but I started to cry. Everything in me went soft and watery, and I wanted Mama in a way that hurt so bad I felt like I was splitting down the middle. I wanted our little house on the outside of Helena, Montana, with the flower beds, and the fenced yard, and Rusty’s dog out front, and the mountains off in the distance. I wanted someone to take care of us again.

  “Don’t do that, Sal.” Rusty’s voice bounced off the hurt like a bird hitting window glass. I felt him sit down beside me and put an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close. His chest smelled of soap and was tight with muscle, a man’s chest now that he spent his days pounding nails instead of goofing off in high school athletics class. Even that seemed sad. Rusty wasn’t supposed to be a man yet. He didn’t need me to take care of, and he sure didn’t need some stripper and her kid. He needed to be laughing and joking, running the bleachers with a bunch of boys whose biggest issue was where to party on Saturday night.

  “Ssshhhh.” The sound rumbled under his skin. “Come on now, Sal. It’ll be all right. I’ve gotta head off to work. Don’t worry, okay?”

  He kissed me on the head and squeezed my shoulders one last time, and then stood up. I heard him moving around the kitchen, getting his wallet in his pocket and picking up his tool belt. Something brushed my leg, and when I opened my eyes the kid was standing there with her arm wrapped around my knee and her thumb in her mouth, her huge eyes blinking sleepily at me.

  “Come ’ere,” I said, and she crawled into my lap and snuggled against my chest, her bony knees poking me in the stomach, her skin cold against mine. I pulled the sleeping bag over her legs as Rusty punched in the doorknob so it’d lock behind him.

  “See ya after a while.” He didn’t look at me. He just rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, going out the door, and sighed like he was real tired.

  “Oook?” the kid said around her fingers.

  “We’ll read the book in a little while.” It was scary, but I was starting to understand her.

  I rested my chin on her head. Her hair smelled good this morning, like the strawberry shampoo I’d dumped in the bathtub last night to make bubbles. That was one thing the kid and I had in common. We both liked bubble baths. I guess everyone probably does. A bubble bath makes things seem all right, for a little while.

  Today I’d have to ask Kiki the kid’s name, even though I didn’t want to talk to Kiki at all. Every time I asked the kid her name yesterday, she kept saying something like Popah or Popal, and I couldn’t make it out, so I just called her squirt all day.

  Squirt and I sat for a while together, curled up in the sleeping bag, and even though I didn’t want to be, I was glad she was there. Yesterday, it was a pain having to take care of her all the time, but at least now that they’d brought some stuff from Kiki’s old man’s house, Squirt would have shoes. We could get out of the apartment and walk someplace.

  “How about we go down to the Book Basket and get something new to read today?” The Book Basket was just down the road in an old gas station across from the little white church. I liked it there, because MJ, the lady who owned the store, had tons of books, and she didn’t care how long you stayed and looked at them. She also took trades, which was good when you didn’t have any money.

  “Maybe we’ll walk on down to the Just-a-Buck store, too,” I told her. “Sometimes they’ve got old cans of stuff on sale for cheap. You want to go look for cans?” Squirt nodded, and her braids scratched up and down on my chest where my nightshirt hung loose. If we could get some dented cans instead of paying full price at Wal-Mart, that’d help the groceries go further. We still weren’t gonna be able to get by all week on thirty-six dollars, even if Rusty stayed out of the drive-thru windows and gave up Mountain Dew, which wasn’t too likely. Rusty couldn’t hardly go six hours without a Mountain Dew.

  “Unnn-ungwee,” Squirt whined, and after listening to it all day yesterday, I knew what that word meant.

  “We’ve got McDonald’s for breakfast,” I told her. At least this morning we had food. I’d cut all the hamburgers in half last night, saved some of my fries, and put my vanilla shake in the freezer.

  “Mmmmm,” she said, then sat up in my lap, pulled the thumb out of her mouth, and smiled at me. I hadn’t ever seen her smile before. She really was cute, even with her hair pulled half loose from her braids and sticking up all over her head. Maybe before we went to the Book Basket we’d take out the braids and make a couple pigtails.

  “Guess we should get some breakfast,” I said, then looked at my bedroom door, wondering if, while she was in there crashing out in my bed, Kiki wondered at all how her kid was getting fed. Squirt could be wandering out in the street for all Kiki knew. How could somebody’s mom be like that?

  I put Squirt on her feet and we went to the kitchen together. She tried to crawl up my leg when I got out the hamburgers, so I lifted her onto the counter. Pulling her knees under the big T-shirt I’d put on her last night, she sat with her chin resting on them as I got out the burgers and scooped some of the shake—ice cream now—into a couple bowls. She watched the food move from the counter to the table, like a little puppy dog waiting for a bite.

  “Let’s eat,” I said, and she put out her arms so I could move her to the table. I took the broken chair and gave her the good one. For a little thing, she could eat a lot, and really fast. When she was done, she wanted more. I told her that was it, and she got up, went to the refrigerator, and tried to pull it open.

  “There’s nothing in there,” I told her. She looked confused, so I said, “All gone.” She knew what that meant.

  A memory of our refrigerator back home went through my mind, and my stomach rumbled. Mama always kept sodas, and there was a gallon of milk on the middle shelf, sometimes two. There was butter, and jelly, and string cheese we could pull out for a snack anytime we wanted it. Usually there were leftov
ers—a casserole or something Mama had made that Rusty and me complained about… .

  My insides ached, and I wrapped my arms tight around myself. There’s not any point in sitting here thinking about the stupid refrigerator, Cass Sally Blue, I told myself, but I couldn’t help it. It hurt deep down, like the past was eating me up a little at a time. I wanted Mama to put a casserole in front of me, and I’d eat every bit of it and tell her it was good. I wanted her to holler from the kitchen to wait until we all said grace together. I wanted her to put a glass of milk by my plate, and push my chair up on two legs when she squeezed by… .

  “Ook?” Squirt was standing there watching me with my book in her hand. She held it up against her face and peeped over it, looking worried.

  “All right.” I wiped my cheeks on the way to the sofa, and we sat down to read. It was halfway through the morning before the lady next door put the kids out, and they started making a racket. I figured as long as they were making all that noise, Squirt and me might as well head on down to the Book Basket and maybe the Just-a-Buck. On the way back, we could go to the convenience store and get something for lunch with the change from the bottom of the jar. Something cheap.

  “Let’s go get a new book.” It went through my mind that Squirt was gonna need clothes, and everything was in a ripped trash bag in my room. With Kiki. Through the crack in the door, I could see her spread out across the bed, her arm bent back like it’d landed that way. That had to be uncomfortable, but she didn’t seem bothered. It was creepy, watching someone so passed out she didn’t even move when I pushed the door open and it squeaked. I’d heard her tell Rusty she was taking some kind of pain medicine for the cracked ribs, and it knocked her out. Flopped out in the bed like that, she looked like the dead bodies on CSI, except she was breathing.

  I didn’t want to go in there with her, but I needed shoes for Squirt.

  I pushed the door some more, then looked at Kiki. She sure didn’t seem worried about what her kid was doing right now. It wasn’t fair that crappy people got to stay around and raise their kids, and good people didn’t, sometimes. I’d wanted to ask Pastor Don about that at Mama’s funeral, but the room was full of people she worked with and stuff. They were all looking at Rusty and me with sad, worried faces and telling us how sorry they were, and whispering behind their hands about what would happen to us now. Then creepy Roger made Rusty take me on home before the room cleared out and I could get to Pastor Don. I wanted to tell him Rusty and me shouldn’t go home with Roger. He acted weird when Mama wasn’t around. He was always rubbing my shoulders with his big nasty hands, and trying to get me to sit by him on the sofa, and watch movies and stuff. I was afraid to be with him in the house.

  Since I didn’t get the chance to talk to Pastor Don, I told Rusty on the way home. He said to get my things together, because he’d already made up his mind we weren’t staying there. We left that night when Roger was sound asleep.

  The feeling of sneaking past Roger’s bedroom came back when I went in with Kiki. Rusty and me had put all our stuff in trash bags to get ready to leave Roger’s house. It was only in the dark that we realized the trash bags were noisy.

  Kiki’s bag made a racket as I dug through it, trying to find Squirt’s other pink sandal. Squirt climbed around on the bed, and Kiki stayed as still as death.

  I got your kid up, fed her, read her a book, and watched her all morning. I didn’t bother to say the words anywhere but in my mind. Kiki wouldn’t hear, anyway. Now I’m gonna get her dressed and haul her around town with me. Sure, no problem. I dumped out the bag. You can pay me later.

  From the bottom of the trash bag, a little necklace with letter beads spilled out. O-P-A … something.

  “’S mine!” Squirt said, and hopped off the bed. She grabbed the necklace, then closed both hands over it when I tried to look. “My-mine.”

  “Ssshhh,” I whispered, because I really didn’t want Kiki to wake up. “I just wanna see the letters. I won’t touch it. I promise.”

  Squirt thought about it, rocking back on her heels, blinking at me.

  “Come on …” I sounded like creepy Roger, trying to get me to go with him for ice cream. Squirt looked like she was thinking what I always thought about him: You can’t trust people who act way too nice for no reason. Finally, she opened her fingers, one by one, just enough so that I could see the beads. O … P … A … L.

  “Opal?” I said. “That’s your name? Opal?”

  Closing her fingers over the beads again, she nodded and stuck a thumb in her mouth.

  “That’s, like, an old lady name,” I said, and she just blinked at me. “All right. I guess you can be Opal.” I went back to looking through the pile. “I sure wish I could find your other shoe, because right now it looks like you’re gonna have to hop to the Book Basket on one foot.

  Opal scrambled around the other side of the bed, lifted the covers off the floor, and came up with a tennis shoe that didn’t match the sandal in my hand, but at least it was for the opposite foot. “Tshooo, tshoo!” she cheered.

  “Yup, that’s a shoe.” Even if Opal was hard to understand, she understood me real good. I was gonna have to be more careful about what I said around her.

  “Come ’ere,” I told her. “Let’s get dressed. You’ll be cool with two different shoes, right?”

  Opal made a squeaky sound in her throat, then followed me into the other room, and laid down on the floor, waiting for me to get her dressed. “Stand up, for heaven sakes,” I said. “You’re not a baby. You’re a big girl.”

  “Big gul,” she echoed. “Popal big gul.”

  “Right. You’re a big girl.” We talked about what a big girl she was while I put her in the cleanest thing I found in her bag—a pink sun-dress that was too big for her, and two pink socks that didn’t match. The shoes were a great finishing touch. One pink sandal, one purple tennis shoe. “Perfect,” I said. “You look like Hannah Montana.”

  “Anna banbana!” Opal cheered, swinging her hands until she lost her balance, stumbled sideways, caught my hair, and almost pulled it out.

  “Ouch!” I squealed. “Hold still!” I said it louder than I meant to.

  Opal stopped moving and stuck her thumb in her mouth, then pulled her chin into her neck and ducked away like she thought I was going to smack her.

  “It’s okay.” Was Kiki the reason Opal acted that way? The idea made a shudder go down my back. I was glad Kiki was sound asleep.

  “Come on,” I said, then took Opal into the bathroom and fixed her hair into two ponytails, which wasn’t easy because I don’t know anything about black-girl hair, but it was pretty cute when I got done. At least she was dressed and it looked like someone had tried to clean her up.

  Opal followed right behind me while I got a little money, my book, and the key to the front door. She grabbed the hem of my shorts, and hung on like she was afraid I was gonna leave her behind, then she choochoo-trained along behind me out the door.

  The parking lot was empty, but I could feel someone watching us. The Mexicans were all gone to work by now, and as far as I could tell sweaty Charlie slept until noon before opening the office, so it was probably the crippled lady. She never came out, except when the Dial-a-Ride showed up for her. Then she’d take it somewhere, and when she came back, she’d go right inside and shut the door. She sat at her window and watched a lot, though.

  I stepped back and looked down there, and her curtain moved.

  The kids from next door came out near the Dumpster and ran to the other side of the parking lot. They disappeared into the breezeway between the two buildings across from ours, scampering off like little mice looking for a place to hide. I wasn’t sure why at first, but then I heard something hit the Dumpster, ringing it like a big drum before bouncing off the pavement. A basketball. Looked like the gangbangers were skipping school today. Great.

  “C’mon, Opal,” I said, then opened the door and pushed her back inside. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid of those stupid
gangster wannabes, but I was worried they’d scare Opal. “We’ll go in a minute,” I told her, and locked the door to wait.

  Chapter 7

  SandraKaye

  As I exited the interstate near Poppy’s house, I turned the car radio on. “Another clear day ahead,” Jim, from Metro Morning with James and Jim, predicted. “The unseasonable cool spell continues, with a high of eighty-one, then cooling toward evening as a weak storm front pushes into the metro area, bringing lower temperatures overnight, but only a slight chance of rain.”

  “That’s good news for the freegans conventioning in town,” James remarked. “You catch that on the news, Jim? If you sign up, you get a free demo.”

  James chuckled, lowering his tone like a voice-over announcer. “Dumpster Diving for Fun and Profit,” he joked. “Considering what they pay us here, it might be a good idea.”

  “Ever wonder who caters the food for a freegan convention?”

  “I don’t know, James, but—”

  I turned off the radio before James and Jim could illuminate the details of professional Dumpster diving. Holly had already clued me in well enough. They go hunt for food in Dumpsters … to see what they can discover that’s still consumable … yuck!

  They hunt for food in Dumpsters… .

  Hunt for food …

  I passed the apartment complex with the crumbling white stucco walls, looked over, watched the Dumpster go by, but the vision stayed with me. I pictured the children climbing among the broken bottles and Wal-Mart sacks full of soiled diapers.

  They weren’t playing… .

  The image was clear now—the little girl holding a wad of foil, the boy turning over a Hostess Cup Cakes box… .

  They were looking for food.

  My stomach roiled as I neared the little white church across from Red Bird Lane. It sat quiet and pastoral in the shade of a towering oak tree, a place out of keeping with the rundown buildings up and down the street. When I was little, I’d attended a neighborhood potluck there with Poppy and Aunt Ruth. There were tables full of casseroles, salads, and desserts. Was it possible that, now, just down the road, children were looking for food in trash cans?