Page 2 of Crossroads Magic
I pushed all the bitter old history out of my mind, unlocked the door and moved inside. I couldn’t help but compare the apartment to the house that Ghaliya and her brother, Oscar, had grown up in.
Ghaliya stepped in behind me, paused in the kitchenette and looked around.
I did, too, and saw the apartment the way she would see it.
The kitchenette was directly inside the door, with a miniature fold up table at the end, under the aluminum-framed window. Living area to the left of the door, that a full sized sofa couldn’t fit into. Bedroom off the living area, with a tiny bathroom coming off the bedroom.
I’d repainted the walls white, because they had been yellow from cigarette smoke when I moved it, and I’d hung cheap posters – I couldn’t afford frames. I’d studied the Ikea website pictures of tiny apartments for days when I’d first moved in. I could have Ikea-rized the guts out of this place and it would have been glorious, only I didn’t have a few thousand dollars to spare to buy all the furniture and bits and pieces it would take to turn the apartment into a tiny oasis.
I’d stretched to get a love seat and a bed, and had been slowly adding pieces here and there, most of them in a must-have priority order. Like coffee mugs. And a saucepan, as I like to eat hot, cooked food occasionally.
This morning’s dishes were still in the sink. Everywhere, on the floor, stacked up against the walls, and piled upon any flat surface, were my books, because bookcases were a luxury.
Ghaliya pulled her jacket in around her again. “Umm….”
Well, at least she didn’t say it was nice. Or worse, that it was cozy. Which it was, but we both knew that.
“Sit,” I told her, pointing at the tiny table. There was a second chair folded up and stacked against the wall under the window. I’d only wanted to buy one chair because no one but me ever came here, but there had been a sale, a second chair at half off. I sometimes used it as a step ladder to reach the upper shelves in the kitchen. My chair had my current books on it.
Ghaliya moved over to the table. She hesitated, then lifted up the leaf on the side where the chair leaned against the wall, bent, and swung the arms out to support it. That made the table about three feet across. Then she unfolded the chair and sat gingerly.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
“Starving,” she admitted.
There was a note in her voice that made me ask, “How long since you last ate?”
Ghaliya looked away from me, her gaze settling on the books on my chair. “Umm…breakfast,” she admitted.
“And whatwasbreakfast?” I asked suspiciously. I moved over to the range and fired up a burner, and put the frypan over it. Then looked back at Ghaliya for her answer.
“I used the last of my cash for the bus ticket,” she said, her tone defensive.
“Bus fare is a dollar seventy-five.” I got the eggs out of the bar fridge, and the bread, and dropped two slices into the toaster on the shelf over the sink. “You only had two dollars?”
“Twenty-four dollars, Mom.”
I glanced at her, startled. “Where did you come from?”
Her red-rimmed gaze met mine. “San Francisco.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t think what else to say. In the two years (and two months, five days and forty minutes) since she had told me to go to hell and left, I had always assumed she was somewhere in L.A. Somewhere where her father could help out if she needed it. Somewhere safe, with better appointments than this apartment.
My gut tightened. My chest squeezed. Where had my daughter been living? What had she been doing? Because she didn’t look as though she had been thriving.
I opened the half carton of eggs. I had three eggs left. She could have two of them.
I pulled out the butter, and dropped a tablespoon into the frying pan. It sizzled, a sound I got to hear all day at the diner. The burn on the back of my hand gave out a throb, reminding me it was there. I ignored it, and rinsed off the spatula from this morning. Then I dropped the eggs into the pan, and corralled them with the edge of the spatula.
As soon as they were behaving themselves, I got two plates down from the shelf and put them on the table in front of Ghaliya. I actually had four sets of utensils, because that was how many the package had held. I pulled two knives and forks out of the scrubbed-out soup tin on the back of the sink, and put them on the table with the plates.
Ghaliya moved the plates so they were sitting in front of each chair, and arranged the knives and forks on either side.
The toast popped and I put both slices on Ghaliya’s plate and fed another slice into the toaster for me.
Then I carefully flipped the eggs. Ghaliyahatedrunny eggs. So did I. Just call us weird, but if there was any sort of yellow glistening beneath the egg white, neither one of us could eat it. She’d started refusing runny eggs at the tender age of four, declaring them to be “gross” – one of the first words she’d learned.
And I spent my days cooking eggs sunny side up and watching customers slop their toast in the yellow glop on their plates. Ugh. To each, her own.
