The Summer Kitchen (39 page)

“The house, Holly. She sold the house.”

“What house?”

“
This
house. Poppy’s house.”

The kitchen went dead silent. It seemed like minutes passed before anyone said anything. I felt the time ticking inside my chest, like the big grandfather clock in the funeral parlor where Mama was in her casket.
Bong, bong, bong, bong. . . .
The closer I got to the box with Mama in it, the louder the sound was, until finally I put my hands over my ears and ran away.

I wanted to do that this time, but I couldn’t. I had to know what they were saying.

“How could she . . . I thought you were going to tell her to take the house off the market. I thought you were going to tell her
we
wanted it. Teddy took down the real estate sign last week.”

“It
fell
down, Holl. I just didn’t have Teddy put it back up. I didn’t think there was anything to worry about. There hasn’t been a single sign of interest in the house since we put it on the market. I thought that if an offer did come in, the real estate agent would contact me, and then I could approach the issue with Mother. For one thing, I wanted to talk to Rob about the café first.”

“Great. Now what?” It was the first time I’d ever heard Holly sound mad about anything. The knife went wild,
chop-chop-chop-chop-chop-chop,
and nobody said a word for a couple minutes again. “There must be something we can do. The house isn’t worth all that much. Just call the Wicked One and tell her we’ll buy it. We’ll come up with the money somehow—maybe get a bank loan, or—”

“She sold it to a broker. That’s why I didn’t hear anything about it until after the fact. Mother had Maryanne call a home-buying company, and she dumped the place for what she could get. I tried to call Mother last night, and I got Maryanne, and you can imagine how that went. She said Mother was in bed with a headache. Maryanne thought I’d lost my mind, wanting to keep the house. She was delighted to let me know the place was gone, period, and there was nothing I could do about it, so there wasn’t any point in my talking to Mother. She had the nerve to tell me it was for my own good—that Mother sold the house so I wouldn’t have to deal with it.”

“Ohhhh, I hate her.” I’d never heard Holly say anything like that, either. Holly liked everybody. “I hate both of them. I do.” The knife went wild. “Real estate contracts take a while to become final. There are inspections and such.”

“It’s an ‘as is’ sale—one of those
We buy shabby houses
companies.”

“Well, that’s it, then!” The knife stopped suddenly. “We’ll buy it back from the company. Hagatha and Medusa won’t have any control over it. It’s perfect. We’ll get the house,
and
we can stick it to the wicked witches, all at once. What could be better than that?”

“I already called the company. It’ll be thirty days or more before the house is available. They inspect and renovate each property they take on, then they rent it out. I had a long talk with the property manager. I even explained what we were doing here. She was actually very nice, but she knew her stuff. We’ve got more problems than just the sale of the house. This property isn’t zoned for anything more than single-family use. Getting that changed would require a huge effort and it’s fairly unlikely we’d succeed. The kitchen here isn’t an approved commercial kitchen. Sooner or later, the health department will find out we’re serving food to the public—free or not—and they’ll shut us down. Apparently, you can’t just open your doors and start feeding people. People have to go hungry until you’ve got all the right permits. End of story.”

Holly didn’t say anything, which sunk me lower than all the stuff Mrs. Kaye’d brought up. When Holly didn’t have a plan, things were bad.

“Wildfire” came on the radio. I sat down in a chair and closed my eyes, and went to a mind place. I was the girl on the pony named Wildfire, running and running.

“There has to be a way,” Holly whispered.

I tried to decide whether to keep listening or stay in the mind place. The song went on, the pony busted down his stall and got lost in a blizzard. The girl ran after him in the cold, calling his name.

Did she ever find him?
I wondered, but in my mind, I couldn’t see the answer. I couldn’t stay in the place where things were good. I couldn’t stop the voices in the kitchen from mixing with the song.

The girl in the story died, out looking for her pony. She got swallowed up by the blizzard and nobody saw her anymore, and she never rode Wildfire across the prairie with the whirlwind by her side again.

Nothing good lasts. It’s a fact. You build a stall to keep the good thing dry and warm. You try to lock it up, keep it safe, but it busts out, and runs away, and you don’t even know why. . . .

I waited all day for Mrs. Kaye to tell me about the trouble with the house, but she didn’t. Maybe she was having a hard time dealing. She didn’t tell Christopher, either, or Teddy, or Teddy’s mom, who’d had her nurse help her make cookies. They stayed to hand them out to the kids. For a little while around lunchtime, the people were eating, and things seemed okay. MJ told a story out on the porch, and the kids sat and listened. Even Monk and his gang quit playing basketball and stood where they could hear. Rusty and some of his buddies from the construction site came over for lunch. They paid for their food, even though Mrs. Kaye said they didn’t have to. Rusty and Boomer were headed off on another night run to pick up shingles from the dude in Houston, and he didn’t know when he’d be home, but probably not until early morning. He said to be sure I locked the door when me and Opal got home, and I said I would. I didn’t tell him anything about the café getting sold, because he didn’t look like he needed one more problem on his mind. He didn’t like leaving me and Opal home alone that long, but they were gonna get a hundred dollars each for the shingle run.

I told him me and Opal would be fine, then him and his friends headed back to work.

After story time was over and the people left, I looked through the window, and I saw MJ talking to Mrs. Kaye and Holly. I could tell without hearing the words what they were talking about. All three of them looked upset.

Cleanup for the day went on like normal, except it didn’t feel normal. It felt like the end of everything. I guessed it was, but my heart still wouldn’t buy it. I wasn’t sure what would happen to Opal and me now, without the café to go to every day and without the food I got from Mrs. Kaye. Extra food and free lunch every day leave a big hole when you haven’t got them anymore, and you’ve still got three people to take care of.

I tried not to think about it, but I couldn’t get to a mind place, even though I wanted to. When you grow up, there’s more things between you and your mind places, I guess.

On the way home, I stopped and let Opal drop some bread crumbs in the creek, and then we hung out in the park a while. I sat on the lopsided merry-go-round and remembered all the talk we’d had about fixing up the place. Rusty was gonna get some bolts and a welder for the merry-go-round, and some spray-on stuff that would make the slide slippery again, and some cables and boards for the swing set frame. He’d talked to the guys at the construction site about welding together a teeter-totter and some frames for picnic tables.

It was too much to think about, sitting in the park with Poppy’s house right on the other side of the trees, so I made Opal leave and we headed home. She didn’t argue. I guess she could tell I was in a mood, because she just held my hand and walked along real quiet, looking up at me every once in a while.

When we turned the corner into the apartments, Kiki was sitting on our steps. By the time I saw her, we were so close I was surprised she didn’t hear us. She was just sitting there still as a statue, her knees wrapped up against her body like she was cold, and her head down between them. I froze, holding Opal’s hand tighter and tighter. Opal was watching a bird hop along the gutter looking for food, so she didn’t see her mama at first. I moved in front of Opal. She tugged at my hand, watching the bird. I felt the pull stretching my arm as she tried to see the bird better.

Run. Turn around and run away,
I thought, but I couldn’t move. If we ran away, where would we go? Sooner or later it’d get dark, and we’d have to come home. How long would Kiki stay there? Why did she come? Why did she have to come back at all?

I couldn’t wait until Rusty could get home and take care of it. He was probably already headed off with Boomer on the road job, overnight. Even if he wasn’t, I didn’t have any way to get ahold of him now.

“Is a bird go.” Opal’s voice pushed back the silence. I caught my breath and jumped, jerking Opal close. The seconds seemed to pass in slow motion. Opal pulled from my hand, I saw her, I saw the bird. One leg was dragging behind it, the claws curled together, useless. The bird wasn’t looking for food; it was trying to get to someplace safe. On the steps, Kiki untangled like a ball of string, loose and slow, like she didn’t have the energy to stand.

Opal splashed into the water in the gutter, trying to pick up the bird as it hopped toward the apartments. “Bird. Bird, ’mere bird.” She moved closer to Kiki without even knowing it.

“Stop, Opal!” I ran after her and grabbed her up, swinging her onto my hip so hard she gulped out air.

Kiki turned all the way toward us, and then I knew why she was back. She had a fresh shiner. Her eye was swole almost shut, with a cut underneath that’d bled down her neck and stained the front of her T-shirt.

“Geez,” I muttered. “What happened to you?” As if I had to ask.

“It . . . went bad.” Kiki’s head tottered on her neck, and I was afraid she’d pass out right there on the steps.

Opal saw her and tried to wiggle out of my arms. I felt stung inside. I wanted Opal to turn away, to treat Kiki like she deserved. She didn’t deserve for anybody to love her, least of all Opal.

How can Opal even want to go to her, after everything she’s done?

Stop it,
my mind hollered at Opal.
Quit reaching for her. Don’t you know what she’s like? Don’t you know she doesn’t care?

But all Opal knew was her mama was there again.

I held on to her tight, so she couldn’t get away. “Quit, Opal. Leave her alone.”

“Hey, mmmb-baby,” Kiki mumbled. She was either stoned or knocked silly. She blinked and swayed backward against the steps.

“Go away.” I twisted in the other direction to keep Opal from her. “We don’t want you here. You can’t come in. Go back wherever you were.”

Kiki let her eyes fall closed, and her whole face seemed to sag. “I ain’t got . . . annn . . . anywhere . . . He kicked . . . kicked me . . . ouhhht.”

“You shoulda thought of that before you went back. What’d you think he was gonna do—buy you a Rolls?” I sent the words out like a rock after a stray dog. I wanted to hurt her, to chase her off. I hated her like I’d never hated anybody. “Go away.”

“I gotta . . . I gotta get Op-Opal. She’s . . .”

“You can’t
have
Opal!” Kiki was only using Opal to get me to let her stay. If she really wanted Opal, she wouldn’t of run off and left her in the first place.

“She’s umm-my ba-by.” Her words ran together like drips of molasses.

If she tries to grab Opal, I’ll fight her,
I told myself, but at the same time, Opal was wiggling and squirming, trying to get free, and calling, “Mama, Mama. Unna see Mama.”

“C’mere, ubbb-baby.” Kiki smiled on one side and reached out.

“You don’t take care of anything she needs!” I shouted at Kiki. “If you try to take her, I’m gonna call CPS.” Would I? Would I really risk it? Kiki could tell them about Rusty and me just as quick as I could tell them about her. “Stop it, Opal!” I hollered at Opal, then tightened my arms. She head-butted my shoulder and started to cry.

Kiki pushed off the cement and staggered closer, then fell against the building, and hung bent over like a scarecrow. Spreading her legs for balance, she cussed a long, lazy string that ended in a sound like an animal would make, lying on the road after a car hit it.

From the corner of my eye, I saw black and white. A police car. Maybe somebody’d called them about the noise. The car passed by slow. I tried to watch without turning around.

Kiki didn’t notice it at all. She was hunched all the way over, coughing with the dry heaves.

“Great.” I moved past her, opened the door and set Opal inside. It took everything in me to come back and get Kiki, but if that police car circled around again, I didn’t want her to be out there hocking one up in the parking lot.

Inside, I sat her on the edge of the bathtub and handed her a wet washrag. I watched the dried blood turn back to liquid and soak in around the edges as she pushed the cloth against her eye. Her hair was stuck in the blood.

“You shouldn’t of gone back with him,” I said. “Nobody should be with someone like that.”

“He takes care a’ umm-me,” she whispered.

There was a little shuffling noise in the doorway, and I saw Opal with her doll, watching us. “Go on and read your book, okay, Opal?” I moved her away from the door and closed it, because it didn’t seem like any kid should see her mama that way.

Kiki watched me cross the bathroom, the swelled-up eye moving under the eyelid.

“You can’t go back with that jerk,” I said, sitting down on the toilet lid.

“He takes care . . . ummm . . . me.”

“He hits you.”

“He’s good . . . good sometimes.”

I wanted to shake her like you’d shake someone to wake them up from sleepwalking. “Opal’s got burns under her hair. Did
he
do it? Did
he
do that to her?”

She sank forward until her head was laying in my lap. “I don’t . . . I get so . . . I’m so . . . messed-dup.”

I let her stay that way while the water and the blood soaked through my clothes. I felt sick in my stomach, but in my mind, everything was clear. I sat there thinking about it as the sun sank behind the buildings outside the little window over the shower.

The plan played like a movie in my mind.