by Drew Blank
“I also can’t help but notice how polite you are. You really don’t fit in here, do you?”
“No ma’am. The counselors tell me they can’t place me in any more foster homes, so I am kinda stuck here. I feel like a criminal, even though I haven’t done anything. Most of these kids deserve to be in here.”
“Yes. Yes they do.” She shook her head in dismay. “And I have a feeling it is just getting them prepared for an adult life behind bars.”
“So why do you do this then? I mean, if you think it’s hopeless?” I had no idea where the conversation was going, but she had certainly gotten me curious.
“I believe everybody has to do what they can to help their community. Even the smallest effort can sometimes help.”
“Well, I don’t know what I would do if you stopped coming. I think I’d go crazy.”
“That is why I wanted to meet with you today. I had a discussion with your counselors about you. They agree that you are an exemplary student and deserve a little more freedom than the other boys.” The word boys escaped her lips with an uncharacteristic touch of venom, as if she meant to say jackals. “How would you like to come work at my restaurant a few days a week? The school says I couldn’t pay you, but I thought you might enj…”
“Yes!” I interrupted her, not needing any more convincing. “Oh my god, yes!” I felt like I had just won the lottery.
“Then I guess it’s decided. You can start tomorrow.” She put her arm over my shoulder. In retrospect, I think she was trying to initiate a hug, but never being close with anyone before, I had a difficult time understanding physical affection. I simply stood there, beaming with a happiness I had never felt before.
“And Drew?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Call me Mema. Everybody does.” She gave me a wink, grabbed her huge brown satchel and left me alone in my excited stupor. That was the beginning of our close, albeit unconventional, relationship.
After parking my bike, I strolled through the door of Mama Mema’s greeted by the bell overhead. Every time I heard that bell I would chuckle to myself, knowing its intention was to alert Mema of customers if she was busy in the back kitchen, yet she hadn’t been able to hear its jingle from more than ten feet away in decades. As spry and full of life as Mema was, her vision and hearing were consistent reminders of her true age. The dining room was particularly slow that night. Even old Mr. Thomsen had found something better to do than to sit around all day complaining about the goddamn weather or the goddamn president or that goddamn Internet. I ran my hands along the tops of the wooden seats as I made my way down the short aisle formed by the six square tables. In front of me was the cash register sitting atop a glass counter filled with pastries fresh from Mema’s kitchen. Were I ever to find myself on death row and needing a last meal, I suspect most items on the menu would come directly from that glass treasure chest of sweetness.
It had always made me nervous that Mema would work in the back kitchen leaving the front completely open to theft or attackers. Her trust in the city and its inhabitants was not naiveté, but simply stubborn refusal to be made a victim. As much as I respected her independence, it made me crazy with worry. I poked my head around the corner to see her pounding dough out on the big sterling silver counter top, floured like a fresh snowfall. Worrying about Mema’s safety seemed silly as I watched her pulverize that rubbery dough like a professional boxer taking on a grade-schooler.
“Get on the ground, bitch!” I yelled into the kitchen while banging on the tiled wall, hoping to get a rise out of the statuesque chef standing before me. It never worked.
“Hello dear,” Mema greeted me, unflinching, unfazed and still focusing on the dough. “I wish you wouldn’t swear. You’re better than that.”
“Well shit, you think?” I retorted as I chomped on a fresh carrot stolen from the cutting board behind her.
“And stop eating the profits,” she still hadn’t turned around, “you little bastard.” With that dry and viciously true comment she peered over her shoulder and gave me a wink. “And how is Miss Moxie today?” She turned from the task at hand, wiping her hands on a towel hanging from her apron.
“Scared… but good,” I shrugged, worry evident in my answer.
“She is a strong young woman, Drew. She has nothing to be afraid of,” she peered over her magnifying glass spectacles “and neither do you.”
I hadn’t told Mema anything about the insurance issues I was having. There was no sense worrying her with problems far out of her control. The restaurant barely made enough to stay open, let alone provide Mema with extra money to help someone else out. I simply replied “I know,” and choked back a tear.
“Besides, she has you by her side. That means a lot,” she said while displaying a sweet and genuine smile. “You aren’t my hero for nothing, you know.”
“Yeah. I know,” I replied, “and you are mine too.” With that, I strode past Mema chomping on what was left of ‘the profits’, gave her a single kiss on the cheek and headed for the utility staircase leading to my cozy studio apartment. “Gotta work,” I told her as I ascended the steel steps.
“Be good, dear,” she said as I double stepped out of sight.
Mema had always been a great source of strength and inspiration for me, yet she would still refer to me, when nobody was around of course, as her hero.
While still living at Donnelly House I spent three days a week at Mama Mema’s, working three to four hour shifts. The restaurant was never terribly busy, but it was also never completely empty. College students would hang out studying among a stack of textbooks over cappuccino and tiramisu. Old men from the neighborhood would play chess while complaining about the economy, downing countless refills of decaf coffee. “Not regular because it makes me shit”, as old Mr. Thomsen would so generously offer up every time I came by with the coffeepot. There was nothing spectacular about the inside of Mama Mema’s. It was tiny, with only six tables - seven if you included the small bistro table she left out front for people to sit and enjoy their meals on nice days. Take-out was a big business for Mema. People buzzing in and out, always in such a hurry to get home and gobble down their fettuccine in clam sauce or their eggplant parmesan with a zesty spaghetti marinara. The meals she served were never as exotic as the ones she would teach us in the school. I asked Mema one day why that was. She matter-of-factly said, “Customers want simple. If they can’t pronounce it, they do not want to feel dumb and order it. My students have no choice. They will eat what I teach them to make, whether they can pronounce it or not.” Mema was never one to mince words.
My time at Mema’s was spent cleaning dishes, sweeping the floors, refilling coffee, plunging out the toilets after I tested Mr. Thomsen’s claim about giving him regular coffee, running the registers during the busy lunch time take-out hours and prepping the to-go station for the dinner shifts. Dinners at Mama Mema’s were more of a bustling affair. Being so limited in seating, such an intimate setting with authentic Italian cooking is a hot ticket in this dismally dreary town. The reservation list was always full and Mema personally took care of each and every table. Before me, Mema did everything. At times I felt she missed doing it all, but other times I was under the impression she just liked having someone around. I didn’t mind doing the menial, less glamorous tasks. All I had to do was remind myself that whatever I was doing was better than counting the moments go by at Donnelly House.
Mema continued teaching her classes and her prized pupil continued attending. I couldn’t get enough, but it was difficult to pinpoint the root of my passion. Sure, I loved learning all the new foods and cooking styles and techniques. However, I think most of my drive came from the desire to please someone who obviously cared about me. This was a new experience that I was not used to. With my life starting in the hands of a vagrant next to a dumpster, having people in my life that cared for me was rare. I was truly starting to feel what it was like to have family.
Word began to spread throughout
the school about my extra curricular activity and it was not received well by my classmates. Envy was one of many regularly committed deadly sins in the Donnelly House. It’s easy to be jealous of what another person has when you have nothing. Although I had earned any special treatment I was receiving, the other students simply saw it as their punishment for not sucking up and kissing the right asses. A life of family-less imprisonment can viciously skew your interpretation of cause and effect. I was worried some of the more envious students may take out their rage on me. Getting an extra jelly packet with your toast at breakfast was enough to get you jumped in the gym by a bevy of covetous delinquents armed with textbook stuffed pillowcases. I couldn’t imagine what kind of penance I would pay for receiving the privilege of freedom, albeit only twelve hours a week. It did not take long for me to find out.
It had been exactly four weeks since I started working at Mema’s when I strolled into her classroom, oblivious to the fact that this would be her last lesson. We had prepared a chicken fricassee served atop a spanakorizo, a spinach rice, expanding our repertoires to include some Greek cooking. To Mema’s credit, I had never eaten a bad meal in her class. With her natural ability to teach and the diverse and tasty menus she would prepare for us, the only student to leave her class hungry or unsatisfied with the finished product was a student who just wouldn’t follow directions. This lesson had been no exception. After finishing up the dishes, all the students lazily began gathering their things in order to head back to the dorm hall and, more than likely, fall into a food coma due to over-stuffing of fine Greek cuisine. It had become habit for me to hang around and let all the kids shuffle out of the room ahead of me so I could stay and visit with Mema for a few minutes. This day, however, there were three students at the back table that were stalling their departures even more than I was.
Admittedly, I was not very social at the Donnelly House. I had very little in common with the criminal element that filled this group home’s hallways and found it in my best interest to just keep to myself. This tactic never kept me from getting into scuffles and brawls on a very regular basis, but it did keep me from most of the drama involved with sharing a dorm room inhabited by fifty kids in bunk beds. Although I did not mingle much with my classmates, I did spend my time observing and analyzing them. The three students that had hung back after class was over were Luiz Munoz, Norman Stephens and Ray Kowalski. Not three of the most notorious kids in the school, but certainly three that could raise an eyebrow with the slightest bit of suspicious behavior.
Luiz was the ringleader of this merry band of troublemakers. He was an orphan, like me. The Munoz family had adopted him as an infant. However, he was placed into the foster care system at five years old when his adoptive mother and father died in a murder-suicide, his mother being at the murder end of the deal. From there he skipped from foster family to foster family, each time leaving as a result of his violently criminal nature. As much as I did not like him, I suppose I could not blame him for being a little traumatized. He was the one who called the police the night his adoptive parents died. The cops found him hiding under the porch, covered in the blood of the only people he ever knew as parents.
Norman and Ray were your run-of-the-mill delinquents. They had families that would come see them from time to time, but nobody that really missed them. I suppose as a parent, it would be a bit of a relief when the state sentences your troubled kid to a home like Donnelly House. As much as parents typically love their children unconditionally, they don’t necessarily need to like them. Dropping them off and visiting them only on holidays and birthdays in a stale white room at a big wooden table that’s been nailed to the floor to keep it from being used as a weapon in the event of a riot, surrounded by armed guards that have no reservations about clubbing an out of hand teenager, has got to be easier than raising them yourself. Understandably, the non-orphans residing at Donnelly carried bigger chips on their shoulders. We orphans had been abandoned, but only by people we had never met.
I tried my best to slow my retreat from Mema’s class without drawing the attention of the three characters lingering in the back. I grabbed my coat, threw it over my shoulder and tucked my books under my arm. As I reached the front of the class, I gave Mema a weary smile. My suspicion must have been apparent in my face because Mema returned my look with a warming, reassuring grin, followed with a wink. That wink spoke words she couldn’t convey at the moment. It said “I’m a tough old broad. Don’t worry about these little creeps. Get outta here.” I realized that maybe I was being a little overly cautious and I gave her a wave as I slowly stepped over the room’s threshold.
Directly across from the science room was a drinking fountain and the entrance to the men’s washroom. To my left was the pale brick hallway that led to the dorms, lined with torn anti-drug banners and framed portraits of Donnelly’s benefactors cemented to the brick to protect them from vandals and rioting teens. To my right was more hallway leading to the janitor’s supply room, a few abandoned offices and the women’s washroom. Still not totally comfortable abandoning Mema, I decided to stall at the drinking fountain. In most scenarios this would seem like a relatively easy stall technique. However, putting my mouth anywhere near this antiquated basin was about as appealing as retrieving water from the toilet in the last stall of the men’s room that was forever taped off with an OUT OF ORDER sign affixed to the door. The fountain was stained crimson brown with blood from split lips and other wounds obtained during altercations in the hallway. A faded rainbow of colors caked the nozzle courtesy of pranksters hoping to catch a parched, unsuspecting student with a mouthful of gum placed over the spout. Leaning over the fountain, I pushed the rusted orange button and let the water arc in front of my face, being careful to not actually ingest any of the sludge spewing forth. Anybody to ever claim water does not have a scent has never spent any extended period of time within Donnelly House.
While hunched over the fountain, I saw Mema in my peripheral vision. She casually left the room and turned right, heading for the women’s room. Out of sight, I heard the seldom-used door defiantly creak open and then slam behind her. Moments later, I heard the cagey trio approach the classroom’s exit. Hushed whispering and scheming did not tip me off to their exact plans, but it did alert me to impending wrongdoings. With the rotten water still spraying from the nozzle, I peeked my head under my arm, hoping my ruse was not too obvious. With no attention being paid to me, Luiz silently motioned towards the right hall, ushering his two cronies forward. It was immediately obvious to me that this was not good. While they turned their backs to me and moved swiftly towards the room Mema had just entered, I turned on my heel and headed the opposite direction in hopes they would be too focused and arrogant to think anyone was on to them. The moment I heard that old wooden door slam shut again, I reacted quickly.
I spun back around with my mind racing. I had no time to alert any of the counselors or guards, nor did I think anyone would move fast enough to be any help. This was up to me and I had to work quickly. Sprinting back down the hallway away from the dorms, I assessed my options. I had been in countless fights during my six years in Donnelly, but they were usually senseless tussles over irrelevant teenage bullshit. This situation was different. I did not know what these hooligans had in mind, but I was sure it wasn’t going to come out with a happy ending if I didn’t step in.
Although I was without a plan and unaware of what Luiz and his crew would be armed with, I was sure it would be foolish of me to go up against them ill equipped. A quick jiggle of the janitor’s closet handle confirmed my suspicions that it would be locked. Now frantic, I pivoted on my right foot trying to assess my surroundings. I needed a weapon. Hanging next to the janitor’s closet was a brand new, bright red fire extinguisher. The folks who ran Donnelly House may have skimped when it came to a lot of areas regarding our care including: fresh food, sufficient education, comfortable lodging and suitable health care. However, when it came to safety, they were top-notch. A few ki
ds being sent to the hospital for food poisoning never made the papers. An orphanage full of children burning to the ground due to dated and unsatisfactory safety equipment, on the other hand, could not escape some negative press. As much as I appreciated the school’s effort to keep us safe, I had a better use for this shiny new extinguisher.
Ripping my weapon from its wall holster, I took a
deep breath and kicked open the bathroom door. I was greeted immediately by Norman’s screech. Apparently, he was the lookout and hadn’t anticipated anybody coming in so abruptly. The blow from the door had knocked him off his feet and into the first stall, cushioning the blow with his face. Blood streaked the now slightly dented stall as Norman’s more than slightly dented face slid to the ground. As he lay on the cold tile in a quickly pooling puddle of blood, I knew he was not an immediate concern.
Directing my eyes to the center of the ladies’ room, I took in what was before me. Mema was at the back of the room, knocked to the floor and bleeding from her right temple. Blood ran down that stark white hair, giving her shocking pink highlights. Although she had obviously already taken a massive blow at the hands of these degenerates, she still sat poised on the neglected checkered tile, not letting even this ruin her composure. Ray was standing by the sinks, make-shift blade in his hand. It had been fashioned from either a toothbrush or a comb, a common weapon forged in Donnelly House. He was undoubtedly taken by surprise when he saw me come careening through the door, bloodying his comrade in the process. His attention had been taken from Mema and was now focused on me. Legs spread and in a fighting stance he advanced. Luiz stood in the middle of the room, unmoved by my grand entrance. In his right hand he had a shank similar to Ray’s and in his left hand he held an eighteen inch serrated knife he had taken from Mema’s satchel that now lay at his feet.
In movies we always see the hero taking on hordes of bad guys, each advancing one at a time. It rarely occurs to the group of villains that if they teamed up they could very easily take down the cowboy in the white hat. In reality, although bad guys may not be the smartest folks, they usually have enough natural survival instincts to maintain a pack mentality. I was well aware when I entered this room I would not be given the opportunity to battle each one of Mema’s attackers one on one, Kung-Fu style. Fortunately, I took one of them out immediately. That was luck, and I wasn’t going to count on any more of that. Ray immediately lunged at me while Luiz took no time swinging the serrated blade towards my face. My initial attack was on Ray. I knew Luiz would be a tough battle and having his pesky lapdogs prancing about would just be a distraction.