by Leah Wilde
I liked to pretend that my mother had a smile like that. I wouldn’t know, of course. She was gone long before my memories began. Daddy always told me that she’d gotten sick of the Chicago winters and she went to California, where it was sunny and warm. But I didn’t believe him. I could always tell when he was lying.
I looked up at where he stood in the doorway. He was skinny, hardly any meat left on his bones, though a little potbelly sagged over his drawstring chef’s pants. He walked with a hunched back and a hitch in his step, cursing up a storm under his breath, always demanding to know why his body was betraying him in so many ways both little and big. His hands were scraped raw from years of plunging them into the hot water from the sink.
He’d owned this restaurant for as long as I’d been alive. He used to tell me that he’d moved to Chicago and found a job working in the kitchen here under the previous owner. It was a run-down Italian joint. We served spaghetti and meatballs with marinara sauce, lasagna, and lots of other dishes like that. But there weren’t ever too many people who came to eat here. Daddy was always sitting in his office, shuffling through papers and cursing like he loved to do. He knew a lot of curse words.
I opened my mouth to talk, but he didn’t wait for me to answer. Instead, he marched across the distance between us in two quick steps, scooped up my dolls, and threw them straight into a trash can.
“No, Daddy!” I shrieked, clutching at his elbow.
He shook me off, then spun around and seized my upper arm between his skinny skeleton fingers. “I told you to wash the dirty dishes,” he hissed. His face was jammed up against mine. I hated looking into his eyes. They were so scary. “If you don’t listen to me, you don’t get your dolls.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I wailed. Tears were streaming down my face. His grip on my arm was so tight. It hurt. There would be bruises later. It wasn’t the first time this had happened.
“Now, go,” he barked, throwing me backwards. I stumbled, but stayed on my feet. He spun on his heel and stormed back out, ranting quietly to himself.
Everything was wrong. It was too hot in the kitchen, my arm hurt, my dolls were gone, and the stack of dishes teetering on the edge of the sink would take me years to scrub clean. Daddy always made sure they were extra clean. He’d pluck one up from the finished stack and hold it right up under his eyes. If there was even the tiniest speck of grime or crusted food on it, he’d make me start the whole pile over, no matter how clean all the others were.
I sagged in front of the sink. I didn’t want to stand up anymore. I just wanted to lie down somewhere quiet and cool and sleep for a long, long time. And when I woke up, I wanted Daddy to be nicer and smiling.
I twisted open the faucet. Water poured out, scalding hot. Steam rose in spirals from the flow. Reaching as high as I could while standing on my tiptoes, I pulled the first plate from the top of the stack, dunked it in the sudsy water, and started to scrub.
I pretended that all the bad things were like old food on the plates. If I scrubbed hard enough and didn’t cry out when the hot water hit my hands, then I’d be able to make it all go away. The plates were so pretty when they were clean. Maybe my life could be that pretty, too.
Hours passed as I scrubbed and scrubbed until my hands were swollen and pink. I could hardly bend my knuckles. The fingertips were like little fleshy raisins.
It had to be getting close to closing time. There were still a lot of chores I had to do after the customers stopped coming in, but at least Daddy wouldn’t be quite so nervous and mad. He usually calmed down a little bit once the restaurant was empty.
I eyed the pile. There were only a few dozen plates left. I figured I could afford to take a quick break. Stepping down from the stool, I tottered to the kitchen door. I pushed it open and stuck my head out.
There was a short hallway connecting the kitchen to the main dining room. The sign on the door was flipped to Closed and the few tables I could see were empty, but for some reason, there were still unfamiliar voices booming throughout the building. Suddenly, I heard a big crash, like plates shattering.
I snuck down the hallway and peeked around the corner to see what was happening.
At the big booth in the corner, two men in suits were lounging back, cackling. Their suits were shiny and new-looking. I wanted to touch the fabric. It looked so soft and silky. They each had cigarettes burning between their lips, even though smoking wasn’t allowed in the restaurant. Daddy hated the smell.
Strewn across the table were dozens of dishes. That was good, at least. They’d ordered a lot of food, so maybe, if I was lucky, Daddy would be a little bit happier tonight. Maybe they’d even leave him a big tip. That would be best of all.
“This pasta tasted like shit, Sergio,” said one of the men. He had a thick, bristly mustache and chubby fingers with lots of gold rings. As I watched, he picked up the plate in question and dropped it on the floor at my father’s feet where he stood at the head of their table, right on top of the remains of another broken dish.
It hit the floor and broke into tiny shards. Pasta sauce flew up onto my father’s apron and torso. He flinched, bringing up his hands to protect his face. I couldn’t see his expression but I knew he would be furious. Daddy had such a temper, didn’t these men know that? I bet he was about to kick them out and curse at them until they cried, just like he did to me when I was bad.
But he didn’t do anything. He lowered his hands slowly. I barely recognized the voice that came out of his mouth just then. It didn’t sound anything like him. Where was the anger? Where were the curse words? The only thing he said was, “I’m s-sorry, Emilio. It won’t happen again.” His tone was apologetic and sad. He looked down at his feet as soon as he’d finished talking.
I was confused. None of this made any sense. Daddy shouldn’t be acting so nice to these men. He was letting them smoke in the restaurant and break his plates and insult his food. That wasn’t very nice of them at all. If I’d broken a plate, Daddy would have shaken me by my arm and sent me straight to my room without supper.
“Fuck your sorry,” said the other man. This one was immensely fat, but he had a baby face, skin as smooth and clear as a pat of butter. When he spoke, his cheeks shook like Jell-O. I didn’t like him any more than I liked the man with the mustache. “And fuck your food,” he added. “Emilio’s right. It does taste like shit.”
“Can I, uh, get you something else?” my father stuttered.
“You can get us the money you owe, Sergio,” the fat man said. His eyes were squinty and mean. He took a big drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke straight into Daddy’s face. Daddy coughed hard, doubling over as he wheezed. The men all chortled.
Daddy tried to talk, though his voice came out raspy. “I don’t have any money to give you right now. I can barely keep the lights on as it is. Nobody comes here!”
The man with the mustache cut in sharply, “The Capparelli family doesn’t give a fuck about your excuses, Sergio. We don’t care how you get the money. But you better find a way to get it.”
My father started to babble. “There’s just no way, I mean, how can I? No customers, food goes bad, and then—” The sharp crack of flesh on flesh rang out, interrupting him. Daddy’s head snapped back. He fell silent, stunned.
The man with the mustache, the one who had just slapped him across the face, winced and rubbed his knuckles. “Christ, you’ve got a hard skull, Sergio,” he muttered. “I hate doing that, you know. Why do you make us do things like that?” He tugged on a pair of leather gloves as he stood up from the table.
The other man followed suit. As he stood, he swept an arm across the table, knocking off the dozens of half-eaten plates of food that had been sitting there. They slammed into the floor, crashing and smashing apart. Food went everywhere.
“No, wait, please,” my father begged, but the skinny man with the mustache ignored his pleas as he gripped Daddy’s neck and swung him on top of the table.
“Find the money. Now. We’l
l be back soon if you don’t,” he said, pointing a gloved finger in his face.
“Okay,” he gasped through the pressure on his neck. “I’ll find it, I swear.”
“Good,” the man replied, releasing the grip on his neck and standing up straight. He brushed a spot of pasta sauce from the lapel of his jacket. His nose wrinkled in disgust.
“And clean this place up,” added the fat man. “You’ve got a lot of broken shit lying around on the ground. It’s a pigsty.” He smiled evilly. Both men laughed again. I liked them even less than I had at first. They were not nice men. Daddy was mean sometimes, but even he didn’t deserve this. I felt scared. I hoped they wouldn’t come after me.
“Should we leave him something to remind him of us?” the fat man asked his friend.
The other rubbed his mustache thoughtfully. “I guess so,” he sighed.
Turning, the fat man plucked the cigarette from between his lips with one hand and grabbed my father’s wrist with the other. Daddy started to struggle, but the mustache man pinned him to the table top. He looked on in horror as the fat man flipped his hand over, exposing his palm, and pressed the lit tip of the cigarette down into his skin.
I ducked back around the corner and covered my ears as Daddy started to scream. I kept them covered for a long time.
When Daddy limped back around the corner a while later, I saw that he held a corner of his apron pressed against his palm. He looked at me. His eyes were round and sad. For once, he didn’t look angry. He just looked so tired.
I thought he was going to say something, but he didn’t say anything. He sighed and just kept walking.
I never did get my dolls back.
Chapter 3
Dominic
I didn’t know how long I was lying there. It was the opposite of my first memory. This time around, when I returned to the realm of the living, instead of being white, everything was dark.
It was nighttime. The lights overhead in the alleyway were dim and flickering. They only made the shadows deeper and more jagged. I felt something warm and wet dripping from my mouth. The tangy, metallic taste told me it was blood. My lips were dry and my whole body shivered from head to toe.
I tried to move. The second my muscles ignited, pain tore through me like I’d never felt before. The white hot epicenter of it burned in my chest, where a grinding crunch hinted that something must be broken.
The dealer had beat the shit out of me and left me for dead. I was close to it as far as I could tell. Nothing moved right. Everything hurt. I couldn’t even sit up. All I could do was blink. Even thoughts seemed like too much effort for my body to handle.
I kept fading in and out of consciousness. It went dark for a while, and when my eyes opened again, it was morning. I was so thirsty, my throat desperate for a sip of water. Something cold nuzzled against my face, a tiny pinprick of sensation. It was snow. Flakes began to fall from the sky lazily, drifting down between the power lines and the rooftops to settle in a thin patina along the wet concrete. I opened my mouth and caught a few snowflakes on my tongue.
Every time I tried to move, the same pain flared up, just as bad as the first attempt. I was going to die out here if I didn’t get some help. No food, no shelter. I’d be buried in a snow bank for weeks before they found my body. I almost wanted to laugh at the mental image of some garbage man unearthing me, finding a scrawny little corpse with his tongue stuck out.
The snow kept falling. I wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t, try as I might. This was as far as Dom was going to get. I should’ve died in the car crash. It would’ve been quicker and less painful.
“Oh, shit!” came a wearied, nasally voice. “What’s this little man doing back here?”
I struggled to move my head in the direction of the sound. “Help,” I wheezed through my dry throat. My lips cracked and bled with the motion. “Help me.”
The man rounded into view. He was small and frail. Dirty clothes hung loose from his skinny body and a thick beard clung to his sunken cheeks. His fingers twitched and danced restlessly in the air in front of him. He looked like shit, but his eyes were brown and friendly.
“Oh, shit!” he exclaimed again. “You ain’t doin’ so well, my man.”
I raised a limp hand, but the effort exhausted me after a moment. It dropped back to the ground uselessly. “Please,” I muttered. The act of speaking tugged tenterhooks into my devastated rib cage. Each word was agony.
“What happened to you?” he asked. “Wait, no, no, don’t tell me. You don’t look like you can speak anyway.” He laughed, then cut himself off suddenly with a frown. He seemed crazy, pirouetting from emotion to emotion, his body never standing still. I groaned.
He pounced over and crouched in front of me. Reaching forward two dirt-covered fingers, he peeled back my eyelids. I looked up into his face. The beard was grungy and when he smiled, I could see the clotted gunk accumulated through years of street living. “What’s your name, amigo?” he chirped.
I drew in a slow breath, wincing, and said, “Dom,” as loudly as I could. It came out in a tinny whisper.
“You a young one to be out here alone, ain’t ya?” The man cackled. “Well, I’m Slim. And I can’t very well leave ya out here like this, can I? No, certainly cannot. You’ll have to come with me.” He furrowed his brow and hunched closer to me. He smelled horrific. “But you can’t walk, can you?”
I shook my head gingerly.
“Didn’t think so,” he replied. “Hmm.” He stroked his beard and looked around. “Ah, I know, I know.” He rose to his feet and sprang out of my field of vision. I heard the sound of cardboard ripping. Slim pranced back around, a gleeful smile splitting his face and a big sheet of cardboard held between his hands. He set it on the ground next to me and patted it. “Come on, now,” he said. “Roll on over on top of this guy right here. This’ll do the trick.”
I eyed the cardboard. Summoning all my strength, I threw my weight over to my side. It took a moment to rock back and forth to build the necessary momentum, but eventually I managed to roll myself onto the cardboard. By the time I was on it, sweat beaded across my forehead and short moans burst through my lips. My eyes were wired open, staring at the sky above as lava pain surged up and down me.
“That’s the ticket,” he said, snapping and standing back up. “Good on ya. Well, let’s go, yes?” Slim didn’t wait for an answer. I tried to yelp for him to wait, but he didn’t hear me or didn’t care. Seizing one edge of the flattened box, he started to pull me down the alley.
I didn’t want to scream, but every bump and jolt made the pain blaze like shots of lightning. We made our way down the alley and went trundling down the sidewalk, headed for God knew where. It didn’t matter. I was alive, and that was all that counted.
But the pain was too much. I held out for as long as I could. Then I passed out.
# # #
Night had fallen. The fire crackling in front of me was warm. I stretched out my hands as far as I could towards it. The heat sank into my fingertips and slid up my whole body to calm my chattering teeth. In spite of the blankets heaped on top of me, I was still shivering.
The flame threw funky shadows on Slim’s face where he sat next to me. I twisted my neck to look up at him. He looked back down and gave a toothy grin. “Beats layin’ in that alley, don’t it?” He guffawed.
I didn’t have the energy to laugh with him. I turned back to the fire. In the hours since he’d dragged me away from the brink of death, the pain had begun to subside slightly, but I could still hardly twitch without it drawing a screaming protest from my whole body. It was going to be a long time before I would be up and moving on my own.
We were huddled at the foot of an overpass. A clothesline strung up around us held thick sleeping bags to block out the wind. The little fire next to me burned on balled up trash and aluminum cans. It was a shitty place to be, but still an improvement over being exposed to the snow in the alleyway. It wasn’t like I had a choice. Wherever Slim wanted m
e to go, I would go. I couldn’t possibly fight back.
“So who are you?” I asked after a while. The wind whistled on the other side of the clothesline and cars thundered past us overhead. Every now and then the screech of a horn and raised voices would puncture the drone of traffic.
“Me?” asked Slim. “I’m a supplier for the chop shop.”
I blinked in confusion. “A what?”
Slim laughed. “I boost cars, little man. And then I sell ’em to whoever will pay for ’em.”
I scowled. “You’re a thief.”
He huffed like he was offended. “I’m Robin Hood, man! Steal from the rich and give to the poor. I just happen to be the poor in this here situation.” He grinned at me.
I wanted to hate him, but I couldn’t. How was I supposed to judge the man who’d saved my life? He did what he needed to do to get by. At least he had shelter, if that was what you could call this makeshift tent.