The Summer Kitchen

by Lisa Wingate

  Holly followed me into the kitchen while the kids picked up cups in the yard. “So … uhhhh, what’s with the lady in the Africa suit?” she asked.

  “Not exactly sure,” I admitted. “She owns the bookstore down the road.”

  “Is she hanging around for a reason?”

  “I’m not sure of that, either.”

  “Huh …” Holly shrugged, handing me the foil pans so I could dry them. We finished the dishes in silence, then stood together in the kitchen.

  “Holly, thanks for taking care of things here,” I said. “I know all of this must have seemed really … strange.”

  “I didn’t mind,” she replied, slipping an arm over my shoulders and hugging me. “You could have told me sooner, though. You know I’m the queen of crazy plans. You could have let me in instead of shutting me out. Does Rob know?”

  I shook my head.

  “You haven’t told him anything?”

  “No.” The implications of that and the reasons for it were too complicated to consider, standing there in the kitchen. Years of psychoanalysis could probably be spent on the issue. “I didn’t … plan any of this. It just … happened. Working here took my mind off Poppy’s death and Jake’s leaving, and I just kept coming back. I never meant for it to … get out of control.” It is out of control. It’s completely out of control.

  From the look on Holly’s face, I could tell she was about to ask what my eventual plans were. I’d have to admit that I had none. I didn’t know where my impromptu lunch program was going and I had no exit strategy.

  She seemed to carefully consider what to say next, which was unusual for Holly. “We could do this, you know.”

  “Do … what?” I was almost afraid to ask. Holly had that force-of-nature look in her eye.

  “We could open this place up for real.” She pressed the tip of her tongue to her teeth and raised a brow, assessing my reaction. “Put in some tables and serve actual food.”

  “Holly!” I protested, and she lifted a hand to shut me up.

  “Just listen to me a minute. I’ve been thinking it through. Do you know there’s no summer food program within ten miles of here for the kids who are out of school? There used to be one, but now there’s a condo complex where the community center was. With school out, these kids can’t even count on school lunch. Some of them go hungry all day. We could do this, San. We could. I’ve got all the dishes and the tables. We could make this work.”

  I stood gaping at her. So much for me being out of my mind. Maybe it was the paint fumes in the house, but Holly had lost hers, as well.

  “Holly, we—” I heard someone coming into the kitchen and turned to find MJ in the doorway. Her dark eyes watched me intently from beneath the turban, and again I felt a flash of familiarity.

  “I see the secret room is still there,” she said, her lips parting in a smile.

  “Excuse me?” I know that smile. I know her… .

  “The summer kitchen.” She motioned toward the backyard. “It’s still where we left it.”

  Where we left it … The summer kitchen … Her smile, the slight familiarity in her features, tripped a switch in my mind, electrical current raced through the connections, and suddenly everything made sense. “Jalicia?” I gasped. I could see traces of the little girl in her now, the shadow of the playmate with whom I spent hours pretending in the secret room, exploring along the creek, and looking for the tramps’ marks along the backyard fence. “Jalicia? Is that you?”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Marley Jalicia,” she said, and then I remembered how much she’d hated that she’d been given her grandfather’s first name—a boy’s name. “MJ sounds more exotic, don’t you think?”

  “Oh … oh, it is you!” The words rushed out of me in an excited squeal. I stretched out my arms, and we rocked back and forth in the embrace of long-separated friends. “I haven’t seen you since we were … what … thirteen or fourteen? You moved away somewhere, didn’t you?” In truth, I couldn’t remember why I’d stopped spending time with Jalicia. As I’d drifted into my teen years, boyfriends, slumber parties, and social plans with school friends overtook spending time at Poppy and Aunt Ruth’s. I just remembered going for a visit and learning that Jalicia was gone.

  “We lost our house and had to move away,” MJ said against my ear. “But I came back. This is my neighborhood.”

  MJ and I released each other, and I was aware of Holly watching us with her mouth hanging slightly open. “Ummm … not to be a buttinsky, but can somebody tell me what’s going on … exactly?”

  Chapter 20

  Cass

  It was weird to think that MJ and Mrs. Kaye were friends from way back a gazillion years ago. Even when they talked about it, I couldn’t come up with a mind picture of them being little girls and finding the secret places before Opal and me did. But they had stories about the hideout under the porch, the brick pile behind the shed where the blue-tailed lizards hid, and the summer kitchen. MJ showed me a hidden door in the back room closet. It opened into a steep little stairway to the attic. I sneaked up there later, when everyone was busy. I kneeled on the rafters with the light coming in the little attic windows around me, and I said my prayers all the way through for the first time in a long time. It seemed like, if I said my prayers, maybe that would help a good thing stay good, you know?

  But there was always the devil in the corner of my mind, whispering that good things never stayed good, not for Rusty and me, anyhow. It couldn’t keep working out that we’d do the sandwiches at Poppy’s house, and Opal an’ me would get up every day and go there, and Mrs. Kaye would give us all the sandwiches and juice and hot dogs we wanted to take home, and Rusty and me’d have enough money to buy groceries and gas, and we hadn’t seen hide or hair of Kiki since she took off with her boyfriend—not the days we hid in the apartment, or the week since we’d been back working at the café. It was like something you’d dream, and it’d feel so good, and then you’d wake up and find yourself right back where you expected to be.

  One day, when we were serving hot dogs with chili, MJ said sometimes the problem with people is expectations—she asked me if I knew that word, and I said of course I did. She said what you expect, you create, just like the frogs in the bucket of cream. If you expect to sink, you’ll sink, but if you believe you’ve got the power, you’ll keep swimming until the cream turns to butter, and you can hop on out.

  MJ told the frog story to the kids after lunch that day. Monk and his gang had showed up, of all things—once it was hot dogs and chili instead of PBJ sandwiches, they got interested. After the story, B.C. said the little frog just got lucky, but MJ told him he’d missed the point. The little frog wasn’t lucky; he was determined. She winked at me when she said it.

  It was cool that MJ told stories to the kids after lunch. She brought books and read to them, too, and kids could take one home, then bring it back again to trade, if they wanted to. Story time was on the grass in the front yard the first few days after Mrs. Kaye came back, but then when we hit a rainy spell, the whole café moved indoors. Teddy and Christopher set up tables in the front room while Holly, Mrs. Kaye, MJ, and Elsie, the old lady from next door, served up the food. Most days, the tables were full, and people sat on the floor around the edges, too. Holly said we needed more tables.

  Even Rusty pitched in. He came on a Saturday after work to help Christopher fix a few things. After he’d looked the place over, he told Mrs. Kaye he could bring some scrap lumber from the construction site and build a counter along the walls in the front room, like a diner had. That way there’d be more places for people to eat. Mrs. Kaye told him thanks, but she didn’t think we better do anything permanent.

  When she said that, the devil stirred up the corner of my mind. He pinched me hard and said, See, nothing lasts, if it’s good. He looked around the pink house and pointed out that everything—the folding tables and chairs, the big warming pans and the juice dispenser in the kitchen, the cups, plates, and napkins, even the
little iron table in the summer kitchen, where Opal and me could sneak away from everybody, could be moved in no time.

  You could come here one day, and there won’t be a thing. Poof! the devil said. What did you expect? Nothing’s permanent.

  When Rusty came back the next day, Sunday afternoon, to work on the burglar bars, he brought his friend, Boomer, from work, so they could tack weld one of the hinges. Mrs. Kaye had Christopher with her, and after they got the bars fixed, the guys shot hoops out front with a basketball Holly’d brought from home. She’d also brought a bunch of toys and some clothes for Opal. She said it was silly to keep those things, since she wasn’t going to be having any more babies. I couldn’t figure why anybody would want six kids in the first place, but Holly liked kids a lot. She was always hugging the customers and teaching Opal patty-cake and stuff.

  I’d forgot how good Rusty was at basketball until I watched him playing with Christopher and Boomer. He was better than both of them put together.

  “Wow, he’s good.” Mrs. Kaye sat down beside me on the steps, because she’d locked up the front door already. All that was left to do was put the basketball in the shed and close it.

  It was cool that Mrs. Kaye noticed Rusty. It made me feel proud of him. “Yeah, the basketball team went undefeated last year, back in Helena, and it was mostly because of him. Then the English teacher flunked him on his essay, and I thought the coaches were gonna pop a cork. The principal got in on it, and they made her let Rusty redo the essay. They said, with Mama bein’ sick and all, the English teacher shouldn’t be so hard on him, but really they just wanted him to play basketball. They figured if they could keep him going, by next year the team would be really good.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Kaye watched Rusty go right over Christopher’s head and dunk one.

  We sat there for a while, and then she told me she’d be late tomorrow because she had to help get food ready and tables set up for a funeral at her church back in Plano. Holly and Christopher would come on, open the café, and get things started.

  “I hate funerals,” I said, and thought of Mama’s—all those people walking around the church hall looking sad, hugging on Rusty an’ me, and shaking creepy Roger’s hand, saying how lucky we were to have somebody to look after us. Really, they were just glad they didn’t have to worry about what would happen to Rusty and me. The basketball coaches were afraid we might of got shipped off to foster care somewhere outside the district. I heard them talking about it over in a corner. They said they didn’t want to see us have to go live with strangers, but really, they were thinking basketball. If they didn’t want us to go away to foster care, they could of took us, couldn’t they?

  At Mama’s funeral, I found a table with a long cloth, and when nobody was looking, I crawled under it and put my head on my knees like I was doing now, watching Rusty play basketball.

  “Well, I don’t think anybody likes funerals,” Mrs. Kaye said.

  My mind came back to Poppy’s house. “All those people who were never even nice to you come around and hug on you and tell you how sorry they are and stuff.”

  Mrs. Kaye chuckled. Her eyes caught the pink sunlight and sparkled. “I don’t think they’re all that way. Hopefully, a funeral is a chance to celebrate the good things people have done with their lives.”

  “Like the café?” I looked over my shoulder at the house. It bugged me to think that Mama’s funeral didn’t celebrate anything, so I changed the subject. “And all the toys and bikes Poppy used to fix for people.” Mama didn’t start a place to feed people, or fix bikes so they could be used again. She just went to work, and came home, and tried to take care of us kids. Maybe that was why people didn’t have much to say at her funeral. Those weren’t very big things.

  Sadness broke loose inside me and ran all through like cold, gray paint. I felt it dripping down, icy and thick. I wanted Mama to be alive, so she’d still have the chance to do something big—start a café, or give away books and stories. Back home, probably nobody even thought about Mama anymore.

  Sometimes I wondered if Rusty thought about her. Mostly he just seemed mad that she died and left him to take care of everything.

  I felt Mrs. Kaye’s fingers brush my cheek and catch my hair. She pulled it back and tucked it behind my shoulder.

  “Do you want to tell me what’s really going on?” Her voice was quiet and soft, strange with the basketball bouncing and the guys talking trash on the driveway. “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to confide in somebody, Cass.”

  I felt like a person on the edge of the ocean, watching a wave come closer and trying to decide whether to run back to shore or jump in. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad …

  Or maybe you’d get caught in something you couldn’t get away from… .

  When you see the wave get closer, it’s easiest to do what you’ve always done. “I don’t know what you mean, I guess.”

  Mrs. Kaye’s hand rested on my hair. She gathered it in a ponytail and held it there. It felt so much like Mama, I closed my eyes and let my mind wander off for a minute. I was back on our porch with Mama. I leaned over and put my head on her shoulder, and she slipped her arm around me.

  “I can tell there’s something wrong,” she said. “You have to trust somebody. I think I can help.”

  “Mama … ,” I whispered. Everything inside me wanted her to really be there.

  “What about your mom?”

  My mind came back to the porch. I knew it wasn’t Mama there with me. I knew it was Mrs. Kaye. What would she say if I told her about Rusty and me? What would she do?

  Maybe she’ll take care of us. She probably has a big house somewhere. Maybe she’s like Holly and wants more kids. I let the idea start inside me like a pencil sketch, the lines kind of light, so you could erase them in a hurry if you needed to. Rusty and Christopher were getting on real good. There was an empty place in Mrs. Kaye’s house where Jake used to be. If he didn’t want them for his family, maybe Rusty and me did. But then I thought there was no way Rusty’d go live with parents again, even nice ones. He liked being out on his own like an adult, doing what he wanted to do. I couldn’t go stay someplace without Rusty. Him and me were still a family, first of all.

  I heard Opal’s shoes on the porch before I saw her, and there was the second problem with the sketch in my head. If I told Mrs. Kaye about Rusty and me, what would happen to Opal?

  I didn’t have to think hard to answer that question, and I erased the pencil lines in a hurry. CPS would come get Opal. They’d give her back to Kiki, and if they couldn’t find Kiki, they’d send Opal off to some foster house. She could end up with someone like creepy Roger. Everybody back home in Helena thought creepy Roger was just fine to take care of us kids. They didn’t have a clue what he was really like …

  Opal climbed on my back and wrapped her arms around my neck. I held on to them like a necklace. They were so tiny, I could wrap my fingers all the way around. Somebody could hurt her so easy… .

  I thought about the little burns under her hair, where nobody’d see them.

  You can’t tell, Cass Sally Blue. You can’t ever tell anybody. “Oh, you know, Mama just doesn’t ever feel good enough to do much, with all her treatments and stuff,” I said. “It makes me kind of sad sometimes … for her, I mean. It’s like there’s no way she’ll ever get to be part of anything … real important.”

  Mrs. Kaye frowned. “Real important?” she repeated, like the words could mean a lot of things.

  I thought about them for a minute, those words “real important.” No matter what it took, someday I was going to do something bigger than the regular stuff—bigger than just going to work and coming home, and trying to make enough money to keep the lights on and buy two loaves of bread at Wal-Mart. Not that I wanted to be president or anything, but one of these days I’d be the lady at the checkout line, with a couple extra bucks in my pocket to buy some kid a pair of pink shoes. “You know, like start a place to feed people, or give out books and storie
s, or even like you brought Jake here from some other country when he didn’t have a family and stuff. I think my mama would of loved to do something big like that, but she never got the chance. She was too busy raising kids on her own and keeping Rusty out of trouble.” Too bad Mama didn’t get a doctor for a husband, like Mrs. Kaye had. I’d never seen him, but he must have a ton of money for her to keep buying all this food for the café and him never telling her to quit. “And now Mama’s sick, of course.”

  Mrs. Kaye watched the boys playing basketball. “I think raising two children and doing a good job of it is pretty significant. It sounds like your mom has made a lot of sacrifices. Not all parents do that.” Her lips pushed together, and for a minute it was like my thoughts were hooked into hers.

  “Like your mom?” I said. A couple days ago, I’d heard her and MJ talking about how they used to hide under the porch to get away from Mrs. Kaye’s mom, and how she’d show up mad, messed up on pills or booze, and stand in the front yard, hollering at the top of her lungs and calling MJ the n word. “I heard you and MJ talking about her the other day.” The old witch still alive? was what MJ’d said. Mrs. Kaye told her the old witch was living in Seattle with Maryanne, whoever that was. Seattle’s not far enough, MJ said, and then she asked if Mrs. Kaye remembered when the old witch caught MJ under the oleander bush, grabbed her arm, then whipped her with a stick and told her not to come back, ever.

  Mrs. Kaye said she didn’t remember, but then, she’d blocked out a lot of things. There was a terrible, sad sound in her voice.

  I felt like, all in all, even though I wasn’t rich like Mrs. Kaye, and I didn’t own a bookstore like MJ, I’d got pretty lucky. My mama loved me more than breathing, and she told me I was something special, every chance she got. I never knew anything but to believe it.

  Mrs. Kaye looked surprised that I’d heard all that stuff about her mom. I probably shouldn’t of let on. Sometimes I forgot for a minute that I couldn’t talk to her like I could with Mama. Mrs. Kaye was just a friend. You’ve gotta be more careful with friends. They can pick up and move on whenever they want.