An Exclusive
Excerpt from Ambrosia by David-Matthew Barnes
I heard my mother before I saw her. It was as if she sensed me coming up
the stairs. My foot was in mid-step and my hand was reaching for the old
cracked banister when her voice rang out like a warning bell. "Christina?!
My God, I thought you were dead."
I reached the top of the third flight of stairs. Mary Desdemona Duncan
stood in the middle of the dimly lit hallway. The door to my apartment was open
and from it floated out the scent of pine cleanser.
The hallway was long, narrow, and somewhat eerie. Bare light bulbs hung
from above, every few feet. They cracked and hissed as if staying alive were a
chore. The carpet was the color of rotten apricots. It was worn away in
patches, revealing old slats of wood.
There were six apartments per floor. On the third floor, mine was the
first one on the left.
My mother stood in front of me with a look of frightened concern on her
round face. She was obsessed with the soap opera The Young and the Restless, particularly with the actress Melody
Thomas Scott, who played matriarch Nikki Newman. She even wrote letters to the
poor woman and sent her Christmas and birthday gifts. She’d done so for three
decades. I suspected my mother thought she was a character on the show herself.
Everything that she did and said was done so with a sense of melodrama and was
often related to a current plot line on the show.
"Where have you been?" she interrogated in a half whisper with
a hand placed over her heart.
My mother should have been born a drag queen. Her hair was thick,
shoulder length, and dyed jet black. She wore a purple glittery scarf in it
that matched her new nail polish and lipstick. As usual, my mother was layered
in gold jewelry: big hoop earrings, necklace, bracelet, and an anklet beneath
her dark nylons. She was dressed for work in a white tuxedo shirt and black
skirt. For the last eight years, my mother had worked on a casino showboat in
Joliet as a blackjack dealer. The money was great and the gamblers loved her,
especially the old men who showered her with tips, trinkets, and torrid
proposals.
"Christina," she breathed, tears filling her eyes on cue,
"why didn't you tell me?"
I looked past my mother, into my apartment. From the crystal clear gleam
of the window in the living room and the shine in the hardwood floors, I
suspected my mother had been there for hours cleaning. She reached for my
hands. A single tear slid down her cheek. "I had no idea he left you,
baby. If I would have known…”
I was surprised how affected I was by my mother's concern. I felt my own
eyes swell with tears. "I lost my purse," I choked.
"Oh, honey." My mother, who was a few inches shorter than me
and twice as round, took me into her arms. One of her hoop earrings smashed
against my cheek. She hugged me tightly, rubbing her right palm across the
middle of my back.
"He left me with nothing, Ma."
"I know, baby."
"He left me for another woman."
"God in heaven. We have to be strong, Christina."
I continued to play out the scene with her, relishing my heartbroken
state. "I'm all alone." The tears spilled from my eyes and fell onto
her shoulder.
She pulled away from me and placed a hand on my cheek. "Don't
worry," she comforted me. "I'm here now. Let me fix it."
I nodded, feeling as if I were six years old again and recovering from a
bad scrape on the playground. But no Band-Aid was big enough to heal the wounds
Shawn left behind. "I don't even have a cell phone."
"I know. Why do you think I'm here? I've been calling you for three
days. Finally, I called Miss Malukey and she said you were out of your mind
with grief because of what that rotten boy did to you.” My mother shifted her
position, as if she were turning toward an imaginary camera filming a scene between
us. “Christina, are you selling shoes at McGrady's? Honey, your father and I
would have—”
"Mom, I'm thirty now. I have to learn to take care of myself."
"Yes, dear, and I'm almost sixty and I'm still not opposed to using
your father's credit card for life's emergencies."
"I have to take a shower. I have to get to work."
"Have you eaten?"
"Not since yesterday at lunch."
"I brought bagels. Get in the shower. I can stay all day. I came
here right after work."
"You're working graveyard now?"
"I did it so I could have tomorrow off."
"Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow is Christmas, honey."
"Oh my God. I forgot."
My mother led me inside the apartment, ushering me with her hand between
my shoulder blades. I noticed there was a new plant, some type of fern in a
wicker basket, in the corner of the living room near the kitchen area.
I looked around the apartment, saddened by the sparseness of it all. The
only piece of furniture was the sofa. To my right, the kitchen sat quiet,
looking unused and unlived in. To my left, the bathroom and the empty bedroom.
I stared directly in front of me, out the window to an "L" train
passing by, filled with early morning commuters. The Chicago skyline loomed in
the distance, buried in snow.
"I ordered some furniture, Ma. It’ll be here at noon today."
"What about groceries? What about paying your bills?"
"Darla lent me some money. The rest of it was in my purse."
"Where's your purse?"
"In the back of a cab somewhere in Chicago."
"I'm calling your father. He'll bring me a change of clothes and some
cash. Honey, you can't live like this."
"I don't have a choice." I unbuttoned my coat and slipped off
the Santa hat.
"Yes, you do. You can come home.”
"Ma, I'm not going back to Joliet. Besides, I have a job."
"Christina, I can get you a job at the casino. They're always
looking for cocktail waitresses."
"No one would buy a drink from me."
"Why wouldn't they?"
I moved across the apartment, my right hip grazing against the edge of
the ugly sofa. "Because I'm not Kim Kardashian."
I went into the bathroom and shut
the door.
