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.
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