Specter by Nixon Joan Lowery

Author:Nixon, Joan Lowery [Nixon, Joan Lowery]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780307823403
Publisher: Random House Digital
Published: 2013-09-24T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

8

Morning, and my mind is filled with jumbled questions. What is this room with its blue trumpet flowers dripping from faded wallpaper? Why am I here? Where are the sounds of the hospital carts? It takes me a moment to orient myself, to remember.

Julie’s bed is empty, and the small electric clock on the chest of drawers informs me that I’ve slept through most of the morning. I stretch, enjoying the luxury of awakening when I like, of opening my eyes to trumpet flowers instead of to pale green hospital walls, of smelling hot chocolate from a kitchen and not from a tray.

But guilt crawls in. I had promised to help Mrs. Cardenas. I can’t stay in bed another minute. I hurry to get dressed in my jeans and a pink T-shirt that hangs loosely on me. I follow the sound of voices and find Mrs. Cardenas in the kitchen with Julie. Julie is swathed in a gigantic apron over her shorts and shirt, and she is happily drying cups.

“I’m helping Mrs. Cardenas,” she tells me. She looks so smug that I have to smile.

“And I’m not,” I say. “I didn’t mean to sleep so late.”

“You need your rest. And now you need some breakfast.” Mrs. Cardenas bustles to the gas stove and turns on a circle of blue flame. “We have scrambled eggs, pan dulce, and Julie and I made hot chocolate.”

I look at the round, sugared loaves of pan dulce that are piled on a yellow platter. “I’ll get fat.”

“You need a little fat. A little fat never hurt anyone.”

The guilt clings. “I should have eaten with the rest of you and washed the dishes.”

Julie puts the cups she has dried into the cabinet as though she knew where everything went. “Each morning I’ll do the breakfast dishes, while you sleep, and you can do the dishes after dinner.”

“There are other jobs to take care of,” I answer. “What else would you like me to do, Mrs. Cardenas? Dust? Vacuum?”

“Not today,” she says. “Today you eat something, then go sit on the porch in the shade. If you feel like it, take a walk down the block to the lake.”

So I eat slowly, and it’s peaceful in the breakfast room. There is a honeysuckle vine on the fence next to the window, and a small blur of hummingbird swoops and darts into the blossoms. Mrs. Cardenas answers the phone in her bedroom, and Julie is somewhere in the house. The breakfast room, with its scratched wooden chairs and plastic tablecloth and puddles of sun, belongs to me.

I have no sooner finished, surprised that I’ve eaten my scrambled eggs, when Julie returns, sweeping my plate to the sink and rinsing it. “I made your bed,” Julie says. “And I hung up your clothes in the closet. And I put your other stuff in the top two drawers of the chest, because you’re taller than I am.”

Why should I feel irritated? She’s trying to help. “Thank you,” I manage to say.

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