Mostly Sunny by Jamie Pope

Author:Jamie Pope
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2018-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Mama was mad at her but for the first time, Sunny didn’t care because she was mad at Mama too. Nothing was fun anymore or good or happy. They had been without electricity for so long, and the apartment felt hot like an oven and sometimes it seemed like it was getting smaller in there and it was hard for her to breathe. The blankets covering the windows blocked out the light and the air and the view of the kids across the street who played at the school. Sunny wanted to go back to the days when her mama was happy and used to take her to the beach, when they used to take off their shoes and play in the sand and run in the ocean. There was nothing to look forward to.

Sunny had begun to imagine things during those long, dark, hot hours of the day. She would imagine her and her mama living any place else but this noisy, dirty city, maybe a house in the country somewhere with a garden. In her dream, her mama wouldn’t have her crazy eyes, her skin would be golden instead of pasty, and her face would be full instead of deflated. They would laugh and be happy and free instead of scared and miserable. If dreams were wishes.... Her mama could take away many things but not her dreams. She was mad at her now, so angry that she wasn’t speaking to Sunny. It was the only punishment she could give because Sunny had nothing left to take away. She wasn’t talking to Mama either. She was mad too. She didn’t feel bad for leaving the apartment after Mama left to go to work.

Her neighbor was an older lady who lived with no one except a cat she called Perrito. She only spoke to Sunny in Spanish and would squeeze her cheeks when she saw her. The lady would always let her in when she knocked. She never asked her about her mama or why she never went to school or why she always smelled of staleness and sweat. She gave her a bath with lots of bubbles and feed her arroz con pollo or empanadas stuffed with delicious meat. They would listen to old music while the lady knitted and hummed along. It was the best part of the day. The lady liked her, and Sunny desperately needed to escape the life Mama had made for them.

But Mama had found out because Sunny got too comfortable one evening in the lady’s air-conditioned apartment and fell asleep. She was usually so careful. She would only spend a few hours with the lady and sneak off when the lady fell asleep in her chair. But this time she didn’t make it home before her mama, and Mama had been furious.

“You left! You left this place!” her mama screamed and for a second she was shocked because her mama had never raised her voice to her. “I thought they took you.

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