Free Falling

Chapter 4

Chapter Four

An empty pan falls to the floor the moment I walk through the back door of the restaurant, and I swear Mom timed it. The metal pan spins on the tile floor, and the vibration echoes in my head as though it’s miked.

“You’re late!” she yells. Or probably just says, but at six in the morning, my alcohol soaked brain can’t tell the difference. Understandable, since I spent the previous night at Iris’s place drowning my sorrows in margaritas.

“Sorry,” I mutter before reaching for the mug of coffee Anthony is waving under my nose. After taking a gulp of liquid attitude adjustment I say, “I love you.”

Anthony places his hands over his heart. “I’m touched.”

“I was talking to the coffee.” I smile and nudge him when he walks by. Anthony is my brother. Not by blood and not in any legal sense of the word, but when he aged out of foster care and had nowhere else to go, my parents took him in. I was nineteen at the time, a college sophomore consumed with my own problems. For a while, Anthony was just one more example of Agnes and Ray Spalding trying to save the world one person at a time. But over winter breaks and summers spent working together in the kitchen, Anthony and I forged a bond. One that’s become even tighter since I’ve been back home.

Anthony swats at me, and I duck out of the way, slamming my hip against the long wooden counter in the middle of the restaurant’s small kitchen.

“Damn,” I mumble, rubbing the sore spot on my side.

“Freedom Isabelle Spalding.” The way Mom says my full name, slowly emphasizing each syllable, her Jamaican accent pronouncing the “dom” in Freedom as “dum,” is her way of reminding me that even at twenty-four, I’m not too old to be scolded.

“I swear you could hear an ant scratch its head,” I say, shaking my head at the woman’s superhuman hearing.

Without missing a beat my mom says, “Ants can’t reach their heads, and you know how I feel about that kind of language.”

I watch her as she moves quickly to the stove to shift the pot of green bananas that are about to boil over. It’s sweltering in the kitchen, yet Agnes Spalding looks more like the host of her own cooking show than the owner of Pointe Hill’s only Jamaican restaurant. And even with the streak of gray running through the front of her short, curly hair, she looks more like my older sister than my fifty-three-year-old mother. But there are dark circles under her eyes that weren’t there before, and I can see the stress of the past year has taken a toll on her.

“No time to fool around this morning. We’re already behind schedule.” She juts her chin at the mound of mottled yellow-and-black plantains waiting to be peeled.

I prop my sunglasses up on my head.

“Daaamn,” Anthony drawls, shaking his head at the sight of what I can only guess are my swollen, bloodshot eyes.

I raise the hand that isn’t holding the coffee mug and offer Anthony a one-finger salute just as Mom looks in our direction.

She frowns and curls her index finger, making a come here motion. Anthony grabs a basket of silverware and heads through the swinging doors toward the front of the restaurant. Weighed down by the gallon of margaritas still sloshing around my system, I don’t move quickly enough to avoid the steely glare of Agnes Spalding’s brown eyes. I’m about to apologize for my language and my lateness when she places a plate of food on the counter and motions for me to sit.

Even hungover, the smell of salted codfish and boiled dumplings causes my stomach to growl. I slide onto the stool and Mom reaches over to smooth my hair, but I duck out of her reach and pull her hand into mine. Her skin is dusted white with flour, and I brush the flour away, gently massaging her hand. Her fingers are as slim as the rest of her and her skin looks smooth, even under the harsh fluorescent kitchen light, but her palms are rough and calloused from years spent in the kitchen. I squeeze her hand and remember what Dad used to say about cooking for people you care about: “The food says I love you, even when you can’t.”

“I take it things didn’t go well yesterday.” She hands me a fork and takes the seat across from me. We open at seven, and I feel guilty taking the time to eat, knowing that Mom and Anthony have probably been here since five. But this morning my hunger outweighs my guilt.

“What makes you say that?” I ask, around a mouthful of food.

“Yesterday, you stormed out of here so determined, if you’d gotten him to give you an extension on the old lease, you would have called me right after you left his office.”

I pause with the fork midway between the plate and my mouth. Showing up late this morning isn’t the only thing I have to feel guilty about. I clear my throat, preparing to explain why I signed a lease committing us to rent we can’t afford, when a high-pitch whining interrupts my train of thought. I glance at the ancient freezer, which has been a staple in this kitchen for as long as I can remember. My mom kisses her teeth, and the sharp sound of the air flowing through her teeth lasts longer than the sound coming from the freezer.

“Mom, don’t start. It’s still got a lot of life in it yet.”

She kisses her teeth again. “We need to think about how and when we’re going to shut down, Freedom. I’ve talked to the Makaos and they’re willing to buy some of our equipment. Anthony’s checked into a couple of places, too. He’s been such a godsend, stepping up the way he has. Did you notice he’s wearing the hearing aid today? I think he’s getting more comfortable with it.”

“Mom—”

“He’s so self-conscious about it,” she continues, her concern for Anthony momentarily trumping thoughts about the restaurant.

“How can you talk about us shutting down like it’s no big deal?” The stool scrapes against the tile floor as I push back from the counter. I abandon my half-eaten plate of food and grab my hairnet and apron from the hook on the back of the office door. “Can’t you see what’s going on?”

Mom doesn’t answer. Instead, she takes a stack of paper napkins and begins folding them into neat rectangles.

I gesture to the street in front of the restaurant. “CHI wants to replace everything that makes the Old Sixth Ward authentic, with a bunch of restaurants and shops that half the people around here can’t even afford to patronize. You do know what they’ll probably put here if we leave, don’t you?” I ask, not waiting for an answer. “An Island Shack. That awful chain of upscale,” I use air quotes around the word upscale, “Caribbean restaurants from those guys who lost that reality cooking show competition. CHI thinks it can replace Cecelia’s with a couple of guys who think that saying, ‘hey mon’ in a passable Jamaican accent qualifies them to run a Caribbean restaurant. Well, that’s bullshit.”

Mom’s continued silence, even at my use of an expletive, stops me. “Mom?”

She sighs and stops folding the napkins. “I know you think I’m wrong, Free, but it will be better this way. You can move on with your life, and I can move on with mine.”

I start shoving utensils into a container to take to the front. “I don’t get why you’re not more upset about this. Why you’re so willing to throw away twenty years of what you and Daddy built together. I glance up my dad’s picture on the wall, then at the picture of my paternal grandmother, the restaurant’s namesake. “If Daddy were here—”

“But your father is not here.” Mom takes a step toward me, absently rubbing her empty ring finger with the thumb of her right hand. “That last stroke,” she begins, then swallows hard before continuing. “He’s been gone for almost a year now, Free. We have to accept that.”

The harshness in her voice and the way she says “gone,” like Daddy chose to leave us, strikes me like an open hand. Mom sees my reaction and moves toward me, but I back away.

“I didn’t mean it like that, Free. I still miss Raymond every day, but I don’t know how we can keep going like this. I don’t know if we should.”

I take a deep breath and, as always, the aromas of the kitchen play on my emotions. The pepperiness of the jerk seasoning and the bite of the yellow curry ignite my anger, while the sweet smell of sugar buns and plantains salve my foul mood. My voice is measured when I finally speak. “I know it’s been difficult without him, Mom. And I know he kind of left us with a mess, but if we just keep working—”

“Then what? We make it through the first month and maybe the next.” Her voice is strained as she looks around the kitchen then back at me. “Then what?”

“And then we make it through the next, and then the next, and then . . .” But the truth is I don’t know what happens after that. I’m struggling to come up with an answer when the swinging doors that lead from the front of the restaurant to the kitchen open. Mom and I retreat, she to the oven to check on the batch of sugar buns she’s baking, me to the pile of plantains.

“I know it’s a little early, but Mr. and Mrs. Dawson are already waiting outside. Can I open up now?” Anthony asks.

“Sure, dear. We don’t want to keep anyone waiting.”

Anthony pauses, but says nothing before heading back to the front. He’s used to hearing us argue, but it always makes him uncomfortable.

When he’s gone, my mother says, “Well, it doesn’t matter now. The window to renew the lease is closed, so whether you agree with me or not, we move forward. There’s nothing more to say.”

Tiny beads of sweat have formed across her top lip, and a light sheen covers her face. Her words may have sounded confident, but the expression on her face is anything but. And it’s not just the heat of the kitchen; Mom is tired. That realization presses the pause button on my anger. I can’t tell her right now. Not about signing the lease and definitely not about Christopher. What I want to tell her is that I love her, and I’m sorry we’re not closer.

I turn my attention to the stove instead, watching the oil pop in the frying pan. The plantains are dark and crispy around the edges, but the centers of the oval-shaped discs are uncooked. I let the oil get too hot. Dad didn’t make mistakes like that. His fried plantains were perfect every time. I turn down the flame.

“You’re burning them,” Mom says, over her shoulder, reminding me that I’m not the only one who knows I’ll never be able to fill my father’s shoes.