steps and leaves it for us. But not tonight. Because tonight, when we don’t come, she says, “How many times have I told you before that I ain’t your dang waitress and this ain’t no dang restaurant? You better get your ass up here and get your dinner in five seconds or else. Five,” she barks out, keeping count.
I look at Gus, but he’s scared stiff. I got to be the one to do it ’cause Gus is frozen in fear. He can’t move.
“Four,” she says, and before I know it, the lady’s counting down faster than I can get my spoon back in the toilet, get the lid quietly on and push my sleepy legs up off the floor and run.
I’m not dumb. I know how many seconds it is till she reaches one, and it’s not many. I remember how to count and do math, ’cause my minute math worksheets are one of them things that I do in my head when I’m bored to death. I know that the lady will be at one in no time flat.
“Three,” she’s saying. I ain’t ever gonna get there in time. My hands and legs are shaking. My heartbeat is thumping loud. I catch a glimpse of Gus out of the corner of my eye as I go running by. He’s sitting on the floor with his legs pulled into him, scared as heck, wanting to cry.
The lady reaches one right around the same time my feet hit the bottom step. She’s up there at the top of them steps, looking down at me. I got to squint my eyes to see her because my eyes ain’t used to the light. She’s standing up there holding her nasty meal in the dog dish.
I hear her ugly laugh when she gets to one. She’s delighted in having me run scared.
“You ain’t hungry?” she asks, standing smugly at the top of them steps, like a know-it-all. She don’t wait for an answer. Before I can get a word out, she asks, “You think I got all day to sit around here and wait for you to come get your food?”
“No, ma’am,” I say, my lips quivering.
“No, ma’am, what?” she asks sharply.
“No, ma’am, I don’t think you got all day to sit around and wait for me to come get my food,” I say, the words rattling in my throat.
“You ain’t hungry?” she asks, and I got to think a minute about what the right answer is. I am hungry. I’m just not hungry for her food. But if I tell her that, she’ll be angry ’cause she went to the trouble of making me food.
“I am hungry, ma’am.”
That lady tells me, “It would be good for you to show some gratitude from time to time. I ain’t gotta feed you, you know? I could just leave you here to starve to death.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” I say. My eyes stare hard at the floor so I don’t have to see her ugly face.
She asks me, “What were you doing down here that it took you so long to come?” I don’t like the way she’s looking at me, like she knows something she shouldn’t. My stomach churns, thinking maybe she knows I’ve been up to no good. I feel myself stiffen there at the bottom of the steps. But my spoon is tucked away inside the toilet where she won’t ever find it. My spoon is safe and because of that so am I, for the time.
I lie and say, “I was sleeping.”
“What’s that you say?” she snaps, suddenly madder than she was before. Up there at the top of the steps, her face turns beet red.
I realize my mistake too late.
“I was sleeping, ma’am,” I tell her. I ain’t ever supposed to say anything without saying ma’am at the end. I’m supposed to show some respect for all that she does for me, otherwise I get punished.
The lady’s quiet for a long while. She’s just looking at me, staring. I don’t like the quiet because when she’s quiet, she scares me most of all.
“Looks like someone ain’t gonna eat tonight, after all,” she says, and then she mutters under her breath, “Ungrateful bitch.”
She turns away from me and takes her slop with her. At the top of them steps, she slams the door closed and turns the lock. I step backward and drop down from the wooden step to the concrete floor, thinking that if that’s the worst she’s got for me—taking away