hung at the entrance of a makeshift library she’d made us in her bedroom. The walls were made of sky-blue bed sheets. Sky-blue—so it wasn’t too girly—so I’d want to be in there with her.
She set up a beanbag and little table in one corner, and we’d sit in that beanbag together, me under her arm while she read to me. She’d let me pick any book I wanted off the cardboard box shelf she’d created, and she’d point her finger along every line, saying each word carefully. And when I got confused, I’d interrupt her to ask questions, and she never got frustrated. She’d stop and answer them as best as she could for someone only five years older than me. Eventually, she’d start teaching me to read, to recognize letters, and how those letters joined to make words.
When I had to repeat third grade because I was so far behind in my reading skills, she blamed herself.
She never read to me again after that.
Eight years later, I was diagnosed with dyslexia.
It’s weird—how volatile memories are. I hadn’t thought about Lulee’s Library in so long; it was almost painful to recall it. I pick up my phone, ready to text her. I have:
Hey, remember
before I delete it. It seems a waste to share something so significant to me via a message, so I make a promise to talk to her about it in person.
The couple has left their table now and are on the way out. After Miss Sandra clears their table, she returns to me with the chocolate cake. I haven’t even taken a bite from my breakfast. Instead of leaving it with me, she sits down opposite me, her back to the corner, legs outstretched on the seat. “You like to watch people, don’t you, baby?”
I shake my head.
I don’t like to watch people.
I like to listen.
Like last night with Mia. After I said what I said, and she did the same, we sat in silence, our hands linked, for a good half-hour. In my head, I replayed her words almost verbatim, because I listened.
I listened, and I learned.
“Are they together?” I ask, nodding toward where the couple was.
“Why’s that?” she asks, stretching the muscles in her neck. It’s the first time she’s sat with me, and I’m not mad about it.
I shrug. “Curious.”
“You lookin’ for a scandal, hon?” She’s smirking, and I ignore my meal, lean back on the worn leather, my arm resting on the back of the seat. She adds, “Prior to your little show last night, there hasn’t been a scandal around these parts for, what… sixteen years?”
I nod as if I know what she means, and me—scandal? Unlikely.
“Well, thirteen years if you count the year your darkness returned.”
My darkness? Eyes narrowed in confusion, I watch her, and I wait.
“Am I gossiping?” Miss Sandra asks, but it’s not a question. Not really. And she is. Though I won’t call her out on it. Shaking her head, she gets out of the booth. “Well, I should stop. You know what they say about gossip?”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Who gossips to you, will gossip of you.” She disappears again, leaving me with an untouched meal, an unfinished book, and about a million questions floating through my mind.
When I leave an hour later, Miss Sandra’s outside on one of the tables having a smoke break. “See you tonight, baby,” she calls out.
I’m in no rush, so I sit beside her, keep her company. “You work too much,” I tell her. “You’re here all the time, literally.”
She pushes into my side. “I need the work,” she says. “Got three babies at home, and my husband’s life insurance barely covered his medical expenses.”
There’s a lot of information to process in that one sentence. Miss Sandra is a mother, was a wife—now a widow—and whatever caused her husband’s death was either a terminal illness or something that needed, at the least, stays in hospitals, or at the most, operations, failed ones, maybe even multiple. “I’m sorry,” I tell her.
She’s quiet a beat as she takes a drag, exhales it to the side so it doesn’t get to me. “God has a plan for all of us,” she says.
I clamp my lips together because she’s the last person who needs to hear my opinion on that.
“What about you?” she asks. “You got any brothers or sisters?”
“Five brothers, one sister.”
She chokes on an inhale of smoke and thumps her chest, her eyes watering. “That’s a lot of mouths to feed,” she cracks.