Maid - Stephanie Land Page 0,16
choice. It’s not illegal or anything like discrimination—”
“It’s totally discrimination,” the girl next to me shouted.
I knew her from Waterfront Pizza. We’d smiled at each other. I thought I remembered her name was Amy, but I wasn’t sure.
“My boyfriend and I found a great little house,” she said, “but my friend ended up getting the place. The landlord said he didn’t want to rent to Section Eight people because they’d end up trashing it.” She rubbed the base of her pregnant belly. “He said he didn’t want to be a slumlord.”
Everyone’s heads turned to Mark, who just stuffed his hands into his pockets.
Somehow, it took only a week for me to find a place. Not only that, it was available right away and passed the safety inspection. We could move out of transitional housing immediately. The apartment was in a building that faced the fairgrounds, just a few blocks from North Beach. Gertie, my landlady, shrugged when I told her how rent payments would be made. She’d get my portion on the first, I explained, but the other part wouldn’t come until the tenth.
“Yeah, I guess that’s fine,” she said, then smiled at Mia, who tucked her head into my shoulder. “Does she need a crib or anything?”
I wanted to say no. My instinct was always to turn things down when people tried to help us. Someone else would need it more. But then I thought of the hole in the side of Mia’s Pack ’n Play.
“Yeah,” I said. “She does.”
“Oh, good,” Gertie said. “The last tenants left some things, and I didn’t know what to do with them.” She walked around to the back of her truck and took out a white crib like the ones they had at Mia’s day care. Inside the crib was a little red shirt. I reached down to pick it up and handed it to Gertie.
“You can have that if you want it, too,” she said. “It’s a costume or something.”
I shook it out with my free hand and saw the hood had a couple of eyes sewn on, and there was a stuffed tail coming off the back. “Is it a lobster?” I said, smiling a little.
Gertie laughed. “I guess that’s what it’s supposed to be.”
Mia didn’t have a Halloween costume. It was September, and I hadn’t given it any thought yet. My mind had been totally preoccupied with finding us a different home.
Gertie helped me get the crib inside, then left us to it, keys in hand. We had the ground-floor apartment, with a porch that led out to a little strip of grass. Beyond that was a large field. The dining room off the kitchen had wrap-around windows. My brother had built me a computer, and I set it up on the built-in desk off the kitchen counter, then dropped a CD into the disk drive. Mia danced a little, then ran around the table, to the living room, face-planted on the couch, then ran down the hallway before running back to do it all over again.
My books filled up shelves in the living room. I hung a few pictures and artwork my mom had given me—the paintings of snow-covered fields by Alaskan artists that I’d grown up with. I’d just hung up my last painting, a birch tree, when I saw that Jamie was calling. I’d left him a message earlier.
“What do you want?” he said when I answered.
“I, uh, I have a chance to work on Saturday and wondered if you could take Mia for a little longer?”
“How long?” He had her for a few hours on Saturdays and Sundays, except the last weekend of the month.
“It’s far out of town,” I said. “The job will take forever, so as much as you can do.”
Jamie didn’t say anything for several seconds. I heard him take in a sharp breath. He must have been smoking a cigarette. I’d asked him to take Mia for longer periods of time a lot lately, in an attempt to get as much work done as I could before the season ended.
“No,” he finally said.
“Why? Jamie, this is so I can work.”
“I don’t want to help you out,” he blurted. “You’re taking all my money; you don’t send her over with diapers. I have to feed her dinner. So no.” I kept talking, trying to change his mind.
“NO!” he yelled again. “I’M NOT HELPING YOU WITH SHIT!” And he hung up.
My heart started racing in the irregular, pounding way that it did after these