Page 28 of And Still Her Voice
The inside smelled like the Pan Dulce bakery back home over on Cañada, with just a hint of marijuana and incense. And then as I trailed through a narrow hallway toward the kitchen where I smelled something so mouth wateringly delicious, my stomach did cartwheels in anticipation. The empty coffee cans clinked when Mary set them down on a long stainless steel counter top.
“Not many donations today,” I said, squeezing my legs together, as if I could hold back the inevitable.
She tilted her head, looking at me curiously. “Money is an unnecessary evil. People hoard money blocking the free flow of energy and when it’s trapped, it causes so much pain and chaos.”
“Is there a bathroom I can use?” I felt blood snaking down my chafed-from-running inner thighs.
She hooked a thumb, first door on the right. I went in, cleaned up, and then stuffed my soiled underwear with toilet paper. I washed my hands, splashed my face, and returned to the kitchen smelling like chicken soup.
I smacked my lips as Mary ladled me some broth from a huge pot simmering on the stove. I slurped a few spoonsful as I searched the inside of the bowl. “Wish soup,” Mom would call it. I wished there was some meat. “Thank you,” I said, mopping up the bowl with more bread.
Others came in and out of the kitchen, some with coffee cans full of money that they counted out. The kitchen felt warm and I found myself nodding.
“You can crash with us tonight,” she said. “Until you figure things out.”
“Thank you.” It would take more than a night to figure stuff out.
I followed her out of the kitchen and up some worn, creaky stairs lined with psychedelic music posters of bands I wasn’t familiar with. There was one of a pink girl with green, Medusa-like hair for an event held at the Avalon ballroom with Big Brother and the Holding Company. And then there was another green and red poster of some sort of horned demon for a Grateful Dead and Moby Grape event.
“This is the community bathroom,” Mary said. “Help yourself to the soaps, toothpaste, towels.”
“Do you have a pad I could borrow?”
“Borrow?” She laughed.
“I mean—”
“Under the sink, there’s a box of Tampax.”
I hesitated, remembering what Mom had said about losing my virginity if I inserted it wrong. I’d ended up at the library doing my own research on the matter and learned how once a month, the ovary produces an egg that either gets fertilized or shed. I felt like that little egg, fertilized with weird ideas and discarded into the world. But I’d also learned I wouldn’t lose my virginity that way.
Mary’s bedroom was across a narrow hallway where she parted a curtain of colorful beads before entering. Up against a wall was a small bed with a bright madras bed cover and a similar cloth used as a window shade. Already dark outside, she turned on a small lamp on a table loaded with candles, soda bottles dripping with wax, more incense and a small stack ofbooks:The Doors of Perception,Strangers in a Strange Land,The Autobiography of a Yogi,Be Here Now,Siddhartha,I Ching,and theTibetan Book of the Dead. On the wall were more wild posters. Spread across the floor were piles of colorful pillows and blankets.
“Three of us share this room,” she said. “You don’t wiggle too much, do you?”
I shook my head.
“Good. I had a roommate back at the university. We didn’t share a bed, but when she rolled around, the whole dorm shook like a seven point five on the Richter scale.”
“I’m maybe only a one point five,” I said.
She laughed, turning to leave. “Where are you going?” I asked. She seemed trustworthy, but I wasn’t so sure someone hadn’t discovered Dilbert’s body yet. There could have been a search party out for me with some kind of reward for my capture. But by then I was so tired, the thought of running was the last thing on my mind.
“It’s still early. I’ve got to get things ready for the morning,” Mary said. “Just save me room on the edge. Okay, get some rest.”
After washing up, I struggled to insert the tampon and not too deep. I mean, I’d already figured out so many things like how to shave my legs, how to drive, how to use a garter belt, so how hard could this be? Pretty difficult, as it turned out, but thank goodness, the box had illustrated instructions and contained more than just one tampon for practice. I could only hope there’d be a how-to for the other challenges I was about to face.
I returned to the room and sat on the bed. I’ll just lie down for a few minutes.
The bedspread smelled of Sta-Puf fabric softener, reminding me of all the nights when Mom would come to my room and make me scooch over in my twin bed to give her room. She andDad would have been fighting again. I’d tried to sleep, but the sound of him begging for her to come back to their bed caused me insomnia—and nightmares.
Now, the pillow soft murmurs and sheets of laughter floated up from the kitchen below, mixed together with the comforting aroma, sounded like a sensory lullaby.
“Mother Mary seems like a fine young lady,” Grandma whispered, disturbing my peace.
“Yeah, she does.” Even though I was still mad at Grandma, my anger, like my migraine, had gone away for now, but I was too tired to talk. Grandma, in her pink aura, was not.
“She was right about money and the flow of energy,” she said. “You know what happens when energy is trapped.”
