Chapter Three • Mum's the Word

AS I GET OFF the bus and start walking towards Park View Motel, I feel weighed down, and this time I can't bring myself to fight the pull. All I can think about is, Why the hell did I do that?

I'm still engulfed by regret as I enter the the lobby, but I encounter a welcome distraction in the form of Mr O'Connor, who springs up from behind the counter. The jazz music streaming from his small speaker adds a bright vibe to the otherwise dull and cramped area.

"Savannah!" He smiles and throws his arms open as though to offer a hug. "How was your day?"

Mr O'Connor is a fifty-something African American man who lives in the topmost floor of the complex with his family. He always engages the residents in small talk, and we all love him. His youngest daughter and I are the same age, so I think that makes him especially fond of me.

"It was great!" I manage a convincing bright tone, returning his cheery grin. "How was yours?"

He waves an airy hand. "Same as usual. Dull. Boring."

This makes me smile wider, more genuinely. "I seriously doubt that. You never have dull days."

"I hope what you say becomes true." He chuckles. "I'll cross my fingers for that."

"I'll cross my fingers too," I say, to which he chuckles affectionately.

"Oh, before I forget." Mr O'Connor holds up a palm and grabs something from behind the counter. It's a Tupperware filled with food. "My missus made some peach cobbler for lunch. Your mother was in a hurry, so I wasn't able to give this to her."

My chest hardens as I take the Tupperware from him. The desire to count my remaining money goes flying out of my head. "Is she. . . home?"

"Yes. She got here around two."

Oh, no. Now I don't want to go up. "Right. Thanks, Mr O'Connor."

He smiles warmly, his eyes twinkling. "Anytime."

I manage to keep my smile up as I give him a quick see-you-later wave, but my face starts to go stiff as I face the wooden stairs.

The last thing this horrible day needs is Mom and some of . . . well, all of her. Like, the presence of her. Her very essence. She should be at work. Not here, not now. Especially since I can't make an excuse to avoid an awkward interaction.

We live on the third floor, so the absence of an elevator isn't very drastic, but I can feel myself getting drained already. The complex used to be a motel, after all, and it's pretty small. For some reason, however, I'm out of breath as I open the door to our unit.

Mom is nowhere to be seen, but I can hear drawers being opened aggressively. There's also the sound of plastic being crumpled and handled around. And it's coming from the bedroom.

God. What is she up to now?

I push open the door, but something prevents it from opening all the way. Through the tiny crack I see the dull shine of a fully-stuffed garbage bag. I shove harder, only to be met with the sight of more bags as well as an assortment of garments scattered across the floor. In the corner of the room is Mom, crouching in front of the old wooden wardrobe, a pile of clothes in her arms. All her drawers are open, and it seems that the contents have exploded inside the small bedroom. A hurricane of colors, patterns, and textures.

She doesn't look up or flinch as I loudly shoulder my way inside. Even as I toss the blockade of garbage bags across the room, she remained passive, throwing small garments over her shoulder, humming to herself.

I sigh. "What are you doing?"

Slowly, Mom detaches herself from her trance and turns to me. A flicker of surprise passes in her features as though she can't believe I'm here. "Oh. Oh. Um, I. . . What were you saying?"

"I said, what are you doing?"

"Oh," she says again, looking at the mountain of clothes resting on her lap. "I thought I should sort my old clothes out. Sell them to a secondhand store." To my first trace of anger she adds, "Don't worry, I didn't touch your stuff."

"Good," I reply simply, walking out of the room and closing the door behind me.

Immediately after I get far enough from the bedroom I sit on the floor, put the Tupperware on the center table, and dump the contents of my bag on the creaky sofa. My wallet falls out with a dull thump, and I eagerly snap it open. Almost aggressively, I shake out its contents onto the carpet.

I see a lot of loose change. Not a good sign.

My heart has been continuously shrinking to the size of a raisin since I got out of the cafe. I've been itching to check just how much money I got left, but I can't do it in front of Belle and Claire. I had to show how little I care about how much I spend. I will die rather than look poor.

Because that's exactly what I am. Poor as a rat.

Just thinking about those words tortures me. I can't accept that I'm at the lower part of the food chain. And the worst part is, it wasn't always like this. Everything was supposed to go great. I was going to start my last year of high school, and it was going to be a perfect year like always. Then it just changed.

And it's because of that terrible, terrible night. It's because of Dad. And Mom too. And neither of them ever gave me a heads-up.

Dad's in prison for fraud and embezzlement. He used to work as an accountant for big firm called Linden and Associates, on the way to a being a full-time partner, but then some of his clients complained and ganged up on him. They accused him of stealing money. And since the company didn't want to create an uproar that would alert the media, they just let Dad go.

But I know Dad. He's a man of integrity, and he wouldn't take something that isn't his. Everything that he had he worked for. Half a million dollars is a huge amount of money, but a hard-working man like him would't take an easy way out. He would never. He believed in honest work. He increased the profits of that stupid company by bringing in more clients, and that was how they repaid him. No arguments, no meetings. Just let the clients file a case, then boom. Embezzlement of the felony variety.

We sold our house in to pay for the missing money. All of our savings got wiped out. Even my college fund. The cars had to go too.

Everything just happened so fast. The trials, the prosecution . . . all in one blink of an eye.

And maybe that's why Mom's scattered and detached. Because everything happened so fast and she never confided in me.

Look, I love Mom. She helped me pick up the pieces when we found ourselves homeless. It was her who got us this unit at almost half the price. Even though she's been a housewife throughout her married life, she managed to get a job at the diner across the street. She works double shifts to pay everything, even save up to file for a better lawyer to get an appeal for Dad's case. But the thing is, we never got along. She riles me up, and I get under her skin.We never really bonded or did anything together.

I've always been closer to Dad, and when it was just Mom and I alone, things just went . . . quiet. Charged with some kind of estrangement. I want us to enjoy each other's company, but every time we attempt to do something together, we just somehow end up yelling at each other. We both know that we don't have much established between us, and we're trying go solve the problem by staying mum.

Which is why I always make it a point to go to bed before she gets home.

After a few tense moments of counting and recounting, checking with a calculator, and praying to all the deities I can name, I finally come to the overall sum. From seven hundred ten bucks, I'm now down to five hundred and two.

Wait, there's a dime over there. Can't miss that.

Okay. The grand total is five hundred two dollars and ten cents.

Now I'm really screwed.

I gather all my money on the floor and put them back inside my wallet, feeling almost nauseous. Why didn't I just make it rain like a rapper in a music video while I was at it? I'm so stupid.

I crash back onto the sofa, trailing my eyes on everything but my wallet, but pretty much everything I see is depressing.

The unit only has dividers separating the corners outside the bedroom. From here I can see the dirty but unused kitchen equipment and an old plasma TV. Every inch of the walls are covered in faded flowery wallpaper, and the carpeted floor is filled with stains from unknown origins. My closet is nothing but a pile of mixed things stuffed in the rotting cabinets. My makeup is laid out on a rickety table, and under that aforementioned table are my shoes.

Funny how quickly we went from a four-bedroom home in Calabasas to a room in a rundown motel in Alameda Street. Now that's parkour.

And I take public transport now. Can you believe that? Let me tell you, the buses here in Los Angeles are not pretty.

Sometimes I wish some unknown relative would come and get us out of the situation. But my family tree is more of a small shrub. My grandparents are dead. Dad has a sister in Chicago, but she didn't want anything to do with the whole thing. The best she could do was send a card and five hundred dollars. Mom's an only child. No one really helped, both financially and emotionally.

So yeah. We're pretty much solo. We don't have anyone to rely on except for ourselves and the hope that the court would prove Dad innocent.

I still remember the day I found out what the company did. I remember some colleague of Dad's marching into our house. I remember Mom and Dad screaming at each other. I remember hiding in my room, not really knowing that my life was about to change for the worse.

Sometimes I still think that I'm in a bad dream, and that when I wake up, all of these horrible things will be gone. But it's been months and all they managed to do was pile up.

There are secrets you share, and there are ones you have to take to the grave. My secrets qualify for the second category. I would never, ever tell anyone. It's going to ruin me. I refuse to be known as the embezzler's daughter, especially when it's not true.

The only tangible thing I'm holding on to is school. It's the only thing that was untouched by my nuclear explosion of a life. No one knows about the whole disaster, and I plan to keep it that way. At least until I graduate.

After that. . . well, who knows what can happen?

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