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The newspaper headline at the stand we pass the next morning doesn’t help to ease my nerves. A family was tortured to death in their home last night for their television and laptop. Charlie walks next to me, grumpy and sulky. This is no joyride for him, either. I wish I could talk to him and ask his advice. I’ll give anything for a shoulder to lean on, for someone to share a small part of my burden. Determined not to sleep in the car, we walk farther today in my quest of finding a job. At the grocery store, I manage to beg a few expired loafs of bread, and this keeps us going for two days.
When Charlie swims, I rinse his clothes and let them dry in the sun. At night, we sleep hidden between the tall grass in the dunes. It’s more comfortable, but colder and wet. Charlie develops a cold, but I refuse to give up hope. More than once I’m tempted to withdraw money from the bank––I still have the monthly allowance Gabriel paid me––but the minute I do, Gabriel will know where we are. I may as well sign our death warrants.
After a week, there’s no more pretending that this is a holiday. Charlie doesn’t believe me, any longer.
“I want to go ba–back,” he begs.
I pat his leg. “Soon.” What else can I say?
Another week of going hungry and washing under cold beach showers, and I finally hit the jackpot. We’re outside a dry-cleaning store when a Chinese man drags a woman out by her collar, screaming in Mandarin. I don’t understand a word, but from the shirt with the burned hole he holds up as he shouts, it’s not difficult to gather what the rift is about. He goes back inside and returns with a handbag that he throws at the poor woman. She cries and begs in English, saying she’s sorry, but the man is a statue with his finger pointing north. When she realizes her begging has no effect, the woman leaves with hunched shoulders, clutching her bag to her chest.
I jump at the opportunity. An hour later, I’m hired. The only reason the man, Ru, is taking me on is because he can pay me cash under the table. This is his way of avoiding social charges, and it suits me. There’s no money trail that leads to me. The pay is low, but he lets Charlie stay with me while I work, and for half of the money he pays me per month, he gives us a room with a toilet and basin in the back. It has a door exiting onto the street so we can come and go freely when the shop is closed.
The room is dirty, but with Charlie’s help we clean it with the products from the shop, scrubbing away fungus in the basin and grime in the toilet, the origins of which I don’t want to consider. The mattress is stained with coffee and semen, but I cut plastic trash bags open and tape them around the bed.
The following day, we go back to get my clothes from the car, but the long walk isn’t worth the effort. Someone broke into the car and stole our belongings, down to our soap and toothbrushes. When I tell Ru about our misfortune, he allows us to take clothes from the box filled with unclaimed dry-cleaning.
The money I earn is barely enough to feed two people. Our new lifestyle isn’t so much different from our old one in Berea, except back then I still had my dream of making a better future for us. My dream may be dead, but my hope’s still alive. We’ll get through this. I work long hours, sweating over the ironing board while Charlie plays solitaire at the plastic table in the corner we use for lunch breaks. The rhythm is harsh, and my pregnancy doesn’t help. I’ve never been more tired in my life.
I soon discover another reason why Ru’s happy not to have me employed on a formal contract. He can treat me however he likes. He makes me work twelve hours per day instead of the legal eight, but I don’t dare complain. It’s hard to put one foot in front of the other after ironing from six in the morning to seven at night with an hour lunch break. Most evenings, I fall asleep the minute I hit the mattress next to Charlie.
After a few more weeks, three months to be exact, my jeans are stretching over my stomach, and I can’t fasten the button any longer. There’s nothing else in the box of unclaimed clothes to fit me, so I keep the two ends of the waistband together with an elastic band I wind through the buttonhole and around the button. Some woman are lucky and don’t show much for the first four or five months of their first pregnancies, but I’m not one of them. I have a definite bump. If my boss noticed, he doesn’t say anything.
