Calliope Chained

Chapter Three: Ofa's Unfinished Business

I, or Ofa, I guess ( it was getting harder to tell where one of us ended and the other began), rode two buses home from school. The first, an orange school bus (which smelled like vomit and angst) only took us to the edge of suburbia; a grey city bus bearing a much-improved scent of suicidal despair drove us deep into the digestion track of an unfamiliar city.

I stared out the window and watched telephone poles turn to slated grey windows. A tight smile danced across my face.

I hadn't stopped flushing since that girl asked me to her party. I drummed my fingers and hummed quietly, watching saggy men in worn suits gradually leave the bus gutted until only I remained sitting alone in the back.

Finally, we groaned to stop in front of a worn brown building. I stood, and my heart dropped.

I didn't have a costume. I owned nothing nice enough to wear with this crowd.

A shadow fell over me as I left the bus.

I felt a fat drop of rain splat against my shoulder. The gentle plunks of distant dribble started to fall.

At the end of the block glowed a neon sign: Gnat's Dry Cleaning and Quality Laundromat mat.

I bit my cheek and hurried inside just as the sky split in half and the first few fists of eager rain started tumbling down.

My mom perched behind the register; she thumbed through an out-of-date magazine I knew she'd probably stolen at her last dentist visit.

The little bell above the door dinged. She didn't look up.

"Hey," I swallowed.

She flipped a page.

"How was work?" I slipped my boots off and pulled on the flats I'd left by the door that morning.

I tried to ignore the buzzing sound of the washing machines in the next room as they ground down some wealthy men's shirts.

Gnat's delivered laundry. Men with checkbooks and credit cards had their personal assistance run the clothes here, and I rode them back on my bike over the weekend.

I felt a rock in the back of my throat.

"Mamma," I put my hand down on her desk, " Britany Bisk asked me to come to her Halloween party today."

My mom looked up, and fear wrapped around my throat like tiny claws digging into my skin.

Her eyes were the color of sunbaked marbles, so pale they were almost translucent. With her bone-white lips pinched together and wild curly hair falling out in patches, she looked, I thought, like the mummy I'd seen when my school took a trip to the Darkland Museum of Frights a year before.

Those little claws dug in now, choking any words I had away.

But it was Britany's party. Everyone was going.

I was going.

"I need money," I whispered. Hot tears threatened behind my eyes, but I blinked them away.

Mom didn't cry, ever.

"I need to buy a costume and maybe get a cab ride there."

Her lips twitched.

"No." She closed her magazine and gathered her purse from under the desk.

That was it. That was always it.

"Mamma--"

"I said no." Her pale eyes turned to kitchen knives, and I took a tiny step back. "Don't do that." She rolled her eyes. "Stop acting like a victim."