Another Man's Treasure (Joey Bada$$ Story)

Part Due

//: Jamie to the side. The picture is just so you have an idea of what she looks like, but not exact.

Quiet.

All I could hear was silence the next morning; that and the fireplace. I’d put newspapers in it an hour ago, just before Latara and I finally fell asleep. Of course among the newspapers was the latest copy, the one with the article about Edwin leaving me. I woke up this morning and it wasn’t a dream. I didn’t mind. It didn’t hurt as much as it did yesterday.

I walked into our bathroom to maybe take a shower, brush my teeth and wash up for work. The snap-crackle-pop of the fire became even harder to hear now. Less motivation to be alive.

As soon as I turned on the faucet to wash my face, there was Latara’s crying again. I could tell the difference between her crying when something was wrong and her crying when she was just being fussy. This time it was the latter, so I took my time in downing and Advil before going to check on her.

“Hey, Tara,” I whispered, clenching my toes into the softness of her carpet as I picked her up from the crib. “Hi, baby. Good morning.”

She smiled a little bit, even though she’d just been bawling. Babies.

I opened her curtains to let in sunlight and take her out of the room and into the bathroom. If I couldn’t bathe myself, I’d bathe her.

After Latara’s shower was done and I combed her hair, poured baby powder down her back and changed her into a pink onesie for the day, all she needed was breakfast (fruit salad mixed with cheerios and yogurt on the side) until Sam comes again to give her a bottle and nap.

So I kept her occupied with TV and dancing until Sam rang the doorbell. Then I freshened up in the bathroom as well as I could manage, and left the house.

                                                        * * *

There were no uniforms at the restaurant where I worked. We used to have to wear these black t-shirts that read Meskerem on the front, but now the boss didn’t make much of a big deal about it. If you wore it, you wore it, and if you didn’t, you didn’t. As long as you didn’t make any customers unhappy and you came in on time, he didn’t care.

I was sure Darren, the boss, wouldn’t even look at me twice when I walked in at nine o’ clock this morning wearing an oversized gray sweater and black jeans, both bought by Edwin. Apparently, I thought wrong.

“Jamie! Good to see you this morning, babe. Listen, love the outfit—I’m really digging the “I’m unhappy so I don’t care how I look’ image you have going—but we now have new policy. People want more of an Ethiopian flavor when they come here, and what more flavor can we give than to have our workers in traditional Ethiopian attire?”

I just stared at Darren, blankly I can imagine, and blinked. “What?”

“Your outfit is in the bathroom. It’s your size; it should fit well. Go ahead and try it on. We have customers.” He smiled at the group of friends now walking in and shooed me off to the bathroom. Sure enough, in our newly renovated restroom with Amharic writings all over the walls just to make the customers feel cultured, there was a white-and-blue habesha kemi. I owned one like it—it was somewhere in the back of my closet, stored away with a few other Ethiopian belongings of mine that I’d forgotten about over the years—but it wasn’t nearly as over-the-top as this one. When I put it on, I had to stretch a bit to make it fit properly without making me look like I was lacking air. I could imagine how insane I must’ve looked to anybody watching me from the window: a short girl in a kemi kicking her legs up into the air and wrestling at the walls, twisting around and around only to stop and examine herself in the mirror.