Haunted Organic (2014 Watty Award Winner)

Nine: BK

Chapter Nine - BK

Manhattan Kadoura was going to be late for school. Again.

She hobbled around her room, putting one leg into raggedy jean shorts and then another, and throwing on a TV shirt she was pretty sure she had worn the day before, and working her feet into flip flops.

She looked into her mirror, applied a swoop of silver eye shadow across her lids, a rip of sparkly gloss over her lips, and fluffed and pinned the long mane of faux hawk that rode down the back of her like a horse's tail. She saw that her hair was still damp, but there was nothing she could do about it. She barely had enough time to get Marty out of bed, ride him to his kindergarten on her handle bars before she had to get herself over to her own school, a block away.

She grabbed an old American military kit bag that she used for her books and tore out of the room.

"Marty, are you dressed, kid? We gotta move."

Manhattan had been up early catching the first good waves of the day. That's where she was every morning when the sun came up. Sitting on the beach in her wet suit and bikini, feeding scraps of jerky to Bacon, and waiting for the waves off Tamarama to get good and big. Then, she would leave Bacon to his breakfast in the sand, and run out into the water, belly down on the board, and catch the first big ones of the day.

Manhattan spent every morning this way when weather allowed. She came in dripping of salt and sea, flinging her board onto the back porch, Bacon trotting along behind her, always at her feet. She bent down and kissed her old blind grandmother on the cheek.

"Bashir and Mariam were here," the old lady told her in Arabic.

"Yes, Teta," she said softly, putting a hand on hers. "I saw them."

"They came for Marty," she said conspiratorially.

"I said they should have him home by dinner."

Manhattan squeezed Teta's withered hands and said in her ear," I hope you had a great visit."

"Oh yes, Bashir said he would take good care of the boy..."

Bashir and Mariam were her parents, back in Lebanon. She hadn't seen them nor spoken to them in years. They sent her and Marty to live with Teta when she was a toddler and Marty was a baby. All she knew of Lebanon was Teta's stories of the war and the food she made for them when she was still able to cook, her little stuffed cabbage rolls and her Baba Ghanouj. But she hadn't cooked for them in nearly two years. Her mind was fuzzy and she said crazy things. She sat in her arm chair most days and had long conversations in Arabic with the coat rack.

Manhattan was used to being the mother of the family. She fed them, she loved them, she told no one that Teta was so far gone in her brain for fear that they might take Marty away from her.

She knew grown-ups wouldn't understand, so she made friends at the beach and at the skate park, away from her neighborhood. Her friends were mostly boys because they liked riding skateboards and doing street tricks. They didn't ask too many questions about her life or her family. They didn't want to have sleepovers, or hang out at her house. It was all sports all the time with these dudes and she was just fine with that.

She would protect her little family and her secret, at any cost.

"Marty!" she yelled for her brother. "Let's go!"

"Bacon," she told the dog, setting out some new water and food in his bowl, "Take care of Teta, okay boy?'

"Marty, what's the problem?"

There was no movement or noise coming from his room.

Manhattan rolled her eyes and dropped her pack.