The air hung heavy and humid, the weight refused to lift even after the rain. I mopped with rhythmic, clinical precision — four tiles with square designs, four with circles, then back to squares.  I tracked the leak from the roof, neutralizing puddles before they claim the floor. The chairs were already inverted on the tables. Gloria had stacked them before charging into the storm to fetch my mother from Mr Danko’s store.

A bead of sweat broke from my hairline, tracked down, and swayed toward the valley of my chest before disappearing into the cotton of my top. I was wearing a pink and white striped find from the second-hand store down the street — the same place where the local girls bought corsets that kept the tailors busy with repairs. Make it tighter. Fix the zipper. I had spent hours in front of the mirror studying the result. At eighteen, I was sturdy and full, a fact the men at the diner never let me forget.

‎I flicked open the three buttons and adjusted my straps, the task of mopping dissolved into a sudden desire to move. I began to sway my hips, and the thwack-thwack of the wet mop against tile became my percussion. I spun into a frenzy, nearly crashing into the stacked chairs.

‎The rusted sliding door creaked, and a sharp clearing of a throat cut through my performance. I froze. My chest heaved; a stray strand of my loc was plastered to my bottom lip. Gloria was leaning against the doorframe, her eyes travelling from my unbuttoned top to the mop still gripped in my hand.
“You, my friend, are surely in the wrong business,” she said, letting out a cackle — the same laugh she had given me when she caught me reading Little Women instead of studying my biology notes. I was aiming for Billard College, a dream modelled after the life Gloria had lived before she landed on our doorstep. “Your mother ought to put you with the girls, up on those swanky poles when those fuckasses come to spend their stanky notes. Now run along and help your mother bring those crates of veggies inside,” she said, still chuckling.

The building served two lives: a diner till dusk, and a strip club till dawn. My mother ran the food, Gloria ran the floor.

‎I couldn’t recall exactly when Gloria had moved into our white cottage — the only white-painted house on the street, tucked near the local parish. I had expected her to be like the men who cycled through our lives, gone in six months. But Gloria had rooted herself in our home. Her knitting materials were everywhere — on the kitchen counter, the center table, the green sofa. We had four sofas in the sitting room — red, green, blue, and orange — all bought by her. Her laptop, plastered in panda stickers, never left its spot on the green sofa. She never quite finished laundry either, constantly adding wet clothes to the line and picking the dry ones off only when she needed them. Then there were the nights she would sit on the porch of the cottage, smoking tobacco with my mother and grandmother. She had studied medicine in the big city. Now, she stood at the door, her eyes shimmering with a signature mix of bewilderment and a crazy sharp glint.

I rushed out, nearly slipping on the wet floor. My mother stood beside Gloria’s motorcycle, and two crates of vegetables sat on the wet tar. She scanned me with the usual impatience, her voice demanding to know if the mopping was done. It wasn’t. She needed to start preparing the hot soup and bread for the locals who would soon trickle in for dinner. I avoided her piercing gaze, hoisted one of the crates, and followed her.

She hurried into the building, her posture hunched under a blue raincoat. Inside, Gloria had resumed mopping, dancing, and humming to a lyric-less instrumental. My mother laughed — a sound she reserved almost exclusively for Gloria.

She only seemed to soften when Gloria performed one of her antics, or made a crude remark at the men who hovered around me at the diner, or when Gloria gave her back massages after a long shift. I remember peeking into my mother’s bedroom once, watching Gloria’s hand leave my mother’s back to trace her thighs before her head disappeared, joining where her fingers just were. I had turned and ran then, their laughter chasing me through the walls of the cottage. I fled to my grandmother’s room, where I watched an old 80s sitcom and listened to her praise my intelligence. My grandmother told me I would become a doctor, “like Gloria, your mama’s friend.”
‎
‎My mother’s soup and bread drew the neighborhood in: a father celebrating his child’s perfect exam score, a son enlisting in the army, and the neighborhood regulars. Even the girls who worked the poles at night arrived early for a meal. My mother fed them all, packing leftovers into the fridge for the girls to take home. I had already changed into my serving pinafore — an extra-large garment my mother insisted on. “I don’t want any of those tits outside,” she would say.

I spent the evening in a blur, making rounds with heavy trays of steaming food and stacks of empty plates. I eventually slipped away and joined the girls in the backroom where they changed and smoked. My mother despised me being there, but Gloria always managed to talk her down. “Let the girl breathe.” One of the girls, a Sudanese beauty with dark, glowing skin, asked about my entrance examination. My grandmother had boasted to everyone at the parish and the diner about her studious granddaughter heading to Billard to study medicine. I shrugged, masking my weeks of gnawing anxiety with a nonchalant face. “Results will come in tomorrow,” I said.

‎I handed her back the copy of  Little Women she had lent me. We talked about Jo March’s stubbornness and how she refused to be just another pretty, well-behaved girl in the parlor. Then the conversation shifted to her new tattoo, the face of a Mongolian bride she had found on the internet, etched in red ink right on her navel. I had always thought tattoos needed a hidden profound meaning, but she just shrugged. “I just wanted something beautiful on me, “she said, smacking her lips. She casually cupped her breast with her palm and looked at the ink. I watched and imagined what my first tattoo would be.

‎As the night approached, the families left and a harder, hungrier type of men trooped in. Gloria’s bouncers — men with chests so large they threatened to burst their security vests — began rearranging the tables. I wondered whether those muscles were carved in a gym or swollen by hormones. Before leaving, my mother handed the key to Gloria while also dragging me along. “This isn’t a place for girls like you, Tayo,” she said. We walked to our white cottage in a heavy silence. The cooling effect of the rain was finally setting in, and the sky looked like a new storm was gathering.

I woke up the next morning to my grandmother’s screams. She had hijacked Gloria’s laptop and used my registration details to check the Billard College portal. Wrapped in my blanket, I stood at the sitting room door and watched them on the green sofa: my grandmother was beaming and Gloria was cackling, clapping her hands in delight. Gloria saw me first and winked. Then my grandmother, forgetting her arthritis, sprang up and huddled me into a deep hug. The rich scent of lavender in her hair wafted over me. “You did me proud, Tayo,” she whispered. “You did me proud.”

A weak smile touched my lips as the tension of the past weeks drained away. When my grandmother finally released me, Gloria stood and pulled me into a hug of her own. She smelled of leather and wood. She grabbed my hand and dragged me into my bedroom — a dingy pantry that had been converted for me when Gloria moved in. Gloria made the windowless space beautiful. She sat on my bed and spoke at length about my academic prowess, saying she had never doubted me for a second.

‎“And you sure know how to sing,” she added. “I checked Billard’s brochure: they have a singing club, a dancing club, and even a book club. The diversity is astonishing, it’s better than the school I attended. That piss-shit school was too rigid. The world is your canvas, Tayo, and you have just the right fucking brush to paint it.” I felt a sudden urge to pull her into another hug and beg her to look after my mother when I’m gone. I had seen the Renvela bottles hidden in her cabinet.

Gloria began telling me stories of her own pre-med days, and soon I was laughing.
‎“Don’t worry about your mother,” Gloria said softly as if she had read my mind. “I will take care of her really well.” The memory of that night — Gloria’s head between my mother’s thighs — flashed through my mind.

‎She told me my mother had already rushed to Emerald boutique, the expensive store across from the second-hand store, to buy my college wardrobe. She had my measurements and didn’t bother to disturb my sleep.

‎After Gloria left my room, I bathed hurriedly and slipped out into the Sunday morning. The street was still damp, and red clay clung to the sole of my shoes as I ran to the parish. I needed to carry the news while it still burned in my throat. I found the girl from Sudan in the last pew. I whispered the news of my admission and she squeezed my hand. We giggled as I gave her a theatrical, exaggerated performance of my grandmother and Gloria’s reactions. “Softly, Tayo. We are in the house of the Lord,” she whispered though her eyes danced. “Tell me something, how did Gloria and your mother even cross paths? A woman like that… she’s too polished for this dust, isn’t she? A city doctor running floor for men who can’t spell ‘medicine.’”

‎It hit me then. I knew the history of every man who had ever been in the white cottage — the ones who helped with crates and the ones who met my mother at the parish. But Gloria was a ghost of a different sort. I made a mental note: I had to ask my mother how a woman who studied medicine, loved instrumentals, lived loudly and boldly, ended up in our cottage

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash