CHAPTERONE
LUCI
“You knowwhat they do in there, don’t you?”
I nod.
Of course I know.
I don’t like it. But I need the work, the kind that comes with flexible hours, low stress, and minimal tendency for taxing my brain. My mental energy and remaining waking hours are reserved for my bookkeeping course. I’ve got my eye on the ball, as they say. There is no wavering. No deviation.
Bookkeeping is my ticket out. My golden egg. A launching pad to a new life. So, my job, regardless of ‘what goes on there,’ is a means to an end. I need just enough money to cover my day-to-day and tuition at the community college, which isn’t a lot for most people. But it’s a lot of money forme, someone on the cleaning crew of a… whatever the place I work for is called.
I didn’t exactly look for this particular job. No, I went to an employment agency I found out about through the college jobs board, and some nice lady there sent me to interview for a cleaning job at a private club.
I had no idea what a private club was. Never been to one. No one in my family is a ‘club type.’ Whatever that is. So, yeah, I regularly see some crazy stuff here. Stuff that doesn’t jive with who I am or where I come from, but that doesn’t matter. I’m focused on my goals.
Someday I will have a nice office job where I wear tailored pants and a blouse—made of silk, if I do really well—and sit at a desk and computer, rather than clean cum off sofas, floors, and walls like I currently do.
That’ll be the day.
Until that happens, I try not to think about it too much. Which is nearly impossible when silver-haired Sam, the kindly attendant at the cheapest parking lot within a several-block radius of the club, keeps reminding me he thinks the place I work for is dirty and messed-up.
I mean, it is. But I don’t think about it.
I lock my car and hand over my five dollars, smiling at Sam for looking out for me. “I know, I know, Sam. I just gotta get my certificate and then I’ll be out of there.”
He doesn’t look convinced, as evidenced by his wrinkled brow. He’s taken a liking to me, for some reason, ever since the first day I parked here. I guess I brought it on when I breathlessly told him how happy I was to have found his lot. Parking lots closer to the club are twenty dollars and up—way too rich for the blood of a cleaner like me who’s barely making minimum wage. Sure, I have to walk a few more blocks, and when it’s late and dark outside, I carry my pepper spray in my right hand, ready to unload it on anyone up to no good. But at least I’m taking home a bit more cash. It all adds up.
I pull my hoodie up and stuff my hands in my pockets. It’s broad daylight, so the pepper spray rests in my little crossbody bag, not due to come out until I’m heading home at the end of my shift.
“Alrighty, Luci,” Sam calls after me. “Be careful there, won’t you?”
I don’t have many people in my life looking out for my best interests, and hearing him affirm his concern for me, as he often does, knocks against my chest in a part-happy, part-sad reminder of who I am.
I mean, yeah, I have parents and friends. But they are all puzzled as to why I ‘left it all behind’ to come to the dirty, dangerous city of Chicago. I don’t need a silly bookkeeping career, they tell me. Settle down, marry a nice boy from church, and squeeze out some babies. Heck, that had worked for my mother and her mother. Why do I need anything different?
But what they really want to say, which I can see on their faces and hear in their words, is why do Ideserveanything different?
I can’t answer that. I just know I do.
I look over my shoulder, half-tempted to run back and hug Sam. Thank him for caring about a relative stranger and tell him know how rare he is, and what a gift like this means to someone new to town with few friends, a hellacious job, and who’s constantly worried about the lights being shut off, running out of gas, or not being able to find enough ramen noodles to last through the week.
But I don’t. I just wave at him with a little laugh, as if I have everything under control. But I can tell by the way he’s looking at me, he knows as well as I do, I’m faking it.
Just before I enter the club, my phone rings. I wouldn’t normally answer because I’m a freak about getting to work early. Again, I can’t mess up this ride I’m on, and a misstep in any direction could bring it all crashing down on my head. But I see on my crappy little non-smartphone that it’s my mother.
“Mom? I’m about to go into work. Can we talk tomorrow?” I ask. I look at my cheap Timex watch and see I have plenty of time before my shift. But I’m not about to mess up my perfect attendance record now, not if I can help it.
The club manager, Gwen, isn’t exactly what one might call understanding. Or nice. Or even decent.
“Oh, Lucinda, I wish you would just come home,” Mom sighs. I picture our kitchen, slathered in an amazing array of strawberry motif, where Mom is looking around for a possible speck of dirt to clean, tapping her pink fingernails on the pink wall phone.
I think of explaining to her why I’m there, in the big, bad, dangerous, dirty city—her words, not mine—but such explanation is by now, officially, something I’m getting tired of repeating.
But like a glutton for punishment, I half-heartedly try, anyway. “Now, Mom, you know I can’t do that—”
But Betty Jo Braxton isn’t going to be deterred. She never is. “Lucinda, you know that place is full of sinners. Fornicators, drug pushers, and murderers. That’s no place for a sweet girl like you.”