Excerpt: They Are Love

A Short Story by Aleschia Hyde

The windowless room is very small. There’s a bed, a nightstand and an old color television sitting atop of a black plastic crate in the corner. It’s unclear what kind of person, if any, would retire to such a suite. The only evidence of ownership is the sunflower-printed sheets peeking out from under a tattered gray blanket. This is one of six rooms in the only boarding house in the small town. Its position at the edge of the railroad tracks is a metaphor for its existence. It is a means of passage for some, and transition for others. Located at the crossroads of the town’s most opulent and most destitute, it is decorated with elaborate trimmings but the lack of maintenance surely reflects years of neglect much like the town has done to those just across the tracks. Whether bound north to Chicago or south elsewhere, the boarding house offers refuge from the world as its temporary habitants know it.

After a few minutes a young woman of about twenty walks in. She sheds her jacket dropping it to the ground and plunges her entire body onto the bed. Surprisingly the springs work, and her narrow frame pops up just a bit…and she is adrift and suspended in time for less than a millisecond. It drops back into the old mattress with a plop. Her hair is hidden by a hat, but only for a minute. She rips it off to show a short boyish hair cut that clashes, admittedly, with her round face and beady eyes. The young woman’s youth also clashes with the room around her. The room is worn and tattered, whereas she is vibrant and well-kept. Not even the shabby sweater and distressed jeans she adorns can hide the young woman’s poise; although, she has steadily been trying to find her “edge.”

Its Tuesday, her least favorite day of the week. But today it is particularly a terrible Tuesday. The job that she started on Saturday, her first real job with an I-9 and a boss who was not her uncle, informed the kitchen staff, including its newest and youngest hire, that after 48 years, the Sausage Emporium was closing. Which meant that the room she’s been renting for all of three days and that reaps of potatoes and sausages, will soon be too expensive for an unemployed adult child. She was unsure what she had done to deserve such misfortune.

Her phone buzzes. It, like its owner, is in stark contrast to the room in which it rests. The latest Apple iPhone is her most prized possession, despite the fact that the screen is already chipped. The young woman fumbles through her pockets looking for her phone. She anticipates that the call is from one of the many other restaurants that she applied to, maybe even the one in Chicago that she had decided would be a sign to leave her small town if she got it. But that is not the case. She reads the message: Call home. Ur dad is worried about you. And we need someone to watch Taj tonight…

One thing was for sure, when she left her parents’ house in the middle of the night, with nothing more than  a few prized possessions, she expected to never see her family again. She left behind nothing more than a few sentences scribbled on a piece of notebook paper, explaining that she was tired of arguing and needed to find her way. But Mr. and Mrs. Nehemiah ignored the earnest of the letter and did not even flinch when they noticed their middle daughter missing from her room. By noon that day, Mrs. Nehemiah called the neighbor two doors down and asked had she seen Genie. Oh course 82-year-old Jax, perched on the edge of her bed, peered out of her window just in time to see Genie climb out the first floor window and tip toe across her mother’s petunia garden to a waiting blue Toyota Camry, that Jax suspected belonged to the boy three doors down.

Mrs. Nehemiah took this information and asked her eldest child, Raymond, to go find his sister. Within moments, he had found her. Raymond was a newly minted police officer and loved doing “police work” which was asking the boy down the street where he had taken his sister. When he arrived at the old boarding house, in his full police uniform, he asked in his deepest most authoritative voice, “is there a Ms. Genie Nehemiah here?” And within moments the boarding house owner, a frail woman with beach blond hair that hung only to her neck, produced Genie.

Genie and Raymond had been close, many years ago, but it had been strained. Neither of them could identify the precise moment when the duo, Ray N’ Genie, no longer felt appropriate. When the inseparables felt like polar opposites. But the spoken divide was real. Genie started railing about her parents and the way she was being treated. She was not leaving her new home and “they” as in “he” couldn’t make her leave. She was an adult. After her rant ended, and in anticipation of a fight, Genie blurted, “don’t you care to say something? Anything?” He looked at her, peering into her small light brown eyes, and said “I don’t care to, if I’m being honest.” He turned around and walked the long driveway back to his cruiser. And in a brazen act, she slammed the door, after her brother, her once-hero had turned his back on her without a second thought. Genie was crushed. There was no fight. No questions. No nothing. She retired to her closet upstairs in tears.

The worst thing about her mother’s text was the blatant disregard for the severity of the situation. Her daughter had runaway and the only thing she cared about was whether Genie could watch Taj–her insufferable little brother who had an uncanny ability to manipulate those around him with his infectious charm. Taj’s warm hazel eyes paired with his caramel skin, which were sometimes hidden behind his long dark brown dreads, mesmerized men, women, and children alike. He was a character. Charismatic for sure. He was nothing like Raymond and Genie. They were boring, placeholders. He was a star. The main character. The eldest Nehemiah children were puppets or worse minor character’s in their own stories. While Taj easily tricked people into compliance and subservience, but not Genie. His tricks did not work on her . . . anymore.

She would normally not consider going back to her parent’s house. She had made a conscious effort to establish her independence and define her boundaries. But in reality, her mother would pay her for her time and it would be a perfect opportunity to talk about coming home. Indeed, she did not have many options. Her cell phone was under her father’s name, she could not say no unless she wanted to risk losing her most prized possession—her parents could be petty and thus not above shutting off her phone. She texted back, sure. Be there in 30 minutes. She removed the five shirts and two jeans from the nightstand and stuffed them into her yellow book bag, picked her coat off the floor, and slammed the door for what she thought to be her last time. The last remnant of her independence—all three days and 14 hours.