men and slammed the door. “How dare you bring men to the house when my hair’s not done!” She slapped me across the face, her eyes still fuzzy and unfocused. “What do they want with a young girl? They’re perverts, aren’t they? Perverts.” She slapped me again.
No, Momma, I wanted to say, but they care if I live or die, which is more than I can say for you. “It’s my teacher and his brother. I’m catching up on my work.”
She ran two shaky hands through her greasy hair before bursting into tears. “Fine. Go. Go!”
Mr. Sands and Mr. Reynolds patted my arm all day and bought me a root beer float.
I was soon hooked on photography. I think it was because when I was with them, I started to feel clean. Not completely clean, that couldn’t happen—I had a momma who appeared to hate me, a reputation growing uglier second by second, and cataclysmic memories I couldn’t shut down—but around their gentleness and humor I felt better.
That afternoon I took a photo of my face from an arm’s length away with the river in the background. The area Momma had smacked was red, my eyes swollen and lonely from the tears I’d shed hoping she would love me one day. I stared at that photo for days. I still have it. I started to get interested in shooting not rivers and waterfalls and flowers, but people in pain. People like me.
Which led me to a major in journalism in college and a minor in photography, which led me to newspapers and documentaries, which led me to war zones.
Which led me to so many thousands of images of utter, abject, hideous suffering in my head that eventually my mind, on top of what was already there, split open and electrocuted itself.
And that’s when that other thing happened last year.
I shook my head, my braids swaying off my shoulders as I cleared out the memories.
And now I was back, headed toward a bakery I’d hated working in.
“I can’t believe I’m here,” Janie whimpered.
Bommarito’s Bakery is a two-story brick building between the pharmacy and a bookstore on the main street of Trillium River. Momma had “revived” it two years ago after she closed it a year after Janie left for college. “The people of Trillium River begged for my desserts, desserts made my way. The River way,” she had told me, arching her brows.
The bells jangled as I opened the door and we stepped inside.
“Now, this isn’t gonna be fun,” I groaned.
“Not good, not good, not good,” Janie moaned.
There were five red booths and seven tables. They needed a scrub down. The floor was black and white checked and scratched and dirty. It needed a mopping.
The red canopy outside was dusty and sagging, the lettering on the windows washed out, the window treatments boring beige. There were two long display cases for the cookies, cakes, sweets, and breads.
They needed to be replaced.
This was in direct contrast to how the bakery shined when we worked here. Momma had handed us toothbrushes, sponges, brushes, and mops and made us work ’til that place was so clean you could lick the floor.
“I knew it.” I had known it. Cecilia hadn’t wanted to tell me.
“The bakery is dead. It’s like there’s ghosts wandering around,” Janie whispered as we stood in a ray of sunlight, dust bunnies dancing around our heads.
“Ghosts?” I sputtered. “You’re not into ghosts.”
“Yes, I am. I am researching them for my next book. I think they’re fascinating.”
“They think you’re fascinating, too. In fact, they have elected you to be president of their Ghosts in Oregon Society. There’s a national convention in June. ‘Ghosts Beware’ is the headliner followed by ‘Multicultural Ghost Awareness Night’ and ‘Sensuous Ghosts: How Not to Disappear.’”
“Stop it. I can hear the ghosts.”
I froze to hear the ghosts. “Boo!” I shouted.
She jumped.
I laughed. “There’s a ghost in the booth. Gasp. He’s naked! He’s gorgeous!”
“Then maybe you can sleep with him, Isabelle. For one night, not two. That might constitute a relationship.”
“It’ll be ghostly sex. I’ll burn another bra and thong. My white ones.” I slung an arm around her shoulder. “Come on. I’ll cook, you sell.”
“We’re both cooking. You sell. I don’t want to talk to all those people, and you know I don’t do raisins. When I touch them I feel like they have to be counted.”
“I know you don’t do raisins.”
“They’re too small.”
“Yes, I know, Janie. Their smallness unnerves you.”
“They’re not tasty.”
“Right. Raisins are not tasty.”
“They’re tight and wrinkled and shriveled. Yuck.”
“I know. Tight, wrinkled, and shriveled is a no.”
“Right. And they crunch sometimes. They’re rough in my mouth.” She smacked her lips.
“You sound positively sexual, do you know that? Do you have a hidden thing for raisins?”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Yep. So is being unnerved by a raisin.”
Her face set. “I’m not embarrassed to tell you that I also don’t handle hazelnuts anymore.”
“No hazelnuts?”
“Too thin. Poor taste.” She scrunched up her nose.
I rolled my eyes. “Got it. I will be the raisin and hazelnut woman in this bakery.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not. You can still work with icing, right?”
She threw up her hands in frustration. “Icing is smooth.”
“Smooth?”
“Yes. Plus its initial color is white.”
“White and smooth.” I didn’t even try to put that together. “Come on, icing woman, let’s get to work.”
At six thirty we opened our doors. Based on the shabbiness here, I did not expect a rush of people, as had happened when we were high schoolers. Back then people came by before work for coffee and treats. They came by during the day for streusel or orange bran muffins or brownies with white chocolate chips.
The card-playing ladies came in on Tuesday night and the quilters came on Thursday. We had a Sunday church crowd and the Saturday afternoon train of people who needed treats for that night’s potlucks.
I was surprised to see no customers, though. Zero. Nada.
Janie turned on her east Indian music and hung up the photo of her therapist.
We propped open the old cookbooks, most from our dad, a man who loved cooking when the demons weren’t prodding him with pitchforks, and kept baking.
I ignored the loss I felt. I ignored the memories that swirled around and about those early dawn hours, wretchedly painful and hilariously funny, soul crushing and radiant. I did not want to dive into those memories.
So, we baked.
At ten o’clock, an older woman shuffled in. She left her shopping cart, piled with filled black garbage bags, outside the door. She wore a blue flowered hat, three sweatshirts, saggy jeans, and one black shoe and one brown shoe.
“Good morning,” I said.