Wings of Glass (6 page)

CALLIE MAE
met Fatimah and me at Mountain Man Deli for what she called a working lunch. I hadn’t been out to eat in eight years, and that was only if you counted the fast-food lunches your father would occasionally treat me to in our early days. Callie Mae insisted the meal was on her, and it’s not like Trent would even know, since it was during the workday. But still I couldn’t shake the feeling I was doing something wrong by being there.

The place was noisy with chatter, clanging silverware, and plates slapped down by rushed servers. It smelled of baking bread, dill, and raw onion, which didn’t help my morning sickness in the least. It was odd to feel both ravenously hungry and sick to my stomach all at the same time, but I refused to complain. For you, Manny, I would have lived my whole life leaning over the toilet. You were worth every saltine and ginger ale I had to choke down.

I was so anxious to share the good news about you with
my new friends, but afraid at the same time it might cost me the job Trent and I so desperately needed. Callie Mae seemed to be in a good mood, but your father had taught me well that a smile could change on a dime, so I decided to wait and feel her out.

Callie Mae wore her thin, blonde hair pulled up in a clip, making her seem ten years younger than I would have guessed at the food bank. Her fine features made her look as delicate as a china doll, but I would soon discover the woman was anything but fragile.

The waiter set down our sandwiches and asked if we needed anything else. Callie Mae wanted a refill on her iced tea and Fatimah asked for extra napkins. I eyed the brown mustard on the booth behind us, but as usual, said nothing.

Callie Mae must have seen me looking because she scooted out, grabbed the bottle, and set it in front of me, then retook her seat. It was such a simple act, but it made me feel like such a loser that she found it easy to take what she wanted when I couldn’t. I was so busy feeling sorry for myself I didn’t hear Fatimah speaking to me.

“Peeny, where are you?” she asked.

Jolted out of my thoughts, I was surprised to find both women staring at me expectantly. “What?” I asked, confused.

A group of businessmen passed by us, and when I looked up at them, the oldest winked at me in a way that made me uncomfortable. Without responding, I turned back to my lunch dates.

“I’ll get this one,” Callie Mae said. “You get the next.”

I thought she meant the check. When she grabbed my hand in one of hers, and Fatimah’s in the other, I was relieved to find she was talking about the one thing I could actually afford—grace.

“Lord, thank you for bringing these beautiful ladies into my life. Bless this food to our bodies and this fellowship to our souls.”

Her prayer made me want to cry. As far as I knew, no one had ever thanked God for me before. After we added our amens to hers, Callie Mae picked the top bun off her turkey sandwich and scraped off the hot peppers with a butter knife. She let them plop to a slimy mess on her plate beside her potato chips.

My stomach roiled. “Why did you ask for them if you’re just going to take them off?”

She gave me a librarian stare. “You sound like my late husband. For your information, I like a hint of peppers in my mayonnaise. Is that all right with you?”

“I . . . no . . . it’s okay. I was just curious.”
Great,
I thought,
I’ve offended her already.
Eating at me was the same feeling as when I’d earned Trent’s disapproval.

The way Callie Mae squinted at me made me feel exposed. I turned away, but still managed to see her and Fatimah share a private look. Trying to deflect the weakness they had just discovered in me, I threw out a joke. “Didn’t your mama ever tell you there are starving children in Af—” My eyes must have become the size of plates when I realized what I was about to say. I jerked my head toward Fatimah, who sat
beside me. Unaware, she ate potato chips as she watched a baby throw his sippy cup onto the floor.

Callie Mae touched my arm, making me jump. “Penny, it’s okay. Calm down. You’re with friends.” The way she looked at me with that sweet expression touched me to my soul, and I knew she was right. I was with friends. I was safe. Still, my face was hot with embarrassment. “That was a stupid thing to say.”

With a raised hand, she summoned our waiter back to the table. “Excuse me, young man, do you think you could find me an envelope?”

He gave her a tired look, but left and returned a few minutes later with one of the long, check-holding kind. “Will this do?”

“You don’t happen to have one that’s insulated with dry ice, do you?”

He slowly shook his head with a weary expression. “Sorry, all out. Anything else?”

“That’s it. Thank you very much,” Callie Mae said.

He set the envelope down on the edge of the table. When he left, she picked the peppers off her plate and dropped them, mayonnaise and all, into that envelope. The liquid bled right through, making an oil stain on the front. She peeled back the flap, gave it a lick, and sealed it up. “Fatimah, what’s the address for Africa?”

Fatimah turned around, looked at the envelope, then at Callie Mae. “For the last time, woman, we do not want your scraps.” A crumb of potato chip clung to the corner of her
mouth, moving up and down as she spoke until she brushed it away.

I sat, stunned, looking back and forth between the two of them.

Fatimah took a sip from her drink, then looked at me. “She tells me mothers here tell their children to finish everything on their plate because there are starving children in Africa. There are hungry children here too, true?”

Callie Mae sighed. “You couldn’t tell my father that. When I was growing up, he was forever chiding me at dinnertime about those starving children in Africa.” She rolled her eyes. “As if that would encourage me to gluttony. One day, I couldn’t finish the five pounds of meatloaf my mother heaped onto my plate, so I put my leftovers in an envelope and asked him for Africa’s address.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He gave me a tail whooping I’ll never forget and sent me to bed.”

I pictured a little blonde Callie Mae with pigtails, alone on her bed crying her eyes out. “That’s terrible. He thought you were being a smart aleck.”

“I was.”

Fatimah clicked her tongue. “You were a terrible child. He was a wise man to give you the rod. Being hungry is not joke.”

Callie Mae’s smile faded. “No, it’s not. But how is a chubby American girl being forced to overeat affecting anyone in Africa or anywhere else for that matter? Every time I
opened my mouth to ask a question or speak my mind, my folks shoved food down my throat to shut me up.”

It was clear then that Callie Mae was more than just the church lady with the smart clothes and well-to-do late husband. She had her scars just like the rest of us. I wondered what others she bore and if we’d be friends long enough for me to find them all out. I hoped so.

In one fluid motion, Fatimah ripped open the short end of the envelope and dumped the hot peppers onto her roast-beef sandwich. “On behalf of the great people of Africa, we thank you for your contribution. Feel better?”

I choked on my salami sandwich.

“Are you all right?” Callie Mae asked.

I took a sip of root beer and nodded.

“You know,” Callie Mae said, looking at Fatimah, “I liked you better when you didn’t have a bun in the oven. You used to be a lot more fun.”

Fatimah clicked her tongue again and waved her hand like she was trying to shoo away a fly.

“You’re pregnant?” I asked, surprised.

Fatimah gave her flat belly a rub. “Two months tomorrow.”

“How could you not know?” Callie Mae asked, scooping up bits of shredded lettuce and tomato off her plate and putting them back onto her sandwich. “Jiminy Crickets, that’s all the woman talks about.”

I turned to Fatimah. “You didn’t say anything to me.”

Fatimah shrugged like the conversation bored her and
swallowed what was in her mouth. “I have baby, yes. We had other things to talk about, true?”

“That’s why I wanted this meeting.” Callie Mae picked up the napkin from her lap and wiped her hands across it. “I was going to split you two back up after Penny’s training, but I think until Fatimah has her baby, I might keep you as a team. I’d rather not have her working with certain chemicals like bleach or ammonia if we can help it. And since Penny is now with us, we can.”

As soon as she said it, I could almost smell the ammonia burning my nose. I hadn’t even considered that cleaning houses could be dangerous for you, Manny. It scared me to think of all the damage I could do to you just by being ignorant. “Do they hurt the baby?”

Fatimah blurted with her mouth full of bread, “Pftt! She worries too much. She thinks sneezing hurts the baby.”

Callie Mae raised an eyebrow. “Keep it up and I’m going to hurt
you
.”

The sight of that mush in her mouth hit me right in the gut, and what little I had eaten started to push back up my throat. “I have to get up. Now.” The look on my face must have told Fatimah I meant business, because she jumped out of that booth so fast she almost fell onto the floor.

I ran to the bathroom, making it just in time.

After relieving my stomach of what little I’d eaten, I rinsed out my mouth and looked at myself in the mirror. My skin, which had been clear even in puberty, was now breaking out in small pimples around the bridge of my nose. I wasn’t sure
if it was the fluorescent light or if my skin really was taking on a greenish hue, but at least I felt better now, even if I did look awful.

When I was younger, I remember stuffing a pillow under my shirt and examining my profile to see how I might look pregnant, as if the only thing about my appearance that would change would be the shape of my stomach. Boy, was I unprepared for reality.

I made my way back to the booth to explain, but the smiles both women wore told me they already knew.

“You are with child too, Peeny?” Fatimah asked with a silly grin.

“What?” Unsuccessfully trying to play coy, I was unable to force down my own smile.

“She is!” Callie Mae exclaimed, slamming her drink down on the table, adding emphasis to her exclamation. “Well, I’ll be. Fatimah said she thought you might be, but I didn’t believe her.”

Fatimah slid out and let me back into my seat. “You see? I am never wrong.”

“Except when you are,” Callie Mae said.

“How did you know?” My stomach was flat, and it’s not like I was going around wearing a T-shirt with the word
baby
and a down arrow.

Fatimah held the round end of the spoon to her face and bared her teeth, I assumed checking for poppy seeds. After running her tongue across her mouth, she set the spoon back
on her plate. “You have a girl inside you. She is stealing your beauty.”

The smile left my face when my brain caught up with her mouth.

Callie Mae gave Fatimah’s hand a motherly slap. “Now don’t you say that, Fati. She’s beautiful.” She squeezed my hand. “You’re beautiful, Penny. Don’t you listen to her.”

I wanted to crawl under the table. “No, it’s okay. I know I’ve looked better.” I just didn’t know how Fatimah could know that, having just met me. For all she knew, I never had any beauty to steal.

“I told Callie you have a fat pimple face,” Fatimah added, unaffected by Callie Mae’s reprimand or my frown. She took a gulp of sweet tea and spoke between crunches of ice. “I have a boy. See, my skin is still very good.” She touched her cheek as if to prove her point.

Once I got my mind off my hideousness, I began to wonder if what she said about a girl stealing her mother’s beauty had any basis in truth, or if it was just an old Sudanese wives’ tale. It seemed I might have heard the same thing once from one of my mother’s friends. I certainly didn’t like the idea of my daughter stealing my beauty, but the thought of a baby girl was kind of nice.

While Fatimah and Callie Mae chatted, Manny, I had a dozen pink dresses, ruffled rubber pants, and patent leather shoes picked out for you in my mind. I was picturing a cherub-faced little girl with ringlets and pink bows, and regardless of your sex, I fell more and more in love with you.

In her delicate, Southern way, Callie Mae put her manicured fingertips in front of her face to hide her full mouth. “So, Penny, do you know when you’re due?”

I broke off a piece of french fry I wasn’t sure if I was brave enough to eat. “I think sometime in January.”

“My Sara was a New Year’s baby. Who’s your OB?” she asked.

Not having the slightest clue what she was talking about, I shrugged, feeling as stupid as I probably looked.

Ironically, it was Fatimah who translated. “She asks to know who is your doctor.”

My face must have turned scarlet as I looked down at my plate.

“Ha-ha, she has same doctor as me!” Fatimah shouted, then bellowed that deep laugh of hers, bringing way too much attention to our table.

Callie Mae’s lips disappeared into a thin line. “Don’t encourage stupidity. She needs a doctor.”

Fatimah snapped off a bite of pickle. “I be your doctor, Penny. I deliver a hundred babies in my village. Maybe more.”