33. Lila
Lila
I walk into the house after spending the morning with Ember and stop when I spot at least twenty boxes in the foyer. Then, Cinder appears from the dining room and picks one up.
She sees me, and I brace myself for another “friendly” exchange. “You want something to do?” she asks.
It comes out more like a challenge.
“Are you moving in?” I ask.
She laughs. “Hell no. I don’t share.”
I glare at her. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I’m the head of my house. I’m not sharing that power with someone else.”
“Me?”
She rolls her eyes and walks into the dining room. “You don’t have power. I’m talking about Maksim.”
I follow her into the dining room, ready to put her in her place. I am the woman of this house. I do have some power.
“What’s this?” I see the long table covered in stacks of clothes and toiletries. Toothbrushes. Little boxes of toothpaste. Bars of soap. Tampons.
“Care bags.”
“What?” I forget all about stomping my foot and asserting my dominance.
She hands me a box of Ziploc bags. “Care bags for the homeless women. We put them together and hand them out.”
I stare at the box in my hand and then the toiletries.
“Pull a bag and put one of each inside,” she says. “Then we have to sort the clothes.”
I feel ridiculous. I’ve been the recipient of these little care packages. Various churches took pity on people like me and my mom. I’ve been living in all this opulence, and I never thought about sharing the wealth.
I do what she says. We don’t talk as we make bags. She brings in another case filled with bandages, condoms, and an assortment of first-aid supplies. I don’t ask why women on the street would need first aid.
“Now, the clothes,” Cinder says.
“What do we do with them?”
“Sort by size to start,” she says. “It makes it easier.”
“And then what?”
“We label the boxes and take them to the streets. The ladies can pick what they need. It gets a little messy, so we organize them by size, and spread them out to avoid fights.”
“Fights?”
She stops folding a shirt. “When you have nothing, you tend to get greedy.”
I put a hand on my hip. “I don’t know what you think you know about me, but I’ve had nothing. I’ve never had new clothes. I took what I could get, and that includes dumpster-diving.”
She stares at me, nods, and returns to pulling clothes from the box.
“Where do you get all of this?” I ask.
“People donate to a women’s shelter,” Cinder answers. “Some of the clothes are a little—much. Things a lot of women wouldn’t wear.”
I hold up a leopard-print skirt that would barely cover anyone’s ass. “I see.”
We continue working.
“Who gets these?” I ask. “I mean, just anyone or only for the—” I stop because I don’t want to sound like a jerk. Sex workers? Prostitutes?
“Young women, mostly. Runaways. Girls who have been on the street long enough to have nothing.” She doesn’t look up from the bag she’s filling.
“How often?” I ask.
“Once a month. Sometimes more if we’ve got a lot to give.” She pulls the cap off a black marker and writes an “L” on the front.
“You’ve been doing this a long time,” I say.
“Yep.”
That’s all she gives me. I’ve learned not to push with Cinder. I pick up a pair of jeans and check the size.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“You’re going to either way.”
Fair. “How did you and Maksim end up working together?”
She reaches for another bag and starts loading it. “What has he told you?”
“Not much. He mentioned that you run operations. That he trusts you.” I fold the jeans. “That’s basically it.”
“That’s basically accurate.” She writes an “M” on another box. “What are you actually asking?”
I look at her. Her red hair is pulled back, and she’s not wearing any makeup. Without it, she looks closer to her age, which makes her look younger. More human. She’s not looking at me, but I can tell she knows I’m looking at her.
“Were you two ever together?” I want to ask if he was a customer, but I have a feeling that would be the wrong thing to say.
She makes a sound. A snort? Laugh? Maybe disgust.
“No,” she says flatly.
“Okay.”
“Is that why you’ve been watching me like I might steal your silverware?”
I feel heat in my face. “I haven’t been—”
“Lila.”
“Fine.” I put the jeans down. “Maybe a little.”
She looks at me, and I brace myself for our silent truce to be over. We are like two yard dogs circling one another. She doesn’t like me, and I don’t like her. I’ve never tried to understand why.
“He’s my brother,” she says. “That’s it. That’s all it’s ever been.”
I nod, and pick the jeans back up.
She goes back to her bags. I go back to sorting. The silence settles again, but it’s different now. Less like a standoff.
“I was in the system,” she says out of nowhere. “Foster care. From the time I was seven.” She smooths a hot-pink shirt with her hands. “Some of the houses were fine. Some were less fine.” She pauses. “The last one wasn’t fine.”
She picks up another shirt, inspects it, and starts to fold.
“There were four of us kids in that house. The couple who ran it were in it for the money, which is more common than it should be. They weren’t cruel.
They just didn’t give a damn whether we were alive or dead as long as we weren’t making noise that would attract attention.
That is a good house. I’d been in too many where the husbands gave too much attention. ”
My stomach clenches. I don’t have to guess what she means.
I keep folding. I keep my eyes on my hands because I think it’s easier for her to talk if I’m not watching her face.
“There was a fire,” she says. “I was fourteen.”
Her voice is flat.
“I didn’t set it,” she says. “But I didn’t stop it, either.”
I put down the shirt I’m holding.
“I smelled it,” she says. “I woke up, and I could smell it, and I knew what it was, and I just lay there for a while. I thought about not getting up. I thought if I just went back to sleep, it would be easier. I was fourteen and so tired that I stopped caring whether the next day came.”
I reach for another bit of clothing from a box. My heart is pounding. I know what she’s talking about. It’s like she’s been in my head. Lived my memories.
“I got up,” she says. “I got the two younger kids out. The other one got herself out.” She places a stack of clothes in one of the boxes.
“The couple lost the house. No one was seriously hurt. I went to another placement, and then another. I was sixteen, and my next foster dad decided that I was his play toy.”
I press my lips together and blink back tears.
“I ran away. I figured if men were going to use my body, I was going to get paid for it.”
I reach into the box and cringe when I pull out a thong.
“I had a pimp,” she says. “I won’t go into detail about what that looked like. You can probably fill in the blanks.”
I don’t want to, but I can.
“Maksim found me.” She stops folding. “Or I found him. It’s hard to say which. I was in bad shape. He didn’t make a big thing about it. He made sure I was okay. Got me somewhere safe. Dealt with the situation I was in.”
“The pimp.”
“Yes.” She doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t ask. “He never once made me feel like I owed him for it. I kept waiting for him to tell me what it would cost. That’s how it works. That’s always how it works.” She looks up at me. “It never came.”
I look at her face and see it now. All the things I misread as hostility. The way she keeps her expressions controlled. The way she walks into a room and quickly identifies threats.
I recognize all of it because I do the same things.
“He just kept checking in,” she says. “Making sure I was eating. Making sure I was safe. He asked me if I wanted to keep working, or if I wanted to do something else. He didn’t shame me or scold me.
He gave me a choice.” She sighs. “He’s been my family for eleven years.
He’s the only family I’ve chosen to keep. ”
I look at the boxes of clothes.
“I’ve been hard on you,” Cinder says.
It’s not quite an apology. I don’t think apologies come naturally to her.
“I’ve been hard right back,” I say.
“You have.”
She flashes a smile. I think she approves of my surliness.
“I understand it now,” I say. “Why you’re protective of him.”
She’s quiet.
“He loves you,” she says. “I’ve known him for a long time, and I have never seen him look at another person the way he looks at you. So, I’m adjusting.”
There’s nothing to say to that. It would only embarrass us both to make something of it. But my heartbeat speeds up. He’s never said it, but damn, I wish he would. I love him. Maybe it’s stupid to need the words. He’s shown me a hundred times. In ways words could never do.
We sort through the rest of the boxes in silence, but it’s different now. We’re not friends yet. I’m not sure either of us does “friends” easily. But we understand each other. We’ve both got scars that run deep. Scars that will forever color how we see other people.
I get it. I get her.