MICHELLE DONICE is the author of The Other Side of Through (Balboa Press) and Following Your North Star (Atmosphere Press). Her short fiction has been featured in Midnight and Indigo Lit, Free Spirit, Clockhouse, and Flash Fiction for Flash Memory (Anchala Studios). Michelle lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband and dogs. She teaches yoga and writing and often incorporates themes of spirituality, African American culture, and women's empowerment in her fiction.
My best friend Nadine and I were only a year apart, but we went to different schools. The private school she attended was within walking distance of our babysitter, Mrs. Holloway’s, house, and offered extra-curricular activities such as gymnastics, foreign languages, and Girl Scouts. I attended Public School #27 and rode a yellow bus clear across town. In the mornings, I waited alone at the bus stop bundled in a brown and orange plaid coat with a faux-fur trimmed hood Mama found at Goodwill. Even though I took the bus, I always arrived before Nadine and waited outside on the stoop until Mrs. Holloway decided to answer the door for the both of us.
Each day, Mrs. Holloway greeted us wearing a dingy pink robe and a cotton turban, a Virginia Slims dangling from her bottom lip. She would not allow us to enter the warm house until we shook the snow from our coats and stomped it from our boots. Nadine and I would laugh because Mrs. Holloway’s floors were always black with grime and we didn’t think a little tracked in snow would make that big of a difference. It might actually improve the situation, we joked.
I always sat in the big La-Z-Boy by the TV waiting for Nadine to finish her homework. My work got done on the long bus ride, so I sat quietly as Nadine struggled with her math and Mrs. Holloway watched her “stories”, slacked jaw and glazed eyes. She loved The Young and the Restless, and no matter how much time passed nothing ever seemed to change for the characters. I knew I didn’t want to be that kind of adult where day after day nothing ever happened.
When the music began to play, and the list of names rolled across the screen, Mrs. Holloway would haul herself up from the couch and wobble into the kitchen to prepare a snack for us. Every day it was the same thing: four slices of toasted white bread covered in melted Velveeta with a sprinkle of sugar on top. I would greedily wolf down a piece because my class ate lunch early in the day to accommodate the overcrowding in the cafeteria. Nadine would take three pieces for herself even though she told me her class ate at noon and her mom always packed a healthy snack in her Barbie lunch box. Yogurt or a granola bar—stuff I asked for when Mama and I went to the grocery store, but we were trying to make ends meet. Plus, what was the point, mom asked, when I got free lunch.
Mrs. Holloway let us choose what we wanted to watch while we ate, and she would retreat into the living room with the plastic covered couches—where we weren’t allowed—so she could read her Bible. Nadine always chose Popeye and during the commercials she bragged that her dad would buy her whatever toy or breakfast cereal was being advertised.
Nadine often teased me because I didn’t have a dad, and when I got upset and cried, she frowned and shrugged her shoulders. That’s just the way it is, she’d say. My mom told me so. She would hand me the yellow dishcloth with the pretty sewn on daffodils that Mrs. Holloway kept hanging from the refrigerator door and I would wipe the tears from my face.
On Fridays, Nadine stayed after school for “enrichments” as she called it and never came to Mrs. Holloway’s at all. She explained to me that her mother picked her up directly from school and they drove into the city to meet her dad at his office and they would go from there to dinner and a movie.
I hated Fridays.
It was on the last Friday of January that Mrs. Holloway answered the door wearing her good wig, the one she said made her look like Diahann Carrol—but didn’t—and an olive—green pantsuit. When I walked into the kitchen, two slices of buttered sugar bread were waiting for me on a TV tray in front of the sofa and Popeye had just popped open a can of spinach on the screen seconds away from defending Olive Oyl’s honor. Mrs. Holloway explained that from now on she would be going out on Fridays to play pinochle and I should holler for Mr. Holloway who would be out in the garage if I needed anything. I wasn’t really listening to her because I was busy thinking about Olive Oyl and how lucky she was to have both Brutus and Popeye.
On the following Friday, it was Mr. Holloway who answered the door when I rang the bell. Unlike his wife, he invited me inside the warm house and helped me take off my snow-covered boots and heavy winter coat. As I sat in the chair, he gave me a cut up Granny Smith apple and a Slim Jim to eat while I watched him make the cheesy sugar bread.
“You have lots of friends at school?” he asked as he turned off the oven and placed the bread on a plate.
I shook my head and bit into the toast.
He bumbled something to himself and poured a glass of milk for me. For a while, he watched me eat, and then he left for the garage. I had never been alone before and I wasn’t sure I was allowed to be. I walked over to the TV and turned it on, but I didn’t know how to adjust the rabbit ears to make the picture clearer, so I turned it off again. When Mama honked the horn, I was sitting by the big picture window watching the snow fall outside.
The first Friday in March and the sun made everything a slushy mess, but Mama said Spring wasn’t here yet. There was sure to be another snow, and people needed to stop trying to rush stuff before it’s time. I walked to Mrs. Holloway’s house from the bus stop enjoying the warm weather, not really caring what Mama thought. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. I tried the knob and it yielded so I let myself in. The house was silent, so I ate an apple and tore off a piece of cheese from the big block in the refrigerator. I heard Mr. Holloway moving around in the garage, so I went to the door.
“Gal, come out here and sit for a while.”
I didn’t want to, but I was bored. In some small way I missed Nadine’s bragging and Mrs. Holloway’s smoke. I was too afraid to ask if I could go play in the melted snow because I knew it was too dangerous, stranger danger and all.
Mr. Holloway, half hidden beneath the hood of a blue Chevy, waved me over, his hands slick with black oil. The garage smelled of gasoline and oil and something more astringent that I didn’t recognize. A half-empty bottle rested on a stool close to the door and he pointed to it. “Bring that to me and sit there.” I did what I was told—I always did what I was told—and climbed up on the stool and watched him. He was a short, barrel-chested man with gray stubble along his jawline and two puffs of hair above his ears. The rest of his shiny head was bald. Although I was tall for my age, my feet did not touch the floor. Mr. Holloway stood from beneath the car and looked at me for a moment. His eyes, red in the corners, reminded me of a rat. I could smell his breath from where I sat.
"Make any friends today?" he asked, wiping his dirty hands on his shirt. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I gave him a weak smile. He smiled back in a weird way. It was like only his lips smiled, and I wanted to ask him how he did that trick, but I was afraid to. Instead, I promised myself that I would practice in front of the mirror when I got a chance.
“You cold?” Without looking up, he pointed towards the jacket on the back of the chair, and I wrapped myself, cocoon-like, in it. It smelled of sweat and cigarette smoke, but I was warm and content as James Brown played on a transistor radio.
The following Friday, I rang the doorbell, and again Mr. Holloway didn’t answer. I tried the door and it was unlocked. I walked out to the garage where he sat on the stool drinking something from a brown paper bag. He seemed sad and didn’t speak to me when he noticed me standing in the doorway. He just watched, and I felt like he was ticking something off a mental checklist. I walked back inside and sat at the kitchen table, pulling my math homework out of my school bag. I had already finished the even numbered math problems my teacher, Mrs. Johnston, had assigned, and maybe if I did the odd numbers, too, she would give me a treat or let me be her helper. She did that sometimes. Moments later, I felt him standing behind me.
“What’s eighty divided by three?” he asked, looking down at my paper.
I carried the one and looked up at him, “26.66.” I chewed on the eraser end of the pencil.
“Good,” he said gruffly, “now do the next one. He took a sip from the bottle and sat down next to me.
“Your dad live around here?”
I shook my head no.
“You know him?” I shook my head again.
“Probably for the best,” he sighed and took another drink.
I looked up from my homework, startled. I had never heard anyone say maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing for my dad not to be around. Usually there were sympathetic words and sideways glances between the adults. Maybe he was right, and I was better off not having my dad around. In that moment, I liked Mr. Holloway and wished that he could be my father even though he was much older—more like a grandfather.
On the second Friday in April Mrs. Johnston passed out invitations for Donuts with Daddy, which would be the next week. When she came to my desk, she bent down and whispered, “If you can’t get someone to come, I’ll let you sit at my desk and you can help me grade papers.” Almost as an afterthought she added, “And you can have two donuts!”
I stared at the invitation on the bus ride to Mrs. Holloway’s house and clutched it in my hand as I waited on the porch for someone to answer. The snow had melted, and the birds were singing. Spring was so pretty. It felt like everything was opening. I was surprised and delighted when Mr. Holloway answered the door, and I realized that maybe I could ask him to be my dad for the day.
“You hungry?’ He asked as he helped me out of my coat and galoshes. I watched from a chair at the kitchen table trying to gather enough courage to ask him to come to Donuts with Daddy. He had made two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and they were waiting for me at the table. I noticed that his fingernails were clean today and I wondered what he had used to dig out the ribbon of dirt that usually resided beneath each one. He placed one of the sandwiches in front of me and sat down next to me and took a bite out of the other. I bit into my sandwich and coughed. He had used chunky peanut butter instead of the creamy kind I liked, and the little pieces of nut scratched my throat.
“May I have some milk, please?” He stood and walked to the refrigerator.
“We’re friends, right?” he asked, sitting down again and taking a sip of milk. My heart leaped with joy. Maybe, somehow, he already knew about Donuts with Daddy and was planning on coming with me. I smiled and shook my head.
“Of course, we’re friends,” I said.
“Well, friends keep secrets.” He scratched his stubbled chin.
I smiled again because I knew I could keep a secret better than anyone. Nadine even said so. No one would have to know he wasn’t really my father if he came to Donuts With Daddy.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m really good at keeping secrets.”
Mr. Holloway grinned. “You finished with that?” He gestured towards the snack and I nodded. He stood and carried the dishes to the sink and returned to the table, moving his chair so he was now facing me. His hands shook as he reached for my cardigan and unbuttoned it. I watched him in confusion. Once my cardigan was unbuttoned, he began to unbutton each little button on the white blouse Mama had dressed me in. He didn’t say anything, and I held my breath confused by what was happening.
Mr. Holloway pulled the fabric aside and appraised my flat chest. The night before when Mama was helping me from the tub, she had said, Oh sweetie, you’re budding. She looked sad, hugged me tighter.
His breathing changed while I held my breath.
I closed my eyes, and he gasped. Suddenly, my hands were wet and I opened my eyes, afraid. Mr. Holloway walked to the sink and grabbed the pretty yellow towel and watched me as I dried my hands. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke towards the ceiling.
“We’re friends, remember?” He reached into his pocket and grabbed some crumpled bills and pushed them at me. “Take this.”
I don’t know how long I stood in the empty kitchen staring at the money, but when Mama blew the horn, I walked into the bright spring day and stuffed the money into my pocket.
Volume 15.1, Winter 25
Michelle Donice
