Where the Heart is (Interracial with Baby) (BWWM) (2 page)

December 15, 2014

"Mom, you up?" Jamie called as she let herself into the house. It was the same one she had grown up in, and everything smelled the same, even if it was under a layer of antiseptic and bleach, the smells that seemed to accompany hospitals and the terminally ill.

She dropped her purse on the worn leather chair by the door and put her keys on the table, listening for sounds of life.

When there was no response, she sighed.

Her mother had been getting so much worse, lately. A year ago, she would have already been up and waiting at the kitchen table for Jamie to get her breakfast and morning round of pills ready, but these days, it was part of her job just to get her mother out of bed.

She swallowed past the lump in her throat and made her way through the house, turning on lights as she went.

As she'd expected, her mother was still fast asleep in her bed when she entered the bedroom. It hurt how small she looked, curled on one side with her hands pillowed under her head. Her hair was just starting to grow back after the chemotherapy, and she had a tiny little afro that Jamie smiled to see.

She reached down and stroked her fingers through it, noting that even though her mother was clearly worn and tired, her hair was still as black as Jamie's. If it weren't for the fact that she'd lost so much weight, it would be impossible to tell that her mother was in her fifties.

Adelaide had once been a hard working, no nonsense kind of person, but her cancer had taken a toll on her, beating her down into someone softer and quieter. She was still recognizable as Jamie's mother, but sometimes she missed the fierce woman who had raised her.

Jamie sat down on the edge of the bed, looking at her mother's lined face. She knew that the time when she was sleeping was the most time her mother went without being in pain, and she was loathe to wake her up when she looked so peaceful, but she needed to take her medicine and she had to eat with it.

"Baby?"

She jumped at her mother's voice, so soft in the semi-darkness of her bedroom.

"Hey, Mama," Jamie said, finding a smile for her. "Thought you were sleeping."

"I was. Had a dream that I was being turned into a fish and then I could feel that you were here. Time to get up already?"

Jamie nodded, biting her lip. She knew for a fact that her mother had gotten well over ten hours of sleep the night before, and she didn't want to think about what it meant that she still looked tired.

"Help me up?" Adelaide asked, stretching out a hand to her daughter.

She looked so thin in her nightgown that it took Jamie a second to get up and help. Even though she saw her mother every morning just about, it always hit her how the woman who had raised her and made her who she was today was wasting away right in front of her.

"Cancer's no joke," the doctor had said when the official diagnosis had been made, and Jamie couldn't agree more.

But she shook herself and helped her mother pull the blankets back and get to her feet. "What do you want for breakfast, Mama?" she asked, handing her the bathrobe that hung from the bedpost.

"It's cold this morning. What about grits?"

Jamie grinned. "With cheese?"

"You shouldn't even have to ask, girl."

Her mother's good spirits always managed to make Jamie smile, and she led her mother into the kitchen, getting her situated with a glass of orange juice while she made coffee and got breakfast going.

As much as it hurt to see her mother needing so much help when she'd once been fiercely independent and proud of it, Jamie couldn't deny that she enjoyed the time they spent together now. The mornings were quiet, and they talked about the nurses and Jamie's job and story ideas.

They'd spent plenty of time together before, but there had always been things getting in the way, and now they had a time when it was just the two of them.

Jamie scrambled eggs to go with the grits and pulled out the pills for that day, listening to her mother talk about Christmas dinner and what they should have. They would be limited to whatever Jamie could whip up with her meager cooking skills, although the idea of having a nice meal catered bounced around in her head.

She had some money put away, and her mother deserved something nice after all she had been through. It was certainly something to think about.

The two of them sat down to a nice breakfast together, and Adelaide took her pills under the watchful eye of her daughter.

Jamie hung around long enough to watch her mother's energy drop even after only being awake for a couple of hours and for the afternoon nurse to show up and then headed back to her place to shower and change for work, worry eating at her.

It was bitterly cold outside, and Jamie was grateful for the warmth as she let the door of the diner bang shut behind her. The small space was already packed with people, customers filling almost every table and all the chairs at the counter. It was clearly going to be a busy night, and Jamie was grateful for it, welcoming the distraction of a hectic work shift to keep her mind off of more depressing things.

"Where've you been, Jamie girl?" called Sal, the 'head chef' as he liked to call himself, as she made her way through the kitchen.

"Don't even try that, Sal," Jamie called back as she headed to the little office area in the back so she could shed her coat and gloves, put her purse in her locker, and pull on an apron. "I'm not scheduled to start until four, and if you look at the time, it is just barely fifteen til."

Sal's booming laugh echoed through the kitchen, and Jamie stepped back in just in time to see the new girl almost drop her tray. She shot a dirty look at Sal's back and then headed out to the seating area, balancing a tray filled with cups of soda.

"You're gonna make Megan quit if you keep that up," Jamie said, leaning against one of the counters and popping a pickle into her mouth.

"Eh, wouldn't be the worst thing. She takes orders in the worst way."

Jamie grinned and shook her head. John Salinger, or Sal as he preferred to be called, had known her practically since she was a child. Her mother had brought her here after school when she'd done well on a test or made the honor roll, and Sal would make her a burger as big as her head just about and congratulate her. He'd been calling her 'Jamie girl' since he'd met her, and she smiled with affection every time. The man was well over six feet tall and had more muscle on his wide frame than anyone Jamie had ever seen before. There was a rumor that he used to be a body builder back in his younger years, but no one had been able to find proof of that.

"How's your mom?" Sal asked, glancing at her and then back at the grill.

"Today wasn't one of her good days, let's just say," Jamie replied. "She's gonna have to go back in for another round of tests or something, I guess. I dunno what's making her so tired, but just getting her out of bed is starting to become a struggle."

Sal made a sympathetic noise. "She's a strong lady, Adelaide is," he said, nodding his head. "She'll pull through."

Jamie gave him a wan smile. She appreciated the optimism, but she'd been preparing herself for the reality that one day she would let herself into the house and her mother wouldn't be there anymore for a long time. There wasn't a cure for her mother out there, and she knew that. Anytime they had together was borrowed at this point, and there was very little anyone could do about that.

Wishing otherwise would just make things worse when the inevitable came to pass and she had to deal with how much it was going to hurt.

But now wasn't the time to think about that.

Now was the time to tuck her order book into the pocket of her apron, stick a pencil behind her ear, and put on her 'I would be thrilled to serve you' smile.'

The sound of a tray crashing to the floor made her jump, and she peered out the kitchen window to see Megan scrambling to pick up a tray loaded with silverware. She and Sal exchanged a glance and Jamie shook her head.

It was going to be a long night at this rate.

She dove into the fray, sidestepping Megan and going over to her table, smile in place, pencil poised and ready to take down orders. "Hi," she said. "Welcome to The Pit. I'm Jamie, and I'll be taking care of you this evening. What can I get you to drink?"

It was a familiar speech, and one that she said about thirty times a day when she was working a full shift. Sometimes more. It was ingrained in her head so well that she didn't even have to think about it anymore. Just replace the time of day, rattle it off, and wait.

Her table, full of tired looking twenty somethings, clearly on their way to or from some kind of road trip, probably home for the holidays and just passing through, ordered coffee and sodas, and Jamie made a note on her pad to pour them the extra strong stuff. She winked at the one who had his head on the table and a yawn cracking his jaws and recommended the chili. "So spicy, it'll wake you right up," she said, before dashing off to take the drink orders of the next three tables so she could fill them all at once.

She'd worked out a system in the six years she'd been working at The Pit, and it served her well. Drinks were easy to bring out, keep an eye on the cups for refills, serve people in a line.

Jamie had been working at the diner since she'd started community college, and while it wasn't anywhere close to what she wanted to do with her life, the money was alright, the tips were excellent, and it kept her in enough free food that her grocery bill was the smallest thing she had to pay.

It also had flexible enough hours that if her mother needed her, she could move her schedule around easily.

She liked most of the people she worked with, Megan not withstanding, and it wasn't a job that took a lot of mental energy, though by the end of the night her feet were going to be killing her.

"Hey, Jamie," said Adam, one of the cooks who worked under Sal. "What're you doing after your shift?"

Jamie made a face at him. "Well, since I don't get off until midnight, I think that's pretty obvious," she said as she poured sixteen cups of coffee.

"Hot date?" He wiggled his eyebrows at her, leaning against the counter while she arranged her trays.

"Oh, yeah. Steamy even. It's gonna be long and I'm gonna be naked in under five minutes."

It was sort of hilarious how caught off guard Adam looked, and Jamie rolled her eyes, hefting the tray with practiced ease. "Because I'm going to go home and take a long bath, idiot," she said, flashing him a smile and heading back out to deliver her drinks.

"He wants to bone you so hard," Kathryn whispered as she took up Jamie's soda tray and helped her bring it out.

Jamie snorted and started setting coffee in front of people, smiling and demurring when they offered heartfelt thanks. Coffee made the world go round, was what she had learned in her time working here, and there was a lot to be said for keeping a coffee cup full. She took the tray from Kathryn and started handing out drinks, rolling her eyes again. "You don't know that."

Kathryn laughed. "I know everything about this place, Jamie. He wants you bad."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"It just does. Trust me. I've seen more cooks try to bang waitresses than you even want to know, and I know how it starts." Kathryn winked. "I'd look out if I were you."

She wanted to argue, but Kathryn was the only waitress who'd been here longer than she had. She was in her thirties, tall and gorgeous, and no one knew why she worked here when she was clearly talented in other fields, but whenever someone asked, she just smiled mysteriously and kept filling salt shakers or whatever it was she had been doing before.

It was clear that they weren't going to get an answer out of her, and Jamie was fine with that. She liked Kat's company, and they had developed an awesome working relationship that she didn't want to give up.

Ever since Simon had left without looking back, Jamie hadn't exactly had a lot of friends. She'd made some acquaintances at school and she knew all of the waitresses and cooks at the diner, but none of them had the same connection with her that she'd had with Simon.

"But he's clearly not coming back, so get over it," she muttered to herself as she set her tray down in the kitchen with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. Seven years, and she still wasn't over it.

Her mother had told her that it took almost twice as long as the relationship had lasted to really get over someone, and when Jamie had reminded her that she and Simon had never really been dating, her mother had just smiled and nodded as if she didn't believe her.

"That's what I said about me and your father," she'd pointed out.

Jamie had scowled. "And look at how right you were."

Her father had skipped out on them before Jamie was even old enough to make memories of him, and that was the last thing she wanted to think about when it came to Simon, but she had to admit that he'd done kind of the same thing.

But no. Thinking about that while she had tables of hungry people to deal with wasn't going to make this shift go by any faster, so she shook her head and went back out, letting the soothing rhythm of taking orders and handing tickets to the cooks keep her occupied.