Free The Cake House by Latifah Salom

know? Did Claude call by code? Two rings, then nothing, then three more rings equals safe to answer. The phone rang and rang with no one to answer it.
    It couldn’t be the girl Tina since she was there. Was it some other girl? I remembered that desperate, awkward phone call he had made. Was that person calling him back? He was wondering the same thing—I could see it, the way he creased his eyebrows briefly, squashing down the instinct to answer the phone.
    “Should someone get that?” Tina asked.
    Ringing, ringing, someone answer the ringing.
    As if he could read my mind, Alex sprinted at the same time I did, elbowing me down the stairs to be the first to pick it up. My hand closed around the telephone receiver. Gasping, out of breath, I said, “Hello.”
    “May I speak to Claude Fisk?” asked a woman’s voice.
    Of course it was for Claude. “He’s not here,” I said, disappointed. I wrapped my hand around the cord like Alex had.
    “Is this Rosaura?” The woman pronounced my name differently. Most people said “Rose-zara.” But this woman said “Ro-sow-ra.” I went still and looked at Alex. Glad for the excuse, I leaned in close to him so he could hear as well. “Fetch your mother, my dear. Tell her it is Mrs. Wilson from Child Services.”
    The dreaded call, the one that had my mother wringing her hands and Claude coaching me on what to say. Hearing Mrs. Wilson’s voice over the phone brought a curious calm, a release of an unseen fear that had been knotting my belly.
    Without looking at Alex, I set the receiver down on the table and ran back up the stairs, past Tina and the boy, who had come out into the second-floor hallway to watch.
    “Mom,” I said. “There’s a Mrs. Wilson—” I stopped, surprised to see that the room was put back together, the closet neat enough to put Alex’s room to shame, and that my mother was lying down, curled on her side. “There’s a Mrs. Wilson from Child Services on the phone,” I finished.
    My mother shook her head. “I’m not here. Tell her I’m asleep.”
    “That’ll only make it worse.”
    “Do it,” she hissed, but I tugged her arm until she rose and together we went downstairs. “I can’t talk to her. Tell her I’m not here. Tell her I left the house.”
    We got to the phone, my mother as white as the furniture in the front room. Like a child refusing food, she shook her head with quick, sharp jerks. I heard the tinny voice ofMrs. Wilson saying over and over again, “Hello? Mrs. Fisk? Hello? Can you hear me?”
    My mother begged with her eyes.
    “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wilson,” I said into the receiver. “She can’t come to the phone right now.”
    Mrs. Wilson was quiet on the other end for so long I thought she had disappeared or had hung up, but then she spoke. “Tell her, and your stepfather, that I’ll be by for a visit tomorrow morning, Thursday, at nine A . M .”
    From the look on my mother’s face I could tell she heard. I said goodbye and hung up.
    I thought she would call Claude, go running to him for comfort. Instead, once the dread of the phone call had passed, she blossomed with anger. “I suppose you’d be happy to be taken away.”
    “From here? You’re joking, right?”
    “This isn’t funny.”
    “Then you should have talked to her. She knew you were right here.”
    “Being angry with me won’t change anything, won’t—” She closed her eyes. “It won’t fix this.”
    She and I stood by the phone until my mother let out a breath and stepped away.
    “If she calls again, I’m not home,” she said, pausing when she met Alex coming down the stairs with Tina and the unnamed boy in tow. She stopped and looked at the two strangers and then at him. “They shouldn’t be here,” she said, light and amused, and then continued on her way up to the third floor.
    Alex walked his guests to the front door. Tina’s pretty eyebrows were creased in confusion.
    At least the phone call had one good result: It got rid of