Free The Cake House by Latifah Salom Page A

her.

CHAPTER FIVE
    My mother came into my room early in the morning carrying a shopping bag. She shook me awake and dragged the blankets from my body. “Get up,” she said.
    My first thought was that we were running away again, but my mother rattled the shopping bag and took out a long green dress.
    “Put this on,” she said. “Come on.”
    “It’s too early.”
    “That woman could come at any moment.” My mother sounded scared, and as I became more awake I noticed the wild light in her eyes, the pale cast of her skin. “It’s a pretty dress,” she said, as if that were reason enough to wear such a ridiculous thing before eight in the morning. “Come here. Put it on. I bought it for you.”
    I held the dress out to look at it. Embroidered flowers lined the hem. Sleeveless and gathered in the front, made from a flowing fabric like silk. It was something out of a teen catalog, modeled by girls with perfect hair caught inmid-laugh and surrounded by friends having the kind of fun I never could have.
    The dress still had its tags; it had cost one hundred and ninety-five dollars. I’d never worn anything so expensive before.
    “When did you buy this?”
    “Oh,” she said, jerking the tag off. “The other day, at the country club. There was a sale. Turn around.” She reached to pull off the T-shirt I’d slept in, then tugged the dress over my head. Her hands were blood warm on my arms. I stood in front of her while she tied the sash around the back. “It goes well with your eyes,” she said, smiling. “Do you like it?”
    She said she’d bought it, but she’d bought it with Claude’s money. I thought of those old novels where people had to dress for dinner and went to parties every night. I almost laughed thinking of Claude requiring Alex to dress in a suit. But it fit now—we would all be dressed like dolls standing lopsided on the icing of the Cake House. “This is what you want me to wear?”
    “It’s almost eight now. We don’t know when she’s coming. We have to be ready,” she said, turning to make my bed and forcing me to move. “What else do you have to wear?”
    Nothing else like this, and she knew it. She started snapping the shopping bag until she could fold it, her movements sharp and choppy.
    She looked around my room, as though realizing for the first time what I had done with all my things.
    “Are you going to leave your room like this?”
    “What’s wrong with it?”
    She took a deep breath through her nose, then reached into a pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Takinga fresh cigarette from the pack, she let it dangle from her bottom lip. Her lighter sparked but produced no flame. She swore. “Do your mother a favor and go light it for me,” she said. “You can use the stove.”
    Many of the kids from my old apartment building smoked, but I never had. My mother smoked too much. It had frightened me, to breathe smoke like a dragon.
    “Why can’t you do it?” I said.
    “Oh, don’t fight me, Rosaura. Not today. It’s not difficult.”
    I hesitated, suspicious that once I left the room she’d take that opportunity to shove my clothing and books and everything else I had so carefully ordered into the closet. I prepared myself for a fight, but then she deflated and the frantic energy she had come in with bled out of her. She sat down on my bed, reaching to pick up one of my shoes that I’d left in the middle of the floor.
    “I like the room the way it is,” I said.
    She nodded. “Just go. I won’t touch anything. I’ll just tidy.”
    I knew she was mad at me for answering Mrs. Wilson’s call, but I didn’t want her to be worried; I didn’t want her to be afraid or to cry. I went down to the first floor, noticing how the armholes of the green dress pulled with uncomfortable tightness and how the bodice itched and scratched.
    Standing in front of the stove, I held the cigarette, watching the flame on the burner dance. The cigarette was still damp from my