Free Jaded by Rhonda Sheree

salvation elsewhere. They slump away with a less romantic realization of the city. We are an island divided between the Privileged and the Paupers. New York City does not want your tired or your poor. And we cannot help the huddled masses who still yearn to breathe free . . .
     
    It wasn’t quite the personal spin she wanted. The article was basically the ramblings of a broke woman trying to survive in a city of wealth. Hopefully, Tanya would give her time to really grow into this new role of blog writer. Two hours later Syeesha had the full article written. It should’ve taken much less time but she found it hard to concentrate. She kept thinking about all that she could do with fifty grand a year. Although Ray had sent her résumé off to a few other hiring managers who were looking for legal secretaries, it was the mystery client who had her up past her bedtime, distracted by fantasies of an updated wardrobe and an apartment with two fat closets. It was possible she was over-thinking the power of an additional ten grand a year, but she indulged herself anyway.
    When she finally got into her new place, Syeesha would replicate the haven she had created. She looked around. A lone artificial tree stood in a corner next to her tiny closet, adding a touch of cheap elegance to her sanctuary. Plastic bins filled with clothes lay obscured behind a bamboo screen she’d found at a thrift store for fifteen bucks. The bedroom smelled faintly of the burning cinnamon-sugar-scented candle on her nightstand. The breakfast tray on which she worked multitasked as a laptop stand, a dinner table, and a writing desk.
    Pushed against the wall was a chipped five-drawer dresser that served as a bookshelf for a few favorite novels that she couldn’t bear to part with: A Known World , The Color Purple , A Tree Grows in Brooklyn . Beneath her bed was a collection of Jackie Collins’s novels. Although she’d eat sautéed worms before she’d confess her love for vintage Collins.
    Above the dresser, framed pictures of her family took a prominent position on the wall shelving that faced her bed. A picture of Trina and her standing side by side in their frilly Sunday dresses. Syeesha was three. Her two pigtails looked like balls of cotton bunched above her ears. Her scrappy body was as stiff as a rifle. Trina, ten, leaned her considerable weight onto one leg, a hand on her right hip as though mimicking the models in the fashion magazines hidden beneath her mattress. Unlike Syeesha, whose lips were set in a straight line, Trina flashed a kittenish smile at the lens. Her father had taken the picture.
    It had been three months after their mother had been eaten away by bone cancer. Maybe her father had been feeling sentimental. There hadn’t been many more pictures after that one. Her mother’s picture wasn’t on the shelf, but instead hung high on the wall. Her fine, dark brown hair was loosely curled and grazed her shoulders. Syeesha had searched those hazel eyes — identical to her own — more than once and could never figure out how a woman so full of life could have married her father. Once, when Syeesha had been angry at her father for the strict curfew he’d imposed, she’d thundered, “At least Ma found a way to escape!” The words had been like an ax chopping through the hard shell of his body. He hadn’t responded. Just turned at the head of the stairs and locked himself in his bedroom. Later, Syeesha had apologized. Her father had accepted. But the wound had marked each of them forever.
    The picture of Barry Green was a formal one. He wore his air force uniform with his rank insignia visible. The four stripes he’d earned during his twenty-year service was a reminder of his perceived failure. The unsmiling yet dignified face with the upturned chin and focused eyes captured the essence of him. He hated that picture, despite looking like a man who could’ve ranked high on a Most Eligible Bachelor list; he valued nothing about