The Cake House by Latifah Salom Read Free Book Online Page B

shouldn’t have.”
    He leaned over and gave her a kiss on her cheek. “The luncheon starts at noon, if you could be ready by eleven-thirty. Wear the new dress, and those earrings.” He spoke with an easy mixture of request and command before leaving the kitchen.
    My mother and I remained silent. She looked at the eggs with a revulsion that I shared, and then she scraped the rest into the trash. I could see the red scratch along her left arm where my fingernail had marked her.
    “Where are you going?” I couldn’t hide my resentment that she was leaving. But maybe she had left often during that time I was in the closet and I hadn’t even known. “Can’t I go too?”
    She shook her head, as if to clear it, then focused her attention on me. “Will you help me get ready?”
    I used to love to watch her dress, watch her put her makeup on. She knew this. Maybe this was her way of apologizing. As we passed the second floor, I strained to hear anything from Alex’s room, but there was nothing.
    Her new dress hung on the open closet door, tasteful in a pastel blue. As she took a shower and dried her hair, I organized her makeup: lipsticks lined up, brushes arranged tallest to smallest.
    She sat at the new vanity Claude had bought and put on makeup like it was war paint: a little too much blush, lips painted a too-dark red. It was her normal way of putting on makeup, but it seemed more out of place in this strange bedroom than before. She smacked her lips together, smoothing out the color. Then came the dress, sliding over her shoulders, swinging down around her hips.
    All she had to do was put her shoes on to complete the outfit, but as she lifted her gaze to the mirror she froze. I looked, too, and saw confusion and disgust cross her face. Without warning, she swept her makeup off the vanity, scattering it across the carpet.
    Then she took a deep breath and grabbed a tissue with a quick jerk of her wrist. She rubbed at her lips.
    “Wet a towel for me?” I went into their bathroom to get a washcloth. When I returned, she’d picked up all of the makeup. I handed her the washcloth and she scrubbed her face clean, starting over again, this time with neutral colors, a soft, clean foundation and light rosy beige on her lips.
    “What do you think?” she asked.
    She looked like a character from a television show where families lived in the suburbs and mothers wore sweaters draped over their shoulders. Together, we looked at her image again, her hair brushed to shining gold, diamond drops in her ears; she was perfect, and different from before. Something had changed in the hour it had taken for her to dress, some indefinable metamorphosis that took her even further away from the mother I knew.
    I went with her downstairs and was surprised to see Alex sitting at the dining table, dressed in ironed khaki trousers and a light yellow polo shirt that matched his hair.
    It hit me that Alex was meant to go with Claude andmy mother to this luncheon, all of them together, and that I wasn’t going with them. They were going to leave me alone, without even Alex as company. It felt like a betrayal, a deliberate insult meant to say I was not wanted, not cared for, not needed.
    Claude whistled as he entered the living room with a smile. “All ready?” he asked. “Good. I’ll be just a minute.”
    “You’re all going? Without me?” I said, outraged with disbelief I couldn’t control.
    “That’s right,” he said, not reacting to my anger.
    I hadn’t expected him to admit it. “You don’t want me with you. Keep the crazy kid at home, right?”
    Claude pursed his lips. Beside him, my mother and Alex stood mute, apparently unwilling to come to my defense. Maybe they didn’t want me to go either. “After last night, I think you should stay here and rest.”
    “But what about Child Services?” I asked, trying to hold on to my panic, feeling sick to my stomach. “What if I call the police and tell them you left me