Day 151: Clementine, Chapter 10

Rose was back.

I got home from the pool, pushed open the front door that was never locked, and squelched to my bedroom. Only the door was shut. I never shut the door. When I opened it, I saw Rose flopped on her back on my bed. Only, I guess it's her bed again. Because she chucked some socks at me and told me to stay out of her room.

I squelched back to the kitchen and took off my wet sneakers and draped my anorak over the kitchen chair because it was damp. I needed clothes. I debated going back to Rose's room and asking her if I could get my clothes, but the closest thing to the socks she'd thrown had been her Sunflowers perfume and if she threw that, the whole trailer would stink.

I opened the fridge, stared at it for a second, then shut it again. I stood there, looking at the business card size magnets for JOJO'S PIZZA: WE DELIVER and BAILEY, BENSON, & FELDSTEIN, ATTORNEYS AT LAW. Sometimes I like to see how many letters of the alphabet I can find on one magnet. I'd already done the one for the lawyers. It had every letter but K and Q.

I opened the fridge again. Still nothing good.

My mother had a tendency to buy ingredients, rather than food. Food is things like Oreos and Doritos and string cheese, or even fruit. Stuff you can eat. Ingredients are flour and oil and soy sauce. Things that are absolutely no good on their own, and--therefore--of no possible use to a 13 year old. This made looking through the fridge a daily ordeal.

I slouched back to the table and sat down in one of the vinyl chairs. A lone banana sat in a bowl in the middle of the table, covered in black freckles with little fruit flies hovering over it.

I heard my dad's Sentra pull into the driveway, and I saw him out the window. He was carrying a grocery bag. Thank heavens.

He came straight into the kitchen and plunked the bag down on the table proudly, "Fresh cherries! All you can eat!" I pulled the bag toward myself and pulled out a big plastic tub filled with cherries. They were the ones that were a little bit dinged or bruised and would never last to get to a grocery store, but not damaged enough for pie filling. My dad could bring home as many of these as he wanted; it was the single perk of his cherry job.

He sat down in the chair next to me and reached for a handful of cherries, popping them in his mouth, chewing and swallowing. He never washed his cherries and he always swallowed the pits. Rose and my Mom would make faces at him, and say "That's disgusting." Which is exactly why I grabbed a handful of cherries and popped them into my own mouth.

"Going swimming?" Dad asked, between gulps. I shook my head, "Already been. Just drying off." Instinctively, he leaned his chair back on two legs and looked down the hall at the closed door of Rose's bedroom. "Ah. Gotcha. What's up with Rose?" I shrugged at him. I just knew she wanted to be left alone.