I started to cry uncontrollably into my hands. She was right. It was only a joke, but she was right. I was a walking death warrant to everybody I touched and everybody I care about, and I hated her for reminding me of that. I actually could have liked Samantha, but instead I had to push her away. I couldn’t risk more blood on my hands.
Chapter 7
Mom had the worst schedule. She went to school before I got home and came back after I went to bed. The only time I saw her was when she had the day off, but even then, she had projects to work on for class. She was always either trying to catch up on sleep or dragging around like a zombie trying to pretend like she wasn’t exhausted.
On the lucky days, she would head into work late so we could eat together, even if she was eating her breakfast while I ate my dinner. More often than not, though, we missed each other completely. One gift Katie’s death gave us was the chance to be together for a couple of days and reconnect as if we had a functional relationship. Those days were gone now.
When I walked in the door from school, I smelled chili simmering in the crock pot. I walked into the kitchen and found a note on the counter:
Didn’t season dinner before running out. Needs chili powder for sure. Love you, hija. Mom
Mom didn’t like a lot of spice in her chili, but I liked it hot enough to start a fire in my mouth. I scooped out a bowl and tossed a mess of cayenne pepper and adobo onto the chili. Katie would have hated it, what with her weak stomach that just got weaker over time. She could barely keep down toast by the end.
I flipped on the television, but then I caught a glimpse of Katie’s house from outside my front window. The lights were off, but her mother’s car was in the driveway. When Katie was alive, a bevy of doctor appointments forced Joanne to interact with the outside world, but now she only left the house to attend church.
She had taken to getting her groceries delivered since before Katie died, and took a remote job teaching Chinese students English so she could be by her daughter’s side. I doubted she had eaten much since the funeral. At Katie’s wake she didn’t pick up so much as a cracker.
I scooped a second bowl of chili and headed across the street. Joanne didn’t like spice any more than Katie did, so I didn’t bother adding any additional spices into my mom’s bland chili. It wasn’t really about taste anyway. I just wanted to make sure she ate something, anything.
“Mrs. Allen,” I said, knocking on the door with my foot. There was no movement at first, but after a few seconds, I heard footsteps walking toward the door.
The door slowly opened, and the ghost of Katie’s mother stared back at me. She looked as if she hadn’t bathed in days or seen the sun in even longer. At the funeral she’d made herself up to seem more together, but now, in the darkness of her own house, she looked like a zombie. She was doing a bad job of hanging on to the last vestiges of humanity.
“What is it, Anna?” she asked me with a hoarse voice. Her red, dry eyes told the story that she had just been crying for hours. The wad of balled-up tissues in her hand confirmed it.
I held up the chili. “I thought you might be hungry.”
“No, I’m not,” she said, trying to close the door.
I stuck my foot in the doorjamb. “Please eat. Katie would have wanted you to eat. She used to love my mother’s chili.”
Joanne let out a deep sigh. “She did, didn’t she?”
“It’s still hot,” I said. “Temperature-wise, of course. I know you have white people taste buds.”
Joanne let out a soft laugh, but there was nothing behind her eyes except pain. “Come on in then. You’ll catch your death out there.”
We ate our chili in silence, but we didn’t need to talk. It was just nice to be around somebody. Listening to her spoon hit the side of the bowl, and hearing her chew meant that I wasn’t alone.
After we finished our dinner, she took our bowls into the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher. “I’ll bring these to your mother tomorrow.”
“No rush. It’s just the two of us and we have a hundred bowls for some reason. They’ll last us until doomsday.”
“Yeah, it’s weird, isn’t it? Suddenly, I have double the bowls than I’ll ever use.”
I stood up. “At least you’ll have to do the dishwasher half as often, I guess. Katie would have taken some solace in that. She hated the dishes.”
Joanne let out the smallest breath of air, which could barely be construed as a laugh. “She really did, and she was just dreadful at it.”
“She was the worst. Like, you would get something out of the drying rack, and it would be caked with food. But you know Katie, she would always claim that she washed it.”
“She swore by it every time,” Joanne said, shaking her head.
“Do you mind if I go up to her room?”
“Go ahead,” Joanne said. “My house is your house. At least with you here it doesn’t feel as lonely.”
I slowly walked up the stairs. I hadn’t been in Katie’s room since the funeral. I just wanted to be close to her and catch her smell on the air. Maybe that was the whole reason for bringing Joanne dinner. She was the closest to Katie I would ever be again.
I pushed open the door and stepped inside the room. A cold chill whipped past me as the door slammed shut. I didn’t think much of it at first. Katie’s room was the coldest in the house, since it was above
