Homecoming Ashley Volta
I stare out the grease-stained window and my gaze creeps upward. The sun just sits there like a gaping wound, unaware and uncaring of its effects. Hot and yellow with infection with rays oozing over the sky burning my skin through the glass. “Why are you still here?” Rachel asks. I sit frozen in the booth seat with my eyes fixed on the cracks and rips in the pseudo fabric that covers them. I feel like that pseudo fabric, once shiny and sturdy, now ruptured with my contents peeking out. “I don’t know, just feel weird,” I reply as I look down and play with the knotted mass of dark hair that I plopped on top of my head before my shift. I have been working at this restaurant since I moved to Baltimore four years ago to live with my boyfriend Joe. My last tables left about an hour ago and when I sat down to count my money; I just never got back up. I can start to smell myself, smells of fried fats and buttery delights glazed all over my black uniform. “Is he home yet?” she asks while hovering over me. “Yea, his parents dropped him off earlier.” “Then get out of here!” she urges as she eyes the table I am sitting at. I get the feeling she is more concerned with me taking up her table than with my fear of going home.
14 days ago, Joe left for Williamsburg, Virginia. Williamsburg Treatment Center for Addiction to be specific. Now he is sitting at home waiting for me and I am sitting here waiting for my brain to signal my muscles in my legs to move, to get up and go. I think about him sitting in our house, just sitting there taking up space, like the damn sun. It is about two days after Joe left for treatment and I am cleaning the house. I walk around throwing away rolled up post-it notes. Hidden in drawers or just left out for anyone to see, they are mostly hot pink or construction cone orange. I remember Joe saying one day, “I guess I found a use for the postits mom gave us.” He is so nonchalant about it. I walk to my car, dazed and hot. It is hot for April and the heat swirls around me taunting my congested head. I have a cold and the newly birthed pollen is making it worse. The drive is quiet; I do not even turn on the radio. I want to stay numb and ambivalent. I just keep my eyes on the road and my steering wheel. Road. Steering wheel. Road. Steering wheel. When I first started working at the restaurant, I used to give this guy Jason a ride home even though I had to drive past my own house in order to get him there. One night, I am driving Jason home and as we pass my house, I notice my street lined with cars. “He better not be having a party,” I say to Jason as he just looks at me sympathetically. I drop Jason off and make my way back home. Once I hit my street, I realize those cars were not there for a party. They are a mixture of undercover cop cars and regular police cruisers. The lights of the flashlights move
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