back in miss
olga's kitchen

I felt somehow different as I walked down Fifth Street in my old neighborhood. The bicolored sidewalk swirled blue and green before me, and each step I took was smaller than the one before, as if I were walking toward a place where I didn't want to be.

I stood on the steps with raised fist, wondering if Miss Olga would recognize me. I wondered if five years had changed my appearance as much as they had changed my mind.

Miss Olga opened the door and said, “No sound will come if you don't actually knock.”

Still the same Miss Olga.

“How are you doing, Miss Olga?”

“Not as fine as you,” she said, pulling me inside. “I see you're keeping your hair up.”

Self-consciously I touched my hair, nervous that one of the ever-present peas might jump out.

“You look like you're standing straighter.”

“I've been wearing a brace to help correct my back.”

“It's really working.”

We fell into place like familiar puzzle pieces. She filled my head with the goings-on in the neighborhood while she filled a plate, not one of the three already in place, with beans and rice.

“Your brother's out,” she said, shaking her head. Without her saying a word, I knew that he was back up to the same old stuff. “I'm surprised he hasn't contacted you. I guess it's for the best.”

I hadn't seen Freeman since my mother's funeral, when he was allowed out for two hours. I had thought about him from time to time, but I never had the desire to write or call him.

Miss Olga looked at me over her plate. “Do you miss him?”

“Not really,” I said. “It sounds cold, but I never really had much of a life with him.”

“Do you wish you had?”

“If it means that I would have turned out like him, no.”