“Wait here,” Mama Jane said. Then she disappeared behind a dark wooden door with the word “Office” stenciled on the outside in faded, yellow lettering.
She closed the door behind her, but I could still hear it when a deep male voice yelled, “Are you crazy? You picked up some girl on the road?”
Nicky did not sound like the younger, male version of Mama Jane that I had been hoping for.
I couldn’t hear anything else after that. Mama Jane was probably trying to further explain, but I guess it didn’t work. The door slammed open, then Nicky came out and made a straight beeline for me.
“Your mama ain’t looking for you? That’s what you trying to tell me?”
He was dressed in a suit and a tie, but he was a very large man. Six-five at least with thick muscles and an extremely unsettling, unblinking stare.
I had to control the urge to flinch and take several steps back as he yelled at me. I found myself very scared of this loud man and his loud words, but still I said, “No, she isn’t looking for me. I swear she isn’t, sir.” I told him like I told Mama Jane, “She’s not that kind of mama.”
Nicky’s eyes bugged and he looked back over his shoulder at Mama Jane. “And she talk country, too? Now I know she got somebody looking for her. Her people probably worried sick because she out here with you.”
He turned back to me. “Where are you from?”
Something in his voice told me it wouldn’t be wise to deny him the answer to this question, or even to hesitate.
“Mississippi,” I said.
“Mississippi,” he repeated. “What part of Mississippi?”
I went quiet again. No, my mother wasn’t looking for me. But if this man put in a phone call to the Glass Police, they might go out to Cora’s house or stop by Glass High and find out that I hadn’t been in school since last Friday. If just one of them got it into their heads to do the right thing, then there’d be APBs to worry about.
Mama Jane put a hand on Nicky’s beefy arm. “Maybe she could wash dishes or sweep up around here. She smart and she work hard.” She promised this, even though she barely knew me.
My heart swelled. I was already coming to love Mama Jane. Love her like the mama she had told me I needed back in the first hotel room.
But Nicky turned on her. “We got illegals for all that shit. Nobody with papers in L.A. is doing that work no more.”
“Maybe she could be a waiter.”
Nicky stared at her like she was one of those Skid Row bums on crack. “Okay, then ABC come up in here and then what?”
“ABC? Who’s ABC? And what they got to do with it?” Mama Jane asked.
“Alcohol Beverage Control. They the ones that come up in here asking for IDs, then what happens when they find out this one’s underage. They’d shut me down. Plus I already got all the waiters I need.”
“Well, what else do you need?” Mama Jane put her hands on her hips and drew herself up to her full six feet. She glared at Nicky like this whole situation was all his fault.
But Nicky wasn’t backing down, “I don’t need nothing, Aunt Jane. I got everything I need except a singer, and I got girls coming in to audition for that tomorrow.”
“I can sing.”
Everybody, including me, looked surprised to hear those words. It even took me a second to realize that it had been me who had said them. And I only figured out it was me because I just narrowly stopped myself from adding that I used to be Tina Turner when I was six.
Mama Jane and Nicky both turned toward me now. Nicky, especially, looked me up and down, his eyes running over my thrift store T-shirt that said “Hattiesburg,” and my stonewashed Wranglers.
“You can sing?”
I didn’t blame him for looking incredulous because I didn’t believe me—didn’t even know why I had said that. But somebody else, somebody I can only describe as Me-But-Not-Me, answered, “Yes, I can sing.”