Chapter 2

(Pov Nadia)

The bus ride home took forty minutes.

I sat in the back row with my duffel between my feet, and my face turned toward the window the whole time. I didn't want anyone to see my eyes. They were swollen already and I knew it. I could feel the thickness in my eyelids, the sting that wouldn't settle no matter how many times I blinked. I held two fingers against my mouth and told myself to breathe slowly and just get home first. 

Our building was a bungalow walk-up on Dowell’s Street. The paint on the walls had been peeling since I was twelve. The staircase smelled like mildew and the neighbour's cooking. I climbed it with my duffel cutting into my shoulder and my chest still painful from crying, and I stopped outside apartment 2B and stood there for a moment with my key in my hand as I wondered how my mother would react seeing me home. “Just go in. She'll understand. She's your mother.” I said to myself as I turned the key and pushed the door open.

My mother was in the kitchen. I could hear her moving around, the drag of a pot across the stove, the sound of the tap running and shutting off. Our apartment was small enough that there was nowhere to slip in quietly. She heard me the second the door opened.

"Who is that?" "Yes, Mother. It's me."

She dropped the plates. Then the sound of the tap shutting off completely and her footsteps crossing from the kitchen into the narrow hallway where I was still standing with my bag on my shoulder.

She looked at me. Then she looked at the bag as her eyes moved back to my face.

“Why are you carrying that bag?"

I opened my mouth and I genuinely could not find the first word upon everything I had rehearsed on the bus, all of it fell apart the moment I looked at her face and saw that she already knew. 

But then, I finally answered. "Mom, something happened and I need…"

"Something happened." She repeated it slowly as curiosity flooded her eyes. "Nadia, why do you have your bag? Where are your work clothes? Why aren't you at the house?" She asked.

"I was dismissed, mother." I kept my voice as steady as I could. "Mrs. De Montclair… she sacked me this morning."

She stared at me for three full seconds. Then she pulled out the nearest kitchen chair and sat down heavily, with both hands clasped together, and looked at the wall the way people look when they are deciding how angry they are going to allow themselves to be.

"Dismissed?” she said.  "You were dismissed, how? For what?"

I set my bag down by the door. My hands were still shaking slightly and I pressed them against my thighs to make them stop. "It's complicated, mother. She accused me of…. " I stopped a bit.

"What did you do?" She asked, like she'd been holding it ready.

I felt a knot in my belly. "I didn't do anything wrong, mother."

"Then why would a woman like Helena De Montclair throw you out of her house, Nadia? That woman doesn't dismiss people without reason. What did you do?"

"Mom please…" "Answer me."

I pressed my lips together and looked at my mother's face as she boiled in clear anger now.

"She said I was…. that Leandro and I… " 

I stopped and tried again. 

"Mother, Leandro and I, had become close over the past few months. And we…. I care about him and he…. "

My mother's chair scraped back so fast that it nearly tipped as I stammered.

She stood up and looked at me like she didn't recognize me.

"Leandro De Montclair? And you…. a maid, you went and opened yourself up to that family's son?"

"It wasn't like that…. "

"Then what was it like, Nadia? What exactly was it like?" Her voice climbed, and I watched the colour come into her face. "Do you know what people will say? Do you even think before you do these things? You think that boy was serious about you? You think De Montclair was going to bring a maid home to meet his family?"

"He wasn't like that with me." I responded.

"He wasn't like that." She mimicked the words back at me as her mouth twisted. 

"Look at you. Standing there with your bag, with nowhere to go. Your scholarship is on the line and everything I sacrificed so you could have a better life. And this is what you've done with it? Chasing a rich boy like a fool. Like a complete, senseless fool?"

“Mom, please…. Please just stop.”

"Do you think this is a film? Do you think men like that fall in love with girls like you? You are a maid, Nadia. A maid, not a wife or girlfriend. A common maid, and you've gone and destroyed everything because you forgot what you were."

I felt pain again in my heart. I had been holding myself together for two hours, pressing everything down and keeping my face straight. I came back for peace, only to meet chaos. The tears welled up again as I just stood there in my mother's kitchen and cried with my hands hanging at my sides, and my mother looked at me despitefully.

"Look, crying won't fix it," she said. What's done has already been done."*

I grabbed my bag immediately from the floor.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going out. I just… I need to go. I can't be here right now."

"Nadia, you don't dare walk out on me.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

"I don't know." I wiped my face with the back of my hand. "I don't know anything right now."

"Are you going to call him?"* I looked at her as she stood there with her arms still folded.

I hadn't let myself think about it. I had been afraid to think about it, because the moment I thought about it, I also had to think about what it would mean if he didn't answer.

"I don't know if… " "Call him, Nadia." She said plainly. “Whatever happened, or whatever his mother did, he should know and he should hear it from you. Call him."

"And if he doesn't pick up?" She was quiet for a moment.

"Then at least you'll know, and you can figure out what to do next. But you can't just sit here and wonder. That's worse. Just call him."

I dialed and held the phone against my ear, but his number was switched off. I tried again, still the same thing. I lowered the phone slowly.

I sat with the phone in my lap and stared at the wall across from me. In my chest something was working itself into a shape I couldn't describe yet. He knows what has happened. His mother would have told him and his phone is switched off.

I pressed the thought down. I dialed again but still the same thing as my mother,left to check her pot on fire.

:

Few seconds later I was still on the couch when it hit me. I noticed my stomach wobble as it pulled tight. A cold sweat prickled up the back of my neck and across my forehead at the same time.

I pressed my hand against my mouth and I was already off the couch.

I rushed  to the bathroom in time, dropped to my knees in front of the toilet and my body heaved. My throat burning, my eyes streaming, my whole body shaking with the effort of it. I gripped the sides of the toilet and my knees pressed into the cold tile as I vomited heavily.

When it stopped I was breathing in shallow, ragged bursts. My hands were trembling against the porcelain.

The bathroom floor was cold under my knees. My vision blurred as I tried to straighten up and hold myself together but my arms weren't cooperating.

Then suddenly, It dawned on me.