Chapter 4: Thirty one dollars- Maya pov

She was up at 5:45 AM.

Not because of an alarm. Maya had not needed an alarm since she was fourteen years old. Her body just knew. It woke her up, assessed the situation, and got on with it. No snoozing. No lying there staring at the ceiling. Feet on the floor, Water on her face, Notebook open by six.

She had a system for mornings the same way she had a system for everything. Cheap instant coffee first… Not the good cart kind, The jar on her desk kind that tasted like ambition and disappointment equally. Thirty minutes of reading. Then a review of her budget. Then whatever the day needed.

This morning the budget review took four minutes and left her staring at her phone.

Thirty one dollars.

She had sent fifty home on Sunday. Her father never asked her to. He would let the shop fall down around him before he asked his daughter for help. So she sent it without being asked and he received it without saying much and that was the language they loved each other in.

Thirty one dollars until Friday.

She wrote it in the margin of her notebook. Drew a small box around it. Closed the notebook. Got dressed. Went to class. She did not think about it.

She was very good at not thinking about things.

She was getting worse at it.

She was calling it a problem…Naming things helped contain them. The problem should be Ethan. 

Not Ethan exactly. The idea of him. The way he had sat beside her on the corridor floor Wednesday like the floor was a completely reasonable place to be. The way the coffee had been from the good cart, Not the machine. The way he had said okay and then actually meant it and walked away without making her feel guilty for asking.

She had been turning that okay over in her head for two days.

She did not have room for okays that meant something. She had thirty one dollars and a father whose shop was bleeding and a scholarship that required a grade average she could not slip on and a library job three evenings a week that paid just enough to keep thirty one from becoming ten.

She did not have room for warm things that did not fit the system.

She told herself that she would walk to her room at ten o'clock. She told herself that again shelving books at the library that evening while the rest of campus was somewhere loud doing something that had nothing to do with Economics.

"You should come out," said Bisi from the other side of the shelf. Bisi was warm and relentless and had absolutely no system,

which Maya found baffling and secretly fascinating.

"I am working."

"We finish at eight."

"I am reading."

"Maya. It is Friday."

"You said that."

"You did not react to it the first time." Bisi leaned around the shelf. "Is there someone you are avoiding? Or someone you are not avoiding and that is the whole problem."

Maya shelved two books without answering.

Bisi gasped like she had been given a gift.

"There is someone."

"There is no one."

"You went quiet. You only go quiet when something is true."

"I go quiet when a question does not deserve an answer."

"What is his name?"

"Goodnight Bisi."

"Maya…"

“On Tuesday."

She walked home in the dark with her hands in her pockets and the specific feeling of someone who had said too little and somehow still said too much. Bisi was going to remember this. Bisi remembered everything.

Back in her room she made her instant coffee and opened her reading and did not think about Ethan.

She thought about him for forty minutes.

Then her phone rang.

Her mother's voice came through warm and immediate like she had been sitting by the phone.

"How are you?"

"Good. Tired. How is the shop."

"The shop is the shop. Are you eating."

"Yes."

"Properly?"

"Yes Mama."

"Because you sound thin."

"You cannot hear thin."

"I can hear you. Same thing."

Maya smiled despite herself. Her mother had a way of doing that…Making her smile at exactly the moment she did not want to.

"Are you making friends?" her mother asked.

Maya thought about the corridor floor. The twelve minutes. The notebook shifting just to make space.

"Some," she said.

"Good some or just some."

"Mama."

"I am asking."

"Just some."

Her mother made that sound. The one that was not quite a sigh and not quite a laugh. The sound of a woman who knew her daughter completely and had learned which hills were worth dying on.

"Your father wants to say hello."

Rustling. Then his voice.

"Aya."

Just that. Her name in his mouth. The one nobody else used. Something loosened in her chest the way it always did.

"Hi Baba."

"How is my scholar?"

"Working hard."

"Good. Good." A pause. She counted three full seconds. "Listen. This month. Do not worry about sending anything. Keep it for yourself."

Maya went completely still.

Her father had never said that. Two years of sending money home and he had never once told her to keep it. He always said thank you. He always said it helps. He had never said keep it.

"Baba…"

"You work hard enough. Keep it this month okay."

"Is everything okay?"

"Everything is fine. I just…" Another pause. Shorter. Like he had decided something mid sentence. "Keep it. Okay?"

"Okay," she said.

They talked a little longer. The cat kept coming into the shop. Her cousin's new job. The mango tree in the yard that was finally giving fruit. Normal things. Easy things. She laughed twice and meant it.

She hung up and sat very still.

The thirty one dollar was still in the margin of her notebook inside its small box.

Her father had never told her to keep it.

She picked up her pen. She tried to write something. Anything. Her hand would not move. For the first time in as long as she could remember, her system had absolutely nothing to offer her.

She stared at the page.

Then without deciding to, she turned to the margin where Thursday was crossed out. Where she had written the two lines she had not crossed out.

Things that get comfortable get complicated.

Maybe that is not always bad.

She read them both.

Then underneath, Very small, Before she could stop herself.

I wish I could call him.

She stared at that for a long time.

Then she closed the notebook.

She did not cross it out.

She turned the light off and lay in the dark and listened to the campus outside her window and thought about her father's voice and the three seconds of silence and the way he had decided something mid sentence and chan

ged direction.

She thought about Ethan too.

She hated that she thought about Ethan too.