I find a light switch on the wall, flip it on…and nothing.
This must really be a vacation cabin if the electricity’s turned off. I don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. No electricity means no current occupants. But save for the shafts of moonlight shining through the windows, the cabin’s pitch black.
I’m not loving the thought of moving around this cabin in the complete dark, but the pinching hunger in my stomach reminds me to be brave. I have to find something to eat. For me and the life growing inside of me.
I touch my way across the room, knocking into what feels like big, heavy furniture and smooth wooden walls until I come to a swinging door.
Thankfully, the kitchen is smaller and brighter than the living room. I can easily make my way to the refrigerator with just the light streaming through its windows to guide me. And this time, I easily avoid the room’s primary piece of furniture, a circular round table. It has four chairs situated around it, so maybe this cabin belongs to a family.
It was always just me and my mom growing up in Atlanta, and most of my school friends were in the same single mom boat. But when I went to Emory, I’d met girls who did things like meet their families at vacation cabins on the weekends. Cabins that might have looked like this. Who knows, even though we were attending the same school, those nuclear family girls lived in a different world from me.
They weren’t former state beauty queens who had to strip to make up the difference between their scholarship money and their real living expenses. Their dads hadn’t abandoned them, and their mothers weren’t dead. Those girls were protected and loved. None of them would have fallen into Tommy’s trap….
The familiar mix of regret and shame washes over me. Why did I believe him so easily? Why hadn’t I listened to my best friends, Cynda and Billie, who’d worried from the start that he was too controlling? Why had I insisted on pretending to myself and others that I was living in a fairy tale when it was really a nightmare?
But I can’t change the past, I remind myself, only try to fix it as best I can for the sake of my baby. So I shake off the many regrets and concentrate on the refrigerator.
It’s a nice one. Stainless steel with a smart screen. But my shoulders droop with disappointment when I find it completely empty. Figures, considering there’s no electricity. I should have thought of that before getting my hopes up. Dumb, dumb, I’m so dumb.
Sometimes it feels like me and the girl who made it into Emory are two totally separate people.
I check the cabinets. Nothing there except plates. But then, jackpot! When I open the double pantry, I find all manner of dry goods: beans, canned vegetables, and several packages of pasta. Not only that, when I turn on the tap, water comes out. Hot water, which means there must be a gas heater in play somewhere on the property.
I only need one more thing to make this work.
“Please let it be a gas stove,” I beg whoever is up there, watching over me.
And…jackpot number two, it totally is! I grab the pasta and a saucepan from the cabinet below the range. Less than fifteen minutes later, I’m plating up the first home cooked meal I’ve had in…
Wow, I think it might be years. Tommy liked to eat out at restaurants. And I was expected to be at the door, ready and waiting for him whenever he came off his shift, dressed to slay in full hair and makeup.
Let me tell you, after years of restaurants and a week of scarfing gas station food in my car, eating a meal I made myself at a kitchen table feels like a dream come true. The only things that could make this dinner any better would be some overhead light and a nice glass of wine.
Not that I can have wine these days.
The thought of the baby growing inside of me takes some delight out of eating my first proper meal in days. I’d always dreamed of having a child, but not with Tommy. And not like this.
I pause, eating halfway through my plate of spaghetti. I’m no longer hungry, and suddenly the day is catching up with me. I feel tired and weak. So, so weak.
But I can’t take good food for granted. And who knows when I’ll get my next meal? I force the rest of the spaghetti down, then rinse off the plate. There’s a dusty bottle of dish soap but no dishwasher or drying off towel that I can discern.
I do the best I can and leave the plate to dry on the counter. I’ll put it back tomorrow morning…and figure out how to make it the rest of the way to Canada without a car.
But tonight I’ve got to get some rest. It’s been a week since I slept in a proper bed.
I go back through the living room and feel my way around until I come to a hallway. I open the first door to find a larger than expected room. If I’m reading the room’s shadow play right, what looks like a gigantic bed stands against the back wall.
Okay, I’m sure there’s a bathroom somewhere in here, but it feels all kinds of wrong to not only break into a cabin but also make myself right at home in what’s obviously the master bedroom.
I close the door and open the next one, hoping for a smaller bedroom. But the second room is the first one’s complete opposite. Super small, like a closet with just enough room for an extra-long cot. And I’m not choosy at this point, but there’s definitely no bathroom in here.
Okay, I’ll try the last door, and if that’s a bust, I’ll just have to tamp down my guilt and go back to the huge master bedroom.
But to my pleasant surprise, the room behind door number three is perfect. Regular queen sized bed. A small bathroom with a door I can close behind me. Please let there be hot water in here too, I beg whoever’s watching over me again.
And I must be on a roll. The shower turns on with no problem, and after a few moments, the water warms up. I waste no time, stripping out of my grimy dress and jumping into the shower. God, the hot water feels so good on my skin. It makes me wish I could get my hair wet too.
But washing and conditioning my hair in the dark probably isn’t a good idea either. Pretty much the only thing I was allowed to keep from my time at Magic Peaches after Tommy made me quit was my long blonde weave. It makes me look and feel as beautiful as Beyonce, but washing the golden extensions is a job. Plus, all the products I’d bought to maintain my weave at my last appointment were in the car that disappeared.
With a sigh, I grab the first bottle I my hands come to after fumbling around the dark shower. Maybe it’s body wash. Maybe it’s shampoo. Whatever it is, it smells good. Like pine and wood, same as the cabin. I gratefully soap up my body, then rinse off, careful to keep my hair out of the water as I do.
After stepping out of the shower, I plait my blonde tresses into two long braids. A warm memory of my Canadian mom doing the same thing when I first started getting weaves for beauty pageants washes over me. God, I miss her. I don’t think I’ll ever stop regretting that she died of cancer before she could see me win the Princess Georgia pageant. She would have been so proud.
But not so much now…another stab of shame replaces the warm memories.
I should put on some clothes. But looking down at the dress and underwear I left outside the shower, I decide against it. I don’t want to dirty the bed’s clean sheets. So I leave the clothes in the bathroom and return to the bedroom wrapped in the towel I found hanging on the back of the door.
Ugh, it’s even colder in here than before. But I’m dead tired, so I don’t bother to go searching for a thermostat. I just dive straight into the queen-sized bed, hoping the blankets will be enough to keep me from freezing.