A Room on Lorelei Street by Mary E. Pearson Page A

“I’m in a hurry, if you don’t mind. I’m on my way to work.” He obliges and lifts her hood. He pulls out the stick, shakes his head, wipes it with a blue paper towel, and shoves it in again. He shakes his head again when he pulls it out, and Zoe’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel. Maybe she drove it too far. Maybe the engine is ruined already. God, she can never face Grandma with that.
    The attendant walks over to her window, carefully holding the stick like there is a virus on the end. “I can add more oil if you want, but I’d just be adding it to sludge. When was the last time you changed the oil in this thing?”
    Changed the oil? She has never changed the oil. “I think it’s been a while,” she says. “Does it need it?”
    He silently nods his grease-smudged face like the condition is too grave to utter a word.
    â€œHow much?” she asks.
    â€œChange the oil, new filter, and top off your other fluids for twenty-nine bucks. Best thing you can do for your car. Simple stuff like that’ll keep it running for years. Could have it done in half an hour.”
    Zoe sighs. She doesn’t have half an hour. She doesn’t have twenty-nine bucks. But she needs a car that will last for years. A car that Grandma can’t blame her for trashing. “Can I leave it and pick it up around nine?”
    â€œSure thing.”
    She grabs her purse and gets out of the car, dropping the keys into the attendant’s greasy palm. She is afraid to ask but she does. “And can I pay when I pick it up?”
    â€œYou bet.”
    So much for groceries for the refrigerator. She heads for Murray’s, grateful that she didn’t burn up the engine. Mama would have. It is still light outside, but she can see Murray’s neon sign half a block away already glowing with its red and yellow lights.
    Ungrateful? What did Grandma mean by that? Zoe grabs a cigarette from her purse for one last smoke before her shift begins. She notices the pack is nearly empty. Didn’t she just open it this morning? It must have been yesterday. What should I be grateful for? She lights up and takes a drag, wondering if she looks like Grandma when she does. She tries to keep her face smooth and light as she inhales, her chin drawn up and her eyes soft and round.
    Grateful? For what? That Mama didn’t get rid of her when she was nothing more than a peanut inside of her? Grateful for all of Kyle’s crappy diapers? Grateful for all the times Mama didn’t show up for parent conferences at school? She almost smiles—maybe she should be grateful for that. Or maybe grateful for all the life-sucking, meandering, tearful monologues that squeeze the spirit right from her heart and have everything to do with Mama and nothing, nothing to do with Zoe? I’m only seventeen, Grandma. Don’t I deserve a life, too?
    The streets of Ruby are busy, and the sound of her footsteps is lost in the rumble of the trucks and cars whizzing past her. Everyone is in a hurry to get home. Home. So they can enjoy the twilight, the brief rosy wash of quiet before evening brings its own busyness. She slows her pace and searches for that feeling, a fluttering hint she remembers, so she must have known it once. You can’t remember if it never happened.
    There are things …
    She is grateful…grateful…. Mama holding her, wiping tears and hair from her cheeks when she has her first period on the bus and Kenny Beeson announces it to everyone. Mama whispering and cooing over and over again that she is a woman now and Kenny is nothing but a jerk-off little boy. Grateful. Mama, bragging on the phone to Aunt Nadine that Zoe is five-six and still growing, Zoe with silky black hair, Zoe with eyes that can stop traffic. Mama said those things. Grateful. Mama, leaning over, so slowly, tenderly, kissing Daddy’s cold lips when Zoe couldn’t even walk up to the coffin. Mama.