DEBT by Jessica Gadziala

there, when I was tired, when I had a bad day at work, when I had to turn off the oven and go fetch my father, when I had to drain my bank account for the third time in one month... when the anger and resentment and sadness would overwhelm me. It was in those moments that I mourned the loss of a dream, the chance to open a little bakery and spend my days covered in flour and going home smelling sugar and cinnamon on my skin and never having to worry about loan sharks or debts or casinos ever again. To be, to put it plainly, happy.
    Happy. It was a foreign concept. It was the stuff of fairy tales. It was for people who didn't have to spend every single moment of their lives with a knot in their stomach, just waiting for the next shoe to fall, the next small catastrophe to come barreling into their lives, terrified for the call that could one day say that the worry was gone for good. But only because my father screwed over the wrong kind of man, the kind of man who wouldn't tolerate not getting their money when they wanted it, the kind of man who would take his life as payment.
    As Byron had been willing to do.
    See, when Byron told me that I didn't know much about the men in our town, he was wrong.
    Because he didn't know all the times I had to creep down back alleys with bile searing through my stomach lining to find my father beaten and bloodied by small-time loan sharks. He didn't know about the time when I was fifteen and home alone and one of the men he owed money to came to the house and forced his way in, grabbed one of my barely-there teenage breasts and shoved his hand into my panties before my screams roused Old Olie from across the hall, prompting her to come storming in with a bat and strong arms from lugging around six babies in her youth. He didn't know about the time I had to walk through a massage parlor, my shoes sticking to the floor and I knew exactly what kinds of fluids that were on my soles, to find the owner in a back room as he fucked a skinny Asian girl who couldn't have been much older than my eighteen years at the time in the ass while another woman, older, used-up looking shoved a dildo up his ass, and pay him back the five grand my father owed him, five grand I got together because I took a night shift stocking shelves at a department store and a weekend job waiting tables.
    I knew all about the men in our town.
    I knew what they were capable of.
    I knew all-too well.
    That was why I never gave up on my father.
    Because a bullet in his brain didn't solve my problems.
    All that would make me was completely and utterly alone in the world with so much guilt filling my gut that I could choke on it.
    There would be no more cupcakes at three-forty-five on February third, no high tea, no one around to ask and listen about my day and my hopes and fears and dreams.
    There would just be me.
    But Byron was right about that too... I had no idea who I even was without my father around.
    And maybe I was a little terrified to find out.
    Later, much later, so late that it was almost early, I went back down to the kitchen, guilt flooding my system at leaving such a mess. I didn't want Ella to walk into a filthy kitchen the next morning.
    But when I walked in, the room illuminated by the dim light on over the sink, it was immaculate. The cookies were in a plastic container on the island. My coffee cake was wrapped in plastic and left in the center of the oven, one hefty chunk taken out. All the ingredients I had strewn all over the counters were put away; the dishwasher had been run; the counters had even been wiped of all traces of flour and sugar.
    I moved to turn and go back to my room, even more confused than ever about the enigma named Byron St. James who seemed wholly incapable of picking his damn towel up off the floor after his shower, but somehow knew how to clean a kitchen spotless, when I noticed something right in front of the coffee machine. Curious, I walked over to find a sliver of the coffee cake I