I nodded. “Yup!”
“Well, Bessie is going to need a friend to beat the heat with, so come by whenever you want. I’ve got a piece of ice with your name on it,” Bernard said.
Next to him, his giant Bernese Mountain Dog named Bessie let out a low bark and I laughed. “Okay! I’ll come by tomorrow. Bye, Bessie!”
Bessie barked again and Bernard gave me and my mom one last warm smile before returning to his work. My mom snickered. “You make friends all over the place.”
“It’s nice to have friends,” I said. “Everyone who comes to your cleaners loves you. I want to be like that.”
My mom owned a dry-cleaning store in the middle of a row of small, family-owned businesses on a rundown block on the north side of Chicago. Even though the neighborhood we lived in had the appearance of being unsafe, my family lived happily there with all the others in a thick Italian community. Most of the businesses there were owned by someone who lived right in the neighborhood and my mom was no exception. The only problem was, the area we lived in wasn’t frequented by many people outside the neighborhood itself. It meant none of the businesses made a ton of money. My mom made just enough to keep her business above water, while my father worked a job at Chicago’s quarry to support our family.
We finally reached the front of the store and my mom set me down so that she could unlock the front door. “Get the sign,mia angelo.”
My mom pulled the door open and I skipped into the building and climbed into the window display to flip the open/closed sign back to open. Even though I was only eight, it was my job when I got home from school to help my mom out as much as I could until my father came to pick me up after he got off of work. Since she still had to work, I wanted to be as easy to care for as possible. It was a lesson my older brother had taught me.
“I’ll get the bags, mama,” I said as I climbed out of the window display.
My mom smiled. “Don’t I just have the best little helper in the world? Thank you.”
She walked toward the back of the store and I ran behind the counter to pull out the box of bags to pack in all the clean clothes. It was easy enough for me to say that I was just being helpful by working with the bags, but in truth, I liked the way the clean clothes smelled and got to get a whiff up close when I was helping pack up the clothes.
The box was heavy, but I was used to handling it and used all my weight to pull it out from under the counter and flip the flaps back.
“How many, mama?” I called out.
“Fifteen,” she yelled back. “Sandwich or cheese and crackers for a snack?”
“Cheese and crackers please,” I called out, then I knelt in front of the box and started carefully counting out the bags.
The plastic liked to stick together so I had to be extra diligent in separating the bags. We’d accidentally sent out two bags stuck together before, which cost my mom’s business money. If we ordered a box with 350 bags, we needed to send out 350 clean sets of clothes, otherwise, we were losing dollars.
At least that was what my dad said.
I was about halfway through counting the bags out when I heard the jingle of the front door opening. My mom didn’t like it when I showed myself to customers when she wasn’t immediately visible, because she was afraid something bad would happen. I knew she could hear the door’s jingle from the small break room in the back, so I crawled a little further under the counter and continued to count out the bags.
My mom came rushing from the back, already apologizing for not being in the front, but then she stopped cold. I looked up at her and the look of horror on her face was haunting.
I opened my mouth, but she eyed me and shook her head, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Hello again, Irene,” a man’s voice said. His voice was harsh and double-edged like a monster. It sent an immediate chill down my spine and I cowered as far under the counter as I could. “Have you had time to consider my offer?”
“By offer, you mean extortion?” my mom said, the last word was one I didn’t know.
A few different voices let out disgusting laughs, and then the man spoke again. “I wouldn’t consider giving your business a much-needed boost, extortion. I’m just hoping to become an investor.”
My mom’s left hand slipped under the counter, and her pointer finger extended out. I followed it to where it was pointing and I realized she was directing me to the one thing I’d been told repeatedlyneverto touch.
My dad’s gun.
I looked back up at my mom, but she was keeping her eyes forward. As quietly as I could, I slid over and grabbed the gun from the nook it was stashed in and dragged it over to my mom’s hand. Her right hand dropped beneath the counter then, and she quietly started to fiddle with the weapon. I backed as far away as possible, my entire body shaking and my heart pounding.
“I’ve decided it’s not a good move for my business,” my mom said, “but I appreciate your interest.”
“Well now, thatisa shame,” the man’s voice said, and then I heard a dubious click. “Maybe I wasn’t clear before. I’ll see to it that your business doesn’t come to any unruly accidents in exchange for a percentage of your profits. It’s a good deal, and believe you me, the consequences of turning this deal down are much worse.”
“You’ve bullied nearly everyone in this neighborhood into your corner, Angelo. It’s not happening here.” I’d never heard my mom’s voice so serious and angry before. There was fear there too, but more than that, there was a fire. “You don’t scare me. You can leave.”
The man that my mom called Angelo tutted at her. “That’s unfortunate. I really did like you, Irene. Carlos as well. We could have been a good team. Oh well.”
