When Mila returned from Baltimore, she was no longer a child, though no one around her seemed prepared to notice. She saw herself as a young woman by then, worldly enough, having been to the US and back, and in her mind school was over.
“I’ll get me a job in no time, with my bilingual eloquence. Watch.”
The same aunt who had helped before helped again, feeding Mila lunch most days because food was scarce in the rented rooms. Whatever money came in came from her father’s hustling. Julia, meanwhile, spent her days dressed as if she might leave for work at any moment, in whatever fancy American clothes had survived the latest eviction.
One day, Julia became visibly agitated:
“I can’t believe he’d say that, who is this piece of shit…and why is she even talking like she herself never needed MY help, anyway?”
Vintage Julia.
Turns out her daughter in Baltimore and husband had strongly suggested her two sons, both in their early twenties, find work “someplace, anyplace, start at a gas station even.” Instead of everyone just waiting around for father to bring either money or food, seldom both.
“My sons are not going to work at a gas station, not in this town.”
One day Mila came home excited, carrying news of her first real job. What she thought she saw in Julia’s face was not pride exactly, but something close enough for the girl to mistake it for warmth.
It turned out to be a miserable commission job, the kind that paid almost nothing. Mila was still underage, and no matter how articulate or presentable she was, nobody else seemed eager to hire her.
Once that job fizzled out, Julia found herself with Mila around all day again and suddenly rediscovered her parental authority. She enrolled the girl in a nearby school.
And so it went for months, until the day Mila returned from school and found their mattress propped against the wall out front, along with everything else.
She found Julia speed walking her humiliation away.
“Good for you,” she said to Mila, “you’re taking this stoically…”
In short order, they were all trailing their father, literally walking behind him on the streets, in his search for rooms to rent.
He found one for Julia and Mila, literally on a rooftop. Two men occupied adjacent rooms. One of them enjoyed curing antlers and skulls by drying them in the sun. The other tenant was an old, puny man who had the audacity to offer marriage to Julia, offering what he thought was a hand up.
Julia felt wounded.
“How dare you,” she told him, “this is temporary for me, how dare you, I’m a married woman!”
They were soon thrown out of the rooftop room, too. And, again, it fell on her father to venture out and find rooms.
The day came when Mila spotted a want ad in a newspaper. A late night cocktail waitress job at a fancy bar in Sheraton Hotel.
Her father rarely voiced his opinion but when it came to even applying for the job, he was against her interest in it, because it was a cocktail lounge, and Mila was underage.
Julia didn’t seem to care one way or the other.
Mila got the 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift.
From that point forward, her trajectory changed.
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