Chapter 7 - The Silver Tray On The Checkered Floor
The tray hadn't moved in three days.
That was how I knew it meant something. In my mother's house nothing stayed where it fell. The housekeeper came through with a dusting cloth every morning before breakfast and the marble was supposed to look untouched, like nobody lived there at all. But the silver tray was still on the black-and-white checkered floor at the base of the stairs, just to the left of the bottom step where I had been standing that night. Someone had kept not picking it up.
I sat on the second step after school and held my block against my chest and looked down at it. From up here I could see the lip of it catching the light from the chandelier. It was supposed to be polished. There was a faint smudge on one edge.
My mother passed through the foyer with her phone to her ear and didn't look at it. She stepped around it without breaking her stride, her heels clicking on the marble.
"They'll set the table for six on Thursday," she said into the phone. She didn't look at me either.
The maid came out of the laundry room with a stack of folded hand towels. She didn't look at the tray at first either, and that was what made me understand. She moved like she didn't see it on purpose.
When my mother disappeared into the kitchen, the maid stopped beside the stairs. She bent to adjust the towels and her voice was very low.
"When you're ready, look under it," she said, not looking at me. "Don't let it be found."
My heart beat so hard I could feel it through my sweater. I kept my hands tight around my block.
She walked away.
I waited until the laundry room door clicked and the house was quiet except for the low hum of the heater. Then I slid down one step at a time until my brown shoes were on the checkered floor. The tray was bigger than I'd thought up close, heavy and cold. For a long second I just stared at it because I was afraid to touch what was underneath and find nothing.
I knelt. My sweater sleeve brushed the silver. I tipped the edge with my fingertips and felt paper.
It was a pink laundry slip, the kind the dry cleaner used for my father's shirts, folded into a tiny square. The creases were sharp, like she had pressed them with her nail. In the middle, in quick blue ink, was a phone number and seven words.
*County Family Services - ask for Diane.*
Under that, *You can call.*
My hands were shaking. I wasn't allowed to use the house phone without asking and I'd never memorized a number that wasn't home. The numbers blurred. I tried to say them in my head and they slipped away.
My block was still in my left hand. I held it tighter without thinking and my thumb found the two holes, smooth worn circles I had traced a thousand times when I didn't know what to do with my hands. Without meaning to I started moving my fingertip from one hole to the other, left hole, right hole, like they were buttons.
Five. Five. Five. I dragged my finger around the left hole for the first five, then the right hole for the next. I gave each number a place on the wood - the first three numbers lived in the left circle, the next four in the right, then back again. I whispered them very quietly, not the numbers themselves but the movement, so my hand would remember even if my head didn't.
I heard the housekeeper's cart before I saw her. The wheels squeaked on the marble from the hallway.
I shoved the slip back under the tray and my whole body went cold. She was coming around the corner with her spray bottle, humming, her eyes already sweeping the foyer for anything out of place.
"What's that still doing there," she muttered to herself, looking right at the tray.
She reached down.
I didn't think. I slid my foot forward and nudged the tray maybe two inches with the toe of my brown shoe. Just enough that the edge covered the pink corner that had been peeking out. The metal scraped lightly on the marble and she paused.
She looked at me standing there clutching my block.
"You kick that, honey?" she said.
I shook my head. I couldn't speak. My finger was still pressed inside one of the holes on my block like it could hold the numbers safe.
She frowned, then lifted the tray with one hand. My stomach dropped. But underneath was just checkered marble now, because I'd kicked it far enough. The slip was still there, pressed flat under the center where she hadn't looked. She glanced at the bottom of the tray, saw a water spot, and wiped it with her rag.
"Somebody's getting sloppy," she said, and she walked away with the tray tucked under her arm, leaving the little pink square sitting like a lost ticket on the black tile.
May you like
I stood over it until her cart squeaked away. Then I bent fast, grabbed it, and folded it smaller and pushed it up inside my sleeve, against my wrist where my sweater cuff hid it. The paper was warm from my hand.
Behind me the laundry room door opened again. I didn't turn around. I just pressed my block hard against my chest and felt the two holes under my thumbs, five-five-five, and then the rest, and knew my hand wouldn't forget.
