All She Can Take

F I F T E E N

 They were late and Sid was pissed. She kept an eye on AJ as he raced from one end of the walkway to the other. Just being late didn't piss her off. No. What really bothered her is that...she didn't even have a reason to be. She didn't have a job! But she was still late. It's like lateness had become a part of her. Like her favorite color or her favorite song. Lateness formed a layer of her identity for as long as she could remember. She pulled at a coil of hair that escaped her hair tie uncomfortably. 

AJ zoomed down the slight slope of the walkway and with Sid's quick reflexes, she threw her arm out and caught him just as he tripped over his sneakers. She'd barely pulled him back to standing by the collar of his jacket before he got his feet back under him and took off again.

The Uber app circled on her phone looking for drivers. She was on her way to her sister Whitney, back up in the boonies of Westchester, to drop off AJ before hitting up a few of her connections on the restaurant scene. She needed a job. Now. She had an internal clock running of how past due she was on all her bills. Rent was twenty days past due. Her phone would be shut off any day. Spectrum had already stopped her from renting any movies on demand which meant she was at least thirty days in the red with them. 

Her final check from the restaurant had been deposited into her account but she decided to be smart and hold on to that for food and diapers. So, no bills were to be paid with that and the time-bomb of bills would continue to tick. The last two hundred dollars on her credit card would hopefully get her to Westchester so she could drop of AJ until tomorrow and spend some time looking for work.

She looked down at her phone to see if a driver had been located but the app let her know that her card had failed to charge. Shit. Those interest fees must have hit. That means that she was dangerously close to being over the limit and past due. She cursed again that her mother had kidnapped her sister all the way out to Westchester. There were any mini-mansions she could have bought right here in Brooklyn?

Corralling AJ took a minute but eventually, she had him secured on her hip and was heading down the block, eyeing the fast-food restaurants on the strip. It was just before lunch on a Tuesday and she was starving. She hoped to drop AJ with her sister, raid her mother's fridge for lunch, and make it back into Brooklyn just as the lunch rush was dying down but now with the Uber out of the question she'd be lucky to make it down the block and back. The thought of taking AJ with her crossed her mind, but that would be just as bad when she first waddled in Grazi two years ago. 

She pulled out her phone and called Tomi. Sid sighed as he voicemail came on immediately without the phone ringing. She figured Tomi must be in her studio working on her furniture pieces and blocking out the world. She text Whitney.

Sid: Uber clipped me. Staying local today.

Sid tried to make it sound like she was choosing to just stay put instead of being forced by circumstance. Whitney's ellipses popped up on the screen immediately. Typical, she thought. Whitney's head was either buried in a Psychology journal or buried in her phone. She could have a great career in Social Media if she cared less about actual people. Sid tried to remember what her sister's face looked like without a phone blocking half of it. Nah. The image wouldn't come to her.

Whitney: You're always late. I just sent a car. We have to be to AJ's gymnastics class by 1.

Sid: He's not your kid. Stop signing him up for shit. Just eat Goldfish and watch Sesame Street with him like a normal Aunt.

Whitney: No.

Sid: See you soon.

Whitney: Soon.