Reminders of Him

part of her.
I pull onto the street. “You ate a dragon? A whole dragon?”
“Yeah, but he was a baby dragon, that’s how he fit in my stomach.”
“Where’d you find a baby dragon?”
“Walmart.”
“They sell baby dragons at Walmart?”
She proceeds to tell me all about how baby dragons are sold at
Walmart, but you have to have a special coupon, and only kids can eat
them. By the time I make it to Roman’s, she’s explaining how they’re
cooked.
“With salt and shampoo,” she says.
“You aren’t supposed to eat shampoo.”
“You don’t eat it—you use it to cook the dragon.”
“Oh. Silly me.”
Roman gets in the truck, and he looks about as excited as someone
going to a funeral. He hates T-ball days. He’s never been a kid person. The
only reason he helps me coach is that none of the other parents would do it.
And since he works for me, I added it to his schedule.
He’s the only person I know who gets paid to coach T-ball, but he
doesn’t seem to feel guilty about it.
“Hi, Roman,” Diem says from the back seat in a singsong voice.
“I’ve only had one cup of coffee; don’t talk to me.” Roman is twenty-
seven, but he and Diem have met somewhere in the middle with their love-
hate relationship, because they both act twelve.
Diem starts tapping the back of his headrest. “Wake up, wake up,
wake up.”

---

Roman rolls his head until he’s looking at me. “All this shit you do to
help little kids in your spare time isn’t going to gain you any points in an
afterlife because religion is a social construct created by societies who
wanted to regulate their people, which makes heaven a concept. We could
be sleeping right now.”
“Wow. I’d hate to see you before coffee.” I back out of his driveway.
“If heaven is conceptual, what is hell?”
“The T-ball field.”

---

CHAPTER NINE
KENNA
I’ve been to six different places trying to find a job, and it isn’t even ten in
the morning yet. They’ve all gone the same. They give me an application.
Ask me about my experience. I have to tell them I have none. I have to tell
them why.
Then they apologize, but not before looking me up and down. I know
what they’re thinking. It’s the same thing my landlord, Ruth, said when she
saw me for the first time. “Didn’t expect you to look like this.”
People think women who go to prison have a certain look. That we’re
a certain way. But we’re mothers, wives, daughters, humans.
And all we want is to just catch one fucking break.
Just one.
The seventh place I try is a grocery store. It’s a little farther from my
apartment than I’d like, almost two and a half miles, but I’ve exhausted
everything else between this store and my apartment.
I’m sweating when I enter the store, so I freshen up in the bathroom.
I’m washing my hands in the sink when a short woman with silky black
hair enters the bathroom. She doesn’t go into a stall. She just leans against
the wall and closes her eyes. She has a name badge on: A
MY
.
When she opens her eyes, she notices I’m staring at her shoes. She’s
wearing a pair of moccasins with white and red beads in the shape of a
circle on top of them.
“You like?” she asks, lifting her foot and tilting it from one side to the
other.
“Yeah. They’re beautiful.”
“My grandmother makes them. We’re supposed to wear sneakers here,
but the general manager has never said anything about my shoes. I think

---

he’s scared of me.”
I look down at my muddy sneakers. I recoil at the sight of them. I
didn’t realize I was walking around with such dirty shoes.
I can’t apply for a job like this. I take one of them off and start
washing it in the sink.
“I’m hiding,” the woman says. “I don’t normally hang out in
bathrooms, but there’s an old lady in the store who always complains about
everything, and I’m honestly just not in the mood for her bullshit today. I
have a two-year-old and she didn’t sleep all night and I really wanted to call
in sick today, but I’m the shift manager, and shift managers don’t call in
sick. We show up.”
“And hide in bathrooms.”
She grins. “Exactly.”
I switch shoes and start washing the other one. I have a lump in my
throat when I say, “Are you guys hiring? I’m looking for a job.”
“Yeah, but it’s probably not anything you’re interested in.”
She must not see the desperation on my face. “What are you hiring
for?”
“Grocery bagger. It’s not full time, but we usually leave those spots
open for teenagers with special needs.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t want to take a job away from anyone.”
“No, it’s not that,” she says. “We just don’t have many applicants
because of the low hours, but we really are in need of part-time help. It’s
about twenty hours a week.”
That won’t even pay rent, but if I worked hard enough, I could
possibly work my way into a different position. “I can do it until someone
with special needs applies. I could really use the money.”
Amy looks me up and down. “Why are you so desperate? The pay is
shit.”
I put my shoe back on. “I, um . . .” I tie my shoe, stalling the
inevitable admission. “I just got out of prison.” I say it fast and confidently,
like it doesn’t bother me as much as it does. “But I’m not . . . I can do this. I
won’t let you down and I won’t be any trouble.”
Amy laughs. It’s a loud laugh, but when I don’t laugh with her, she
folds her arms over her chest and tilts her head. “Oh, shit. You’re serious?”

---

I nod. “Yeah. But if it’s against policy, I totally get it. It’s not a big
deal.”
She waves a flippant hand. “Eh, we don’t really have a policy. We
aren’t a chain—we can hire whoever we want. To be honest, I’m obsessed
with Orange Is the New Black, so if you’ll promise to let me know which