A Cab Called Reliable Read Free

held down his head in our bathwater, how I told him to brush his teeth with soap, how I told him Mother and I had found him underneath a bridge in a Korean village where lepers lived. If my mother knew these things, she would surely never return for me, and my father would find me here with my most important things and never ever let me leave.
    With my mother’s note in hand, I took my belongings outside. Waiting on the bench, I prayed that Min Joo, wherever he was, would be crying, because my brother was not able to cry and speak at the same time.
    From across the court, Boris Bulber saw me sitting on the bench and began limp-running toward me with a bag of corn chips. He was wearing a brown T-shirt and a pair of brown corduroys that were too tight and too short for him. Brown eyes, brown skin, brown hair. Everything on him seemed to match. I wondered if on a map, Portugal would also be the color brown.
    He sat down next to me, twitched his good leg, and offered me a corn chip. I told him my stomach wasn’t feeling good and I could throw up all over him any minute. He smiled, showing me the gap between his two front teeth, and told me I could come over and play because his mother was working at the motel today. She was a cleaning lady for the Madison Inn, which was the two-story white brick building with orange, yellow, green, and blue doors. It stood between Buckingham Theater and the Rose Garden Chinese Restaurant, right across the street from Pershing Market. I had seen Boris’s mother come home from work before. She wore what looked to me like a nurse’s uniform: white blouse, white skirt, white shoes, and two safety pins holding up the gray apron that covered her large breasts. The first time I saw her, she looked so important and professional that I decided when I grow up, I would like to be a cleaning lady at the Madison Inn.
    â€œBoris, I can’t play today. I’m moving,” I said and pulled my things closer to me.
    â€œWhere’re you moving?”
    â€œTo Hawaii.”
    â€œYou’re not coming to school tomorrow?”
    â€œIt’s the last time you can see me.”
    â€œYou can come over right now, can’t you?” he asked. Looking at my things, he said, “You’re not moving.”
    â€œMy mother’s coming to get me,” I said.
    â€œThat’s my window. You can look out,” he said, pointing in that direction. “I’ll give you my quarter.”
    Because Boris was the only boy who had ever kissed me, I told him I would come over and play with him, but only for five minutes because my mother was coming to get me any minute now. He pulled out a quarter from his pocket, put it in my hand, stood up, and told me to come on. With one arm around my box and the pillowcase slung over my other shoulder, I followed Boris to his apartment, where he would sit me on his lap and kiss me.
    â€œDon’t touch me. That’s yucky,” I said.
    â€œIf you like someone, you can touch them there,” Boris said, putting his head on my shoulder. I sniffed into his curls, shrugged him off, and told him his head was making me cry because it smelled just like onions.
    I stood up to look out the window. Parked in the center of the court was a white van, but there was no cab—blue, yellow, green, black, or any other color, with any sort of lettering on its door. I did not want to wait outside because it was getting dark and my father would see me with my things and make me stay with him forever. When Boris’s mother came in through the door saying something to Boris in Portuguese, I tried hard to remember my mother’s song, wondering if the country girl ever got her silk slippers in the end.
    After seeing me at her window, Boris’s mother walked into the kitchen telling the air it was natural and all right for a girl and boy to kiss as long as no one had a cough, sneeze, or sniffle. She filled a saucepan with water, placed it on the