What's Mine and Yours
Naima Coster
For J & E
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1
October 1992
A city in the Piedmont of North Carolina
The street was dark when Ray pulled up behind the bakery. The birds sang wild in the trees, the only things astir so early in the morning, the sky a deep and cloudless blue. His little boy, Gee, was asleep in the backseat, neat in his school clothes and fogging up the window with his breath. Ray lifted him out quietly, the keys to the shop jangling in his free hand. They walked around to the front, and the boy was already drooling on him, on his pressed collared shirt, red-and-pink plaid.
“My good luck charm,” Ray whispered as he unlocked the gate, holding the boy close.
Superfine stood near the corner of Beard Street, about a mile north of the city square. A neon sign hung out front, the window boxes planted with yellow mums. This part of town used to be where people would fuel up before driving out of the city, or if they were passing through downtown. There was a garage at the end of the block and a gas station where you could pay only in cash. Otherwise, the neighborhood was empty lots, one-story houses, a ballfield the minor league used in the summer. Wildflowers and busted tires swelled out of the plots of land where the old factories were boarded up. But in the past year, a brewing company had opened in one of the old buildings. They gave tours and served beer in tiny glasses. A lunch window had opened to serve chopped barbecue and hot dogs for a few hours every day. And there was Superfine, which was open from dawn until dusk. They served biscuits and breakfast pastries, coffee, in the morning. At lunch, they sold sandwiches and fresh-baked bread. In the afternoon, they added cookies and lemon bars, slices of chocolate cake. Customers trickled in on their way to work downtown or stopped by to sober up after drunk tours at the brewery across the street. Superfine was cheaper than the coffee stand downtown, and it was the only place this close to get a fresh ham sandwich, a biscuit and peach jam, coffee that didn’t taste like hot water and tar mixed together.
It had been Ray’s idea to open the shop, although Linette was the one who bankrolled it with the money she got from her husband’s life insurance. They knew each other from a job at a coffeehouse an hour away where she had been the manager and he a barista. He’d worked three jobs then, but now Superfine was his everything.
Ray set the boy down on the bench by the windowsill. He ran behind the counter to fetch a bottle of cold coffee from the refrigerator. He dribbled an ounce or two into a glass of milk, stirred it with his finger, and then took it to Gee. He was spread out on the cushions by the window, one arm flung behind his head, the other across his chest, palm flat, as if he were trying to protect himself, to cover up his heart while he slept.
“Morning, my man,” Ray whispered. “Drink this,” he said, holding the glass to the boy’s mouth. Gee would have a longer day than Ray wanted him to. A little caffeine wouldn’t hurt him.
“Daddy, why’d you bring me here?”
“Well, it’s a big day for me. I thought you could be my helper.”
Gee shone at the prospect, sat a little taller in the window.
“Am I still going to school today?”
“We go to school every day,” Ray said. “I’ll run you over when it’s time. Come on now, let’s get you an apron.”
They had to fold the apron over twice so it would fit Gee, who was small even for a six-year-old. Gee laughed at the sight of himself in the mirror. He was missing one of his front teeth, a baby tooth he’d chipped so badly they’d needed to get it pulled, but he was still a beautiful boy: brown skinned and brown haired with big hands and feet for his stature. He had a cleft in his chin, and dimples, eyes that watered when he smiled. He had a hoarse whisper of a voice that Ray liked to joke was from talking too much. Gee was a truth teller: he liked to tell about what he saw, and he saw everything. It made Ray nervous that one day the boy would tell the truth about the wrong thing.
They rolled up their sleeves and washed their hands in the sink. Then Ray sat Gee on a stool in the kitchen and told him to turn on the radio. Ray started folding up croissants and sliding them into the proof box. He made pretty knots of dough for the morning buns, sprinkled them with sugar. He explained what he was doing and sometimes asked Gee how much butter he thought he should brush on top of the biscuits, whether the dough had come out of the sheeter smooth. It was the only way he could let Gee help this morning. This was a day that could change their lives—for the shop, for Linette, but most of all for him and Gee and Jade. If business picked up after the story came out, like they hoped it would, Ray had a list of things he’d do—he’d buy Jade a ruby ring and ask her to marry him; he’d buy Gee a set of drawers to keep his things; they’d go on a trip somewhere, like Washington, DC, or Florida. He’d take pictures of Gee in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Jade in front of the cherry blossoms, all of them in front of the castle at the Magic Kingdom—they’d ask a stranger to take the shot, and put Gee in those funny ears.
But first, the reporter, and the feature on Beard Street, the way it was coming back to life. We’ve got to steal the show, Linette had said, and Ray knew she was right. He was making a special just for the day—a devil’s food cake doughnut. He’d spent the weekend perfecting the recipe with Gee. What Ray loved about doughnuts was that nobody really needed them. Coffee, you could get hooked on to the point where you couldn’t live without it. But doughnuts—soft, rolled in cinnamon sugar, glazed, dripping with caramel, fat with fruit at the center—had no reason for being. They were his secret power, his mark on Superfine.