She glanced down. “Oh. Those. It’s just from the flour bags. They’re heavy, and the handles kind of dig in.”
“Flour bags? How heavy?”
“I don’t know. Fifty pounds? They keep them in the storage room in the back, and someone needed to bring them up. Aunt Jennifer said I was young and strong, so I could do it. She said I have to toughen up if I want to work in the real world.”
The real world. As if I’d been raising her in some kind of padded dream.
“She said that?”
“Yeah.” Maya shrugged. “It was kind of hard, but I did it. It’s fine.”
Week three and four blended into a haze of small alarms. On one Saturday, Maya worked nine hours straight. When she came home, her steps were heavy. She collapsed onto the couch and stared at the ceiling.
“Did you get a lunch break?”
She frowned. “Not exactly. I mean, I ate a cookie.”
“A cookie for nine hours of labor,” I repeated.
“Grandma said breaks are for lazy workers,” she said with a yawn. “But she gave me a cookie ’cause I was doing such a good job.”
After that, I started making “random” drive-bys. One Tuesday evening, I swung past the bakery around six. Through the glass, I spotted Maya on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor with a brush and a bucket of murky water. My mother stood over her with arms crossed, supervising like a prison guard, pointing at spots Maya had missed.
Hot anger flared in my chest, then cooled into something harder. I could have gone in right then. I could have said, “Get up, Maya. We’re done.”
Instead, I watched for a full minute, then drove away. I wanted to be sure. I wanted to give my mother and Jennifer just enough rope to show their true intentions.
Week six arrived like a storm I’d seen gathering on the horizon.
That Tuesday, I decided to visit the bakery at peak time—five in the afternoon. The place was packed. Every table was full. Behind the counter, Maya moved constantly, like she was stuck on fast-forward. She was taking orders, pouring drinks, grabbing pastries, boxing cupcakes, sliding plates across the counter. The line never seemed to shrink.
Her hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail, tendrils stuck to the sweat at her temples. Her cheeks were flushed. She smiled at every customer. She apologized when things weren’t perfect. She joked with a little boy who dropped his cookie.
She was thirteen years old, working like three adults.
My gaze slid past the counter to the back of the shop. At a table near the restrooms, my mother and Jennifer sat side by side. They had coffee cups in front of them, the nice ceramic ones. A plate of pastries sat between them, half-eaten. My mother was scrolling through her phone. Jennifer was telling a story, laughter frozen on her face.
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