Dirty Little Secrets - C. J. Omololu [37]
“Hello?” The voice came from outside. I sucked in my breath and froze. It came again. “Hello?”
Pulling the turtleneck off my face, I stuck my head out the window and tried to manage a normal-looking smile. Mrs. Raj. Even though her house was a pretty good distance from ours, she seemed to think that living next door was an excuse to constantly monitor what we were doing.
“Oh, hello, Mrs. Raj.” I sounded remarkably normal, even though I was a little out of breath.
“Doing a bit of early spring cleaning, I see.” She stood at the corner of our house where the walkway ended. Her eyes darted to the growing pile of garbage bags, and then back to me.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I forced a little laugh. “I didn’t have anything else to do on vacation, so I thought I’d help Mom out. Just getting rid of a few things.”
She pursed her lips and looked at me. “I’ve heard teenage girls can be rather untidy,” she said. “It’s nice to see you making a go of it.”
Her dog, Tinto, strained at the end of his leash, trying to sniff some of the bags. I hoped she had enough sense to pull him away before he chewed a hole in one.
I’d always begged Mom for a dog, but with her breathing problems, we could never get one. Not that I’d want a dog like Tinto—even calling him a dog was generous. He looked more like a long-haired white rat on a leash and was always barking in that high-pitched yap that could be heard all over the neighborhood.
“Tinto, no!” Mrs. Raj called, pulling him back toward the street. He lifted one flea-bitten leg and peed on the bags as a parting gesture. “Come away from there. I don’t want to have to give you another bath today.” Mrs. Raj bent down and picked him up, nuzzling him on the nose. “My precious baby.”
“Well,” I said, giving her a little wave, “have a nice walk. You should probably hurry; it looks like it might rain.”
“Yes, we will,” she said. She tried to peek around the curtains at my back, so I reached down and held them closed with one hand. “I notice your mother’s car hasn’t moved from the driveway all day. Is she out of town?”
I kept the smile plastered on my face as my insides were screaming for her to mind her own business. “No. She’s home. She’s just not feeling well, so she didn’t go to work today.”
“Oh, I see,” she said. She raised her eyebrows. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No, thank you,” I said. “We’re fine.”
“All right, then,” she said, and turned like she was going to walk away.
I exhaled, unaware that I had been holding my breath. I started to pull my head back inside the window when she spoke again.
“Oh, Lucy, dear,” she called from the sidewalk.
I bumped my head on the bottom of the window as I stuck it outside again. “Yes?” I said brightly through the pain.
Mrs. Raj indicated the growing pile of black trash bags with her hand. “You’re not going to leave those bags there, now, are you? You know the town council has rules about compounding garbage that is visible from the street. It would reflect badly on all of us to start a garbage dump on the side of the house.”
The whole place is one giant compounded pile of garbage, I wanted to scream. But instead, I smiled sweetly and said, “Only until trash pick up day. I’m going to get tags for extra garbage.”
Mrs. Raj sniffed from the sidewalk. “Well, that’s very good, dear,” she said. “As long as it’s gone on trash day. We can’t have garbage piling up around our neighborhood, now can we? What would people say?”
“No, we certainly can’t,” I said. “Have a nice walk, Mrs. Raj. I have to get back to work.” I pulled my head in the window and pulled the curtains closed before she had a chance to reply.
“We can’t have garbage piling up around our neighborhood,” I mimicked as I worked my way