Amara's day

Denise called at eight in the morning, which meant it was important — her mother didn't call before noon unless something was wrong. Kayla had been suspended. Again. This time for fighting. Amara listened to her mother describe how Kayla had shoved a girl in the hallway who was making fun of a younger kid, and how the school had zero tolerance, and how Denise was three weeks behind on the salon's rent because the building owner had raised the fee and two of her best stylists had left. Amara said she'd handle it. She drove to the salon in Atlanta on Google Maps, which was absurd — she was in Harlem, not Atlanta, but her mother's voice had that thread in it that meant the salon was the only thing holding everything together and if that went, the whole building went. She called Kayla and asked what actually happened. Kayla said the girl was bullying a seventh grader and nobody was doing anything. Amara said that didn't make it okay to shove someone. Kayla said, Why not. Amara had no answer for that. She told Kayla she'd call the school, and she did, and she paid the three weeks of back rent to her mother's account from the Hargrove check that was supposed to be gone by now. She sat in her kitchen that night and looked at her bank balance and understood that the Hargrove case had already cost her more than money. microFlavor: While on the call with Kayla's school, Amara's kitchen window was open — the fall air coming through — and a neighbor's music was playing so loud she had to move to the hallway to hear the vice principal. She stood in the hallway with her phone pressed to her ear, nodding at nothing, while someone else's bass line thumped through the wall. When she hung up, she stood there for a moment in the dim hallway of her apartment, the music on one side and the city noise from the window on the other, and felt the distance between the case she was living and the case she was fighting.