ON FRIDAY EVENINGS, Tara treated herself to a medium oxtail with rice and peas. ‘I work hard and I deserve it,’ she convinced herself, knowing the twenty-dollar meal was pricey on her monthly budget. The size was just enough to share with Lani without any leftovers except for the brown runny gravy.
By the time the 2 train screeched out of White Plains station, Tara had hopped over the slushy snow puddle at the bottom of the subway steps. She had intended to stick to her savings plan for most of the train ride. To stop by the grocery store, pick up linguini noodles, creamy alfredo sauce, a chicken breast, broccoli, and rainbow cookies and make the best out of the simplest dinner she could whip up in under an hour. But her scrunched toes had rubbed against the leather of her black boots as she shifted her weight from her right leg to the left while holding onto the rail for the one hour it took to commute from downtown. Still standing five stops before pulling into the station, Tara figured one meal wouldn’t drain her savings.
A block and a half from the station, Nyam Ya, the most authentic Jamaican food Tara could find in the eight years of living in the Bronx, was nestled between a nail salon and a beauty supply store. The storefront was so ordinary and plain that it would be easy to miss if it weren’t for the wide flatscreen hung high, displaying the menu
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Morgan Reid holds a Master’s in Writing degree from Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in Otherwise Magazine, and her op-eds and book reviews have been featured in The Baltimore Times. She has taught First-Year Writing at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and currently
works as a Technical Editor. She lives in Maryland and is working on her first novel. Instagram: @themorganreid