Heritage Diner

#heritage-diner .line {

display: flex;

justify-content: space-between;

width: 100%;

}

#heritage-diner .line:nth-child(even) {

justify-content: space-evenly;

}

#heritage-diner .line[style] {

width: calc(100% - var(--space));

}

At the diner three little indians sit horizontallyto each other at the bar seats.Two from Shiprock who have known each other sit left and right.The only one not from the rezsits in the middle. They are facing the kitchen as they watchthe food being cooked on the stove.One of the Shiprock girls recounts in familiarity her job atthe chapterhouse cooking for the elderly.The girl not from the rez has never worked like thatbefore and instead recalls the time hermother left the rez right out of high school and workedfast food at KFC at 5 am each morning.Among the chatter of a busy diner she hears FleetwoodMac and tells the two Shiprock girls ofa now defunct restaurant back in the eightiescalled Flakey Jake’s which is just likeFuddruckers only they got to survive. Anywaysaround the afternoon when there was nobodyElton John’s “I Guess That’s Why They Call ItThe Blues” would start to play and now whenthat song comes on that’s all her mother thinks ofis working during those mundane hours ofthe day in cheaper Tempe Arizona. ShiprockGirl tells the not so rez girl that one day she wouldlike to open a café on her family’s landwith the orchards and all the pretty scenery too.Not So Rez Girl wonders if it’s hard to start abusiness on the rez because nothing seems tolast that long there anyways or maybe becausenobody seems to have money these days.“They have money!” Shiprock Girl exclaims.Not So Rez Girl watches the hashbrowns andomelettes cook on the stove and thinks abouthow when her mother was pregnant with herolder brother she met her mother in lawfor the first time standing by the stove tellingher how young she was and that she should havedone a little bit more with her life.So then Not So Rez Girl asks the Shiprock Girls how theywould like to be twenty-two andpregnant with a man ten years older than them. They are not surewhat to say. Being at thewayback diner reminds Not So Rez Girl of the signsthat read whites onlyduring the Jim Crow days that her grandmother lived through andhow one day she went inone and came out with the wrong order for her colored cousin.She tells her that she waslucky that she could even go in there and order food for herin the first place and to just eatthe food anyways. She was passing if you couldn’t seeby now. The three little indiansbegin to eat their food that is finally ready now except NotSo Rez Girl is having troublefinishing her food as fast as the Shiprock Girls are eating theirs.Instead she just sits thereand decides to take the leftovers back with her. Perhaps she wasn’tas hungry as she thoughtshe was and instead just needed to be reminded of something she hadn’t thought of in a while.