Sweet Romance14 min read
I Woke Up in the Eighties and Cleaned My Way to Freedom
ButterPicks14 views
I woke up to autumn that tasted like iron and old paper. Leaves made a gold carpet outside; inside, the room smelled of grease and stale breath. I sat on a narrow cot and blinked until the world stopped spinning.
"Where am I?" I asked myself aloud.
A mirror on the wall answered with a stranger’s face. Oily hair stuck to a brow that had flakes. A double chin sagged. Cheeks puffed. My pulse jumped like it had been kicked.
"This is impossible," I whispered. "I am Jordan Cole, not—"
But my name on the little metal key in my pocket read "Jordan." The handwriting was the same as the borrowed life I woke in.
I had lived a different life before. I had known contracts and boardrooms, late nights and sugar coffee. I had learned to stand on my own two feet. I had never been a woman who wore other people’s shame like a coat. Now I was inside a body someone else had ruined. The memory came back in shards: her three months in the barracks, her petty thefts, her fights, the husband who avoided her like a rainstorm. The original Jordan—my borrowed Jordan—had been loud, messy, and hated.
"No," I said to the mirror. "Not anymore."
I stood. Every movement felt slow and clumsy. The clothes hanging from the peg were grey and soft with age. I picked a hand towel with a hole and wiped my face. I scrubbed off a mask of cheap makeup someone had smeared on like a joke. The skin beneath was fair. It breathed. A little hope rose.
Outside, the firing range's distant reports were regular as a drum. This home sat in the family housing behind the base. My husband—no, the man who was married to the Jordan whose body I kept—trained here. His name, according to the memory left embedded in the bones, was Samir Mason. I had never met him. We would meet soon.
My first task was small: make this place livable. Dirt lay in corners. Clothes crusted into strange shapes in the living room. The kitchen was a graveyard of pots. I had always hated dirty spaces; this was a personal affront.
"I will clean this," I told the room.
I washed and I scrubbed. I sang under my breath. I told myself stories of the Jordan I used to be—sharp, capable, never defeated by filth. When I moved, the house changed soon enough. A clean rag is a small revolution.
Someone came in later with groceries. My fingers tightened on the cabbage I carried. I heard the door open.
"Is dinner ready?" a low voice asked.
I froze. My heart knew that voice from the memory. I looked toward the doorway and saw him: Samir Mason. Broad shoulders, precise jaw, the kind of face that did not waste expression. He wore a black undershirt and green fatigue pants. He moved like a man who could control a thousand things at once.
"Have you eaten?" I asked because it was the simplest sentence I could give him.
He glanced at the clean floor, at the curtains I had untangled, at the clothes hanging to dry. His face did not move into greeting. It held a small, superior inspection.
"You did this?" he said. The words were flat, almost a statement of disbelief.
"I—yes," I said. "I wanted the place to be clean."
He made a small sound and turned to his room. He closed the door with a soft, decisive click.
I stood there and let his retreat rattle me. The memory said Samir always disliked the original Jordan. He had married because of family obligation—my body’s past had explained it like a ledger. Samir's response could not be changed overnight. I had to live in this house, in this life, and do something better than the memory said I would.
I started small and practical. I took a hot bath and cut away the ragged ends of hair that stuck out like weeds. I boiled water to wash the pots. I fed myself a simple bowl of noodles. When I sat down, the body felt heavy and tired. But the mind—my mind—remained clear.
"Tomorrow I will plant the small patch of dirt," I told nobody and everyone. "I will fix one thing every day."
The next morning the base woke me with a bugle blast that clanged through bones. The body groaned. But I rose and wrapped myself in a warm coat. I breathed the cold, and my lungs filled with a determination that tasted like metal and salt.
On the way to return a borrowed hoe, I passed the little garden that had once been disturbed by the original Jordan. The neighbor, an older woman who watched over her yard like a lantern, glared when she saw me.
"Who are you?" the woman demanded.
"I—I'm Jordan," I said.
"Jordan who?" she retorted. She had a quick temper, but time had put kindness into her hands.
"Jordan Cole," I said, and when she realized who I was she blushed with the memory of another time.
"I'm Leonor Felix," she said, softer now. "You are that Jordan? My girl, you look… different."
"Different is a good start," I said. We both laughed.
I worked in her dirt. I planted seeds, watered delicate shoots. I remembered the old woman’s name in my head so I would not forget the kindness.
"Why are you doing this?" Leonor asked one afternoon. "The Jordan before you could be cruel; why fix her mess?"
"Because I'm not her," I said simply. "Because I'm tired of other people cleaning up who I have hurt."
She nodded, like an answer had been reached. "Then keep it."
Not everyone was kind. One morning, as I walked home from the market with a bundle of groceries, a woman in a white sweater and high heels blocked the stair.
"Move," she snapped.
"Excuse me?" My jaw was slow to show anger, but it came.
She stared me down with an expression that had been practiced on army club stairs. Her name was Mercedes Simon. She carried herself as if the world owed her lined paper. Mercedes had the soft curl still set in place like a crown.
"You, taking the seat," she said loud enough for people to hear. "You have no right to take up space."
I felt the old shame rise hot. "I'm not taking your place, Miss. I carried these groceries a long way."
She scoffed. "You should stay where you belong."
I clamped down the urge to push her. Instead, I said, "We all belong where we are."
She laughed, a brittle sound. "You in your state, who would take you?"
I remembered the memory where the original Jordan had been petty and mean. Now I had choices. I could burn the past into people’s eyes and be consumed by it, or I could do the slow work. I chose the slow work.
"I will not argue today," I told her. "But I'd like you to know I am going to make dinner for people who work morning and night. You can come if you like."
Her laugh froze. The world turned. She turned away, leaving a silence like a held breath.
It would not be enough. The base was a small world with many grudges. Mercedes belonged to a family who prided themselves and elevated their own. Her husband—Jorge Olivier—was a commanding figure. He had influence. They were the kind who looked at my work like a curiosity and then used it.
The first turning point that made me decide to be more than quiet came from the children in the neighborhood. A small boy named Dustin Saito—Leonor's grandson—stole a piece of bread from my stall one dawn.
"Did you take that?" I asked, holding up the crust.
He looked guilty and then relieved to be caught.
"I was hungry," he said, voice thin.
"Here." I tore the bread in half. "You come tomorrow at six. I will make more. Eat, then help me clean."
He blinked. "Really?"
"Yes. Real."
That day I opened a small food stall in a run-down shed. I had the old man's coal pot and a battered propane can. My money was three crumpled notes, but I had technique. I mixed simple dough, rolled it, folded meat and vegetable; I steamed. My hands remembered scales and recipes from a life I had loved. My grandmother's practice came back in muscle memory. The first customers were grateful laborers who smelled of mud and sweat.
"Boss, your buns are the best," one of them said, and my heart did a strange thing.
Word spread. My little business grew by the inch, then by the hundred. I learned prices and wages, and I learned one truth: people respect what feeds them.
Samir—Samir Mason—noticed. His expression when he tasted one of my buns the first time had surprised me.
"Did you make this?" he asked, a small question, like testing whether the sun was real.
"Yes," I said.
He took another bite. His jaw loosened. For the first time his eyes were not cold; they were simply curious. I felt something shift in the room between us. A small, private thing—like the tiny fan my grandfather used to wind up and set on the bedside table.
"Good," he said, simple and true.
That night, he stayed at the table longer than usual. He did the dishes—clumsy and deliberate—and his hand brushed mine. We did not speak about the old Jordan. We spoke about the new bowls. His fingers were rough; his touch warmed like a sunlit stone.
I learned another lesson: food binds people. It draws the hungry, the lonely, and the cruel to the same table. It also attracts gossip.
Mercedes and Jorge started a whisper campaign. They said I was showboating. They said I was stealing from someone else. They said I was a woman who did not know her place. The comments arrived like black mail: whispered slams at the markets, cold shoulders at the laundry, overseeing looks at my stall until sweat ran down the back of my neck.
One night they came with more than words. They came with men who wanted to smash my stall to take the place. The men were loud and drunk on arrogance. They smashed a crate, pushed my chair, toppled steamers, left my dough sprawled on the floor.
"Move," a drunk voice barked. "This one's ours."
I stepped between the men and my small home. My knees trembled. The men laughed.
"Scare her away," Jorge said, voice heavy with the kind of entitlement that smells like rust.
"No," I said. "You are not taking what we earned."
The joke ended when the men pushed me. That night, someone swung a piece of metal and hit me across the head. Blood warmed my cheek. They left when the noise got too loud, but not before the stall lay ruined and my pride lay with it.
The next morning, patrons arrived in force. The men had misjudged the people they wanted to rob. The construction workers—my customers—brought new steamers and crates with them. They cleaned, and they fixed, and the fists that had struck me were humiliated into small apologies.
"Sorry, Jordan," one heavy-booted man said, shame in his voice. "We didn't know this was your spot."
I felt gratitude I could not name. I also felt a deep cold under the apology: Mercedes and Jorge were untouchable until they were not.
It took time to turn rumor into truth. I did not want to fight those two on rumor alone. I wanted to gather witnesses, to prove the rot in their words with the heat of light.
The opportunity arrived in the simplest place: the community New Year's banquet. The hall filled with families, with men in uniforms and women in coats, with the smell of boiled rice and smoked meat. Someone had set up the long tables and a microphone. The evening's program was basic: songs, small speeches, then dessert and tea.
I brought my best dish. Samir watched me set down a pot with a small smile, and the room's hum made me feel small and fierce at once.
Mercedes walked in late, in a red coat and shoes that clicked like a metronome. She wore disdain like an accessory. Jorge followed, jaw clenched. They expected adoration because they had always been given it.
The community chairman called everyone to attention. "We gather," he said, "to celebrate the year and to honor those who help the base and the neighbors."
No one expected what would come next.
I stood, and I went to the microphone.
"Listen to me for a minute," I said. My voice shook like a leaf at first. "I will be short. Last month, my stall was destroyed. A group of men, hired by people with influence, came and trampled what we built. They said we had no right to be there. They called me names."
A few murmurs shifted like a nervous bird. I felt Samir's hand on my shoulder, steady, and it steadied me.
"I would like to thank the people who came to rebuild," I continued. "But also I would like to name those who set those men loose."
A woman in the crowd choked. A young soldier covered his mouth. Mercedes's face tightened.
"I have proof," I said, and I passed photocopies of small receipts and a short list of witnesses to the chairman. "These are receipts showing payments. These are names of people who saw the men leave Mercedes and Jorge's home the night before the attack."
Silence fell like a lowered curtain. Mercedes took a step forward.
"You can't just—" she started.
"Yes I can," I said. "Because I have witnesses."
"She lies," Mercedes cried. "It's just a show. Who wants the word of a food seller?"
"Listen to the people," said an older worker, voice like gravel. "I was there. I saw José and Liu's boy leave with those men. They were at Mercedes's door."
"Me too." Another voice. "I saw Jorge hand a packet to them."
A sea of small confirmations grew. People stood up one by one—neighbors Leonor, workers from the construction site, a junior officer who had once been served my bun and liked it. Mercedes's face went from red to ashen.
"How dare you drag my name in this place," she hissed, but the words landed on the air like pebbles.
I asked Samir to bring the torn remains of the stall, the broken steamer, the crushed crates. He did, with two soldiers' quiet help. The crowd saw the damage again, the proof of violence.
"Why?" asked an old woman, voice full. "Why would you order men to smash another woman's stall?"
Mercedes's mouth opened. Jorge's jaw worked like a stuck hinge.
"I did not—" Jorge began.
"Stand down," said Samir.
The chairman took the microphone. "We will have no violence on this base," he said. "Anyone who hires thugs will be reported. If there is proof, the military will handle it."
Mercedes started to speak and then found herself swallowed by the number of people turning toward her. A young soldier—one of my regulars—stepped closer and produced a small tape he had made on his camera phone: footage of Mercedes and Jorge speaking to a man by the gate at night. The man left carrying a sack and a scowl, and in the camera's shaky light you could make out a paid bill clutched in a hand.
Mercedes struck out, voice high. "That is edited!" she cried.
"Turn it up," someone said. They played the recording in full.
The room listened. Her face changed color three times. She had all the control of a house of cards in a storm.
I watched her eyes go wide, then tight, then glassy, then empty. She moved from outrage to denial to panic in the space of a breath. Her husband Jorge went pale and tried to take the microphone, but hands around him stopped him.
"Here," I said softly. "Tell them why you did it."
"Why would I—" she started, but then the room joined me with small, persistent voices.
"You set a trap," Leonor said. "You wanted her out because she embarrassed your neighbor. You clamored for your husband's rank to shine. You made them act."
Mercedes’s composure cracked.
"I—" she whispered. "They were going to make me look small. They said she was taking attention. I could not—"
"You could not what? Show her mercy?" asked one construction worker. "You used thugs to break her things."
"This is… not true," Jorge said, but his voice lacked claim. His chest's courage had already been deflated.
The crowd began to hiss. A few people whispered about the times Mercedes had bullied others; that stack of small cruelties became evidence. People called out for accountability. Samir stepped forward and asked for the base police to file a report. The military police started to write down statements.
Mercedes sank into her chair, hands trembling. "Please," she said. "This is a misunderstanding."
"Public wrongs," I said quietly, "don't become private apologies. You hurt many. Start with apology and restitution."
At that, Mercedes began to shift through a full range of emotions. At first she was smug at the thought of controlling the narrative. Then incredulous when the tape was played for everyone. She tried to deny. Then she blanched when the name of Jorge's superior came up—someone who would not stand for civil harassment being used as a tool. She pleaded and bargained, promising fines to be paid back. She tried to cry to the families, but their faces remained turned from her.
"How could you?" a neighbor asked, voice thin.
"I am sorry!" she wailed. "I didn't think—"
You could see the mental arithmetic in the faces around the table: expense, reputation, the sudden loss of social standing among neighbors and at the base. As Mercedes's protests lost force, a different reaction took over the crowd. People started to clap—not in celebration, but in a deliberate, slow approval of justice. Someone recorded the moment on a phone and it moved around the room. Women nodded, men murmured. They had been waiting for someone to put a light on small cruelties.
Jorge's transformation was harsher. He tried to shove aside responsibility with orders. When the evidence was firm and the witnesses sincere, he staggered through shame. His face went from scarlet to drained. He tried to make jokes—weak and brittle—hoping to pretend nothing mattered. But when Leonor rose and said, "We don't live by you," Jorge's shoulders folded and he slumped into a seat as if the air were too heavy for him to hold up.
The public punishment was not savage. There were no threats or beatings. There was something worse for people like Mercedes and Jorge: exposure. Their cruelty was measured, labeled, and seen. The base's solidarity turned away. People who had once praised them for social strides now listed their misdeeds in sober detail. Invitations that had once been automatic were counted withdrawn. They tried to bargain. They tried to show contrition. I do not know if it was because of the tape or the witness testimonies, but the tide had turned.
"Let this be a lesson," the chairman said firmly. "We will not tolerate intimidation in this community. There will be a formal inquiry."
Mercedes begged before the inquiry. She cried and pressed her palms together and searched faces for mercy. "Please," she said, voice small. "I will apologize in front of everyone if you let me. I will pay for the damage."
"Public apologies mean learning," an older mother said, folding her arms. "Words must be backed up. You will apologize, and you will help Jordan rebuild."
The next day they came with a man to repair the stall. They handed envelopes for medical expenses and food replacement. Mercedes’s face was raw with humiliation. She had become, in two days, the subject of pity and scorn.
It was a hard victory for me. It did not erase the bruises or the nights my head had ached. But the crowd's slow, satisfied shift of attention was a kind of remedy. It was also proof that when people saw the truth, they could change their minds.
Samir and I did not end the night with fireworks. We sat on the small sofa, the new fan humming quietly overhead, and ate a bowl of leftover soup. His hand brushed mine when he reached for the spoon. No one else needed to see the small, private peace; only we did.
The recovery and the punishment had changed the shape of the neighborhood. Mercedes and Jorge lost their invitations and the little social currency that allowed their bad habits to be hidden. The men who had smashed my stall were reprimanded and did small reparations in public, shamed before the same crowd that had once allowed their acts of intimidation to go unchecked.
I learned that justice could be public and honest. It could force the guilty to stand, to feel the weight of witnesses and to be stripped of the armor of influence. I also learned that it made a man like Samir watch you with new eyes—eyes that could see dignity as well as disgrace.
The winter closed in. Snow came quietly, soft and blinding. I wrapped myself in a scarf I had mended with new thread and walked the path Samir sometimes took. We began to talk in stolen minutes. His voice softened. I found him telling me small stories of his squad, of men he had watched lose themselves to heat and cold, of a photograph in which he was young and full of trust. He had been a tight, guarded thing before. Now the lines around his mouth loosened.
Three small moments in those months made me forget that I ever belonged to anyone else.
Once, when his sleeve caught on a nail and he cursed softly, I laughed and pulled his sleeve free. He tried to hide the small pleasure that warmed him.
"Thank you," he said, and it wasn't the kind of thanks I had heard before. It had something like relief inside it.
Another time, when I went to market with a plan to buy fabric for a coat, he walked beside me and bought bread from my stall for his platoon. When I caught him buying, his fingers brushed mine.
"Your hands have the right feeling for dough," he said. His voice was small, and I felt something in my chest like a string pulled taut.
The last was in the spring, when the first of my seedlings pushed leaves into sunlight. He stood behind me, steady, and did not speak for a long while. He finally said, "You made this."
I had no boardroom for sale. I had no deals to close. I had a life that smelled like bread and dried coriander, and a man who—slowly, clumsily—learned to see me as more than a rumor.
Our world did not become perfect. There were nights with cold and days of petty malice. There were long processes with the base investigating Mercedes and Jorge, and the silence of neighbors that sometimes ached. But the public condemnation had been real, and it had stripped them of safe hiding places.
By the time I closed the food stall for the official New Year's holiday, I had saved a little more than I had thought possible. I had paid back small debts and put away a tin with a brass key. I kept the key on a little red ribbon and wound the new desk fan whenever the nights got too heavy.
We made a small pact. Not a promise of forever—those are heavy things—but a small, human agreement: we would not be enemies. We would speak plainly. We would not hide cruelty as a social trick. We would let the work of living be the thing that stitched us.
On the night of the banquet, as the last of the tea cooled, I tucked the brass key into the little red tin I kept for lucky things. Samir saw me do it.
"What is that for?" he asked.
"For something I have not yet done," I said.
He looked at me then—really looked—and smiled, a small, private thing like a coin turned in sunlight. "Then do it."
I had been given a body that carried a past, and I had been given a chance to direct the future of it. I had been given a man who could be hard and warm, and a community that could be sharp and fair. I had been given messy days and simple victories.
I slid the lid on the tin and felt the fan's little hum, steady and true.
"Let's see what tomorrow brings," I told Samir.
He nodded. "Let's."
And in the morning, when the wind pushed the leaves like little hands applauding a new world, I tied the red ribbon to my bag, and I walked to the market, keys jangling like a promise.
The End
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