Category: Aata Bakes

Near the end of that summer, Orguz passed his GED testing.

Both families came to the hearing to see Orguz, in a brand new gray suit Leila made for him. The little court room was packed.

Orguz did not look like a kid anymore. Now, he looked fit and powerful. Syeira thought that he was the most handsome man she had ever seen.

As Aata listened, a lawyer described Orguz’ good behavior, how he passed his GED on the first try and his desire to study law and real estate.

Judge Murty listened too and granted the defense motion that he be released immediately, he also waived parole. Orguz could go home.

It was the beginning of their third summer in Long Beach.

Bilko was walking Hormat back to the Old English Cedar after dinner and backgammon at Aata Bakes.

Hormat asked Bilko if he was up for yet another game and he nodded, but instead of playing they sat out on the porch swing sipping sweet red wine and talking. It had been a while since they had been alone and talked.

“I’m sorry.”, Hormat said, she wasn’t thinking, it just slipped out.

“For what?” Bilko asked, bouncing slightly with a chuckle. He put his arm over the back of the wooden swing and looked at her, smiling.

“For not telling you,” she started and realized what she was doing. Looked down, looked away, decided it would be now, “I am sorry for not telling you that I love you and all those years,” she was crying, “I think I understand. I am so sorry.”

She folded into his arms and Bilko held her, stunned and confused.

“What are you apologizing for?” he said crying.

“Because I know you didn’t mean it,” she said sobbing, she pulled a way from him, kissed him quickly and ran inside the house and up the stairs.

O, the sound of the door clapping against the wood frame, the cry of the springs, her footsteps on the stairs and the light that flowed out of the house through the screen door, rich as butter.

Bilko sat for a moment, staring at nothing, his face broken in anguish.

Hormat had just spoken to the only thought on his mind since that night with Lori.

Then he started balling like a baby unable to see or hear or think.

When he was done crying, he sat up in the swing. Then, he just sat for a while, swinging slightly, in a fugue.

Saleh came by and asked if he would like to join him for a drink and Bilko, still red eyed and weepy, nodded.

Syeira was just starting high school and displayed both the bewitching charm of youth and the genuine beauty she inherited from Hormat and Leila.

She had thick, black wavy hair and a shadowy darkness that was deeper than the color of her skin, playful and mysterious. And her mother’s brilliant black eyes, and Bilko’s smile.

Boys were beginning to hang around Aata Bakes to wait for her.

Bilko had been thinking to open an auto repair on the now-empty lot on the corner of Hwy One and Tick. He wanted to specialize in foreign and exotic cars, he had even spent an afternoon with Loathsome Uncle Kusmuk making plans.

But when the Old English Cedar two storey house between that empty lot and the strip mall suddenly became available, he and Hormat took their savings and made the down payment on that instead.

She would open Madam Yasdi’s Reading Room on the ground floor, she and Syeira would live on the second.

The following summer, the market on the corner of Tick and Hwy One burned down. Loathsome Uncle Kusmuk put a deposit on that land along with the adjacent five acres behind the strip mall between Hwy One and the beach.

A few months later, Aata Bakes announced two new products: small sweet cakes with raisins and nuts and broken butter cookies in hawthorn berry jam, the brand was now selling in Safeway Supermarkets throughout Southern California.

About the same time, Saleh opened another Circle S Laundry in the main township of Long Beach. The signs out front now featured a picture of the open-mouthed smile of a European looking man with a thick mustache and fedora.

Aata kept her small bakery in the strip mall on Tick.  She did, however, move her kitchen to an industrial park to the north on Hwy 1.

Hormat bought Bilko some plaid flannel shirts to wear when he was working. His tee shirts didn’t fit anymore.

Syeira’s bra size changed significantly and Mehmet’s voice started to change.

That winter, Bilko quit his job at the gas station and rented space in a warehouse to open a small car repair shop.

Syeira’s period started.

The Aata Bakes brand began selling in some small markets in the Long Beach area.

And Loathsome Uncle Kusmuk Ortrar arrived from Bucharest and opened a bar in the strip mall next to the Circle S laundry.

Hormat predicted change.

That August, Syeira and Mehmet grumpily started attending school at Will Rogers Middle School in Long Beach, California.

With no kids at home, Hormat helped out at Saleh’s laundromat, doing laundry, sewing and some tailoring for customers.

And it didn’t take long for the little shopping center on Tick to become known.

Aata and Hormat both wore the same costumes they wore traveling with Jubilee! Saleh added a fedora to his baggy pants and oversized cotton shirts and adopted a curious accent that took a while for Aata to get used to.

Hormat got Syeira to wear some of the costumes Leila had made for her. Mehmet wouldn’t budge from his simple white shirt and trousers.

People thought they were Gypsies and came by just to see the women in their brightly colored clothes and the men in their loose pants and shirts. When they did, they bought bakery.

After work, Syeira, Mehmet, Bilko and Saleh all arrived at ‘Aata Bakes’ for dinner and backgammon at a pair of small umbrella topped tables by the curb.

It wasn’t long before Hormat started giving Tarot readings in the evening and told Bilko, over a game of backgammon, she wanted to live in the Old English Cedar on the corner behind the market.

It took a while to get used to the verdict. They had all expected to be home in Russian River that Winter. Aata left the court in tears.

Saleh was behind her, polite and embarrassed, feeling that he had somehow gone to the wrong wedding or funeral. Bilko was mad. Hormat was hurt.

Every weekend since he entered Juvenile Hall, they had gone to visit Orguz, but until that day none of it had been real.

When they got home that night, they each did what they always did when they were nervous or upset: Aata baked. Bilko drank. Hormat did reading after reading with her Tarot cards. The kids watched TV and Saleh worked.

Regardless, they were all trying to understand what had happened. It didn’t fit. What did it mean?

Aata was the first to say anything, “I want my own bakery! I hate working for other people!”

On Tick, a short side street in North Long Beach, connecting Hwy 1 and an old fishing pier, JM Investments built a 5-store strip mall meant to serve the fields of Naval housing just across the street.

It stood in the middle of this short block with an empty lot and the pier on one side and an Old English Cedar clapboard house on the other. There was a market on the corner and across the street, more empty lots.

Unfortunately, no sooner was it built than the Department of Navy started pulling men out of Long Beach, relocating them to San Diego and the east coast to support the increasing needs of the Vietnam War.

As the drab faceless houses on the east side of the highway began to empty, the only movement in the whitewashed silence of those 5 empty stores was that of an occasional insect, the glass windows first caked with soap were covered with dust.

Until Saleh and Aata rented two of the stores to open a bakery, Aata Bakes, and the Circle S laundromat.

Judge Murty smiled benignly at the family as he read the sentence, even winking at Orguz as he mentioned the GED. He understood Orguz.

Throughout his career as a prosecuting attorney and then defense attorney, his only goal was to get things right.

He struggled for years feeling inadequate to the job. He struggled with his own arrogance and guilt at not being perfect. He struggled with a system that was broken, letting the guilty go while abusing the innocent. He was dissatisfied, discontent and at a loss.

Then, on vacation with his wife in Hawaii, he re-discovered the Lord and was born again.

He realized that he could do more good on the bench than before the court. There he could make the decisions that counted for both God and man. He could take some of the blindness out of justice and help good men get on their way.

At the start of each day, he asked the Lord for guidance. He was quite willing to admit that he didn’t always understand. But if he erred it was in an effort to do the best, the right thing.

Today had been a good day. Now, on his way home, he felt at peace. He felt in his heart and soul the same warmth and harmony that he felt in the soft purring of his bright red Ferrari. He had done the right thing.

Hijo was tried as an adult, In a plea deal, he accepted a sentence of 10 to 15 years in state prison and the death of Madrigal was quietly forgotten.

The rest of the boys were remanded to the Juvenile Authority and were to remain wards of the court until their 18th birthdays with probation until the age of 24.

Orguz was granted an additional option by Judge Murty, he would be released either on his 18th birthday or when he passed the battery of GED testing the state required to enter junior college.

Subsequent probation would depend upon whether he was able to attain his equivalency documents.