Purpose. She named it Little Flame after her mother's favorite saying, "One small flame can light up a whole dark room." For 6 months, Amara worked harder than she'd ever worked. She watched YouTube videos at the public library. how to replace floorboards, how to patch drywall, how to fix a refrigerator compressor, and then she'd go to the restaurant space and try to follow along. She made mistakes, a lot of them.
She patched a wall wrong and had to start over. She bought the wrong kind of paint and had to strip it off. But slowly, painfully, the space came together. She found a used commercial dishwasher at an estate sale, $300. She spent a weekend repairing the industrial mixer that a closed bakery was selling for parts.
She bought mismatched plates and cups from thrift stores. $5 here, $10 there. The tables and chairs came from a church that was renovating. They just wanted them gone. She slept on a cot in the back storage room because she couldn’t afford both apartment rent and restaurant rent.
She showered at the YMCA. She lived on rice and beans because every other dollar went into building this place. Some days she'd sit on the floor of the half-finish restaurant, too exhausted to move, and wonder if she was crazy. Then she'd look at the drawing she'd tack to the wall, the angel in the snowstorm, and she'd get back up. The menu was simple things she knew how to make.
Grilled cheese, three kinds, tomato soup, simple salads, breakfast sandwiches, pancakes, nothing fancy, nothing that required skills. She didn’t have, but everything made with care. And she had one rule written on a small chalkboard by the back door. If you’re hungry, knock always. Little flame opened on a rainy Tuesday in October, 20 years after the night Amara had knelt in the snow to comfort two grieving children.
The first day, three people came in. Two of them were older men from the neighborhood who'd seen her working on the place. The third was a young mother with a baby who looked like she just needed somewhere warm to sit for a while. Amara served them herself, cooked their food herself, cleaned their tables herself. When they paid, she thanked them like they'd given her the world because they had they given her a beginning.
The second day, five people came. The third day, eight. Word started to spread slowly through the neighborhood. There was a new place on the corner run by a woman who smiled like she meant it and made grilled cheese that reminded you of being a kid. After a month, Amara hired her first employee.