All That's Bright and Gone (ARC)

by Eliza Nellums

  Theo was born on November ninth, the Feast Day of Saint Theodore. He set a pagan temple on fire and then was martyred by being thrown into a furnace. I’m glad I was born on Saint Joan’s day instead.

  Uncle Donny does not read from The Illustrated Volume of the Saints. He reads The Berenstain Bears Go on a Diet. Mama does not like the Berenstain Bears, but Uncle Donny doesn’t seem to mind them so much. He even does voices, so I make him read it twice.

  “All right, that’s all she wrote,” he says, the second time. It’s still not all the way one hundred percent dark outside, because it’s summer and it seems like it’s light almost all the time. “Sweet dreams,” he says, and then he leaves.

  It’s hard to sleep knowing Mama isn’t in the house. Usually when I’m trying to fall asleep, I lie in bed and listen to the sound of her movies playing in the living room, which is right below my bedroom. Until we had to get rid of the TV, anyway. Uncle Donny washes dishes downstairs instead, which isn’t nearly as much fun to listen to.

  I use my tongue to push my loose tooth back and forth. One time men broke into a house in our neighborhood. I heard Hannah’s mom tell Mama about it. They broke in during the night while the family was asleep upstairs, and they took the TV and the computer from the living room, and they broke a window. And Hannah’s mom said it was bad men from the city that did it. She said the family could have all been murdered in their beds.

  I try not to think about any murders of anyone.

  Teddy goes downstairs and checks that there are no murderers breaking into the house. If there were, he would be bigger than them, so he would eat them up. But he comes back after checking every window and door. No murderers, he says.

  Sometimes when I’m scared at night, Mama will sing “Ave Maria” with me. But she’s not here. I try singing it to myself, but it’s not as good.

  I finally manage to fall asleep, but even then I keep waking up because Uncle Donny is making lots of noise on the stairs. He gets to the top of the staircase—creak, creak—and then goes back down—thump, thump, thump. There’s a pause at the bottom and then he comes back up again. Up and down, up and down.

  Teddy thinks it’s funny, and he laughs. But I don’t know why he’s doing it, and I wish he would stop because I’m trying to sleep. Finally I put a pillow over my head, even though it’s hot under there, so it’s quiet enough that I think I can ignore him.

  * * *

  I am dreaming that Teddy and I are catching fish in the creek. Teddy is using his bear paws like giant spoons to scoop the fish out onto the bank, and I’m catching them in a net. But then Teddy growls at me, and he’s right next to me pushing his nose against my arm the way he does when he wants my attention.

  Watch, says Teddy.

  I open my eyes.

  It’s still dark outside. It must be very late, because there’s not even the sound of any cars on the road. Instead I can hear footsteps—creak, creak, creak—in the hallway. Someone is walking outside my door.

  Keep watching, Teddy says.

  Then I see the shape of feet under the door, just standing there. The door opens very slowly. I peek through my eyelashes, but the light from the hallway is too bright, so for a second I can’t see. I decide to lie very still and pretend to be asleep, because maybe it’s bad men from the city, and if they think I’m asleep they might go away. Or even if they don’t go away, if it’s bad men, I don’t want to see them.

  But after a second I have to peek again.

  It’s Uncle Donny, dressed in his boxers and a white tank top. His hair is all messed up and sticking out, not like he usually looks. He just stands in the doorway and stares at me.

  See? says Teddy.

  Uncle Donny comes into the room, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s just looking at me.

  “What is it?” I ask, forgetting that I was pretending to be asleep. “Uncle Donny, what do you want?”

  Uncle Donny walks across the carpet and sits down on the side of the bed. I pull my legs away before he can sit on them, but now he’s squashing me.

  “I’m sleepy, Uncle Donny. Why did you wake me up?”

  He doesn’t answer, just sits on the bed and looks at me. I don’t like it. I want to go back to sleep.

  “Leave me alone,” I say, even though Mama says you should never sass grown-ups.

  His face screws up, and without a word, he gets up and walks out, leaving the door wide open so the room is too lit-up for me to sleep.

  I can hear him on the stairs, walking up and down. To the top of the staircase, then back down. Then up again. A little while later, the door pulls closed and it’s dark.

  Grown-ups are weird, says Teddy. I agree.

  I lie back down and go to sleep, and this time it’s me and Teddy chasing flying fish in a field. I don’t wake up again until morning.

  My Dear Aoife,

  They say I may be able to call home soon. Or maybe I already did. I hope I didn’t scare you. I scare myself, to be honest with you. Just now I looked down at my hands and my fingers were all puffed up like bread dough. Something in one of the medicines, I guess.

  This is my second attempt at trying to write. The first time the lines came out like Theo’s pictures when he was a little boy, holding the crayon clenched in his fat fist, making snakes. I don’t think I’ll be able to put this letter in the mail either, but I’ll write it anyway.

  Time has gone off again. Sometimes the pause between words is longer than the next hour. I think I’m talking normally, but they tell me it comes out in a blur—too fast. The nurses say I’ve been here less than a day, and I would swear it was weeks ago that I took you to buy shoes at the mall.

  What happened to Theo—it feels like it is happening right now, and all the time.

  I don’t know if you will have children of your own, but I recommend against it. Propagating the faith, I think—while important work—is best left to a family other than ours. Anyway, children are a trap. Don’t you think I would have moved away, after Theo, if I could have? But you, my sweet snare, you held me here in this town, because you loved your preschool and because we had free babysitting at the neighbors’ and because I couldn’t take the risk of going without work while I had your little potbelly to feed. I was as trapped as my Ma, who was never able to earn her own money, who spent her days ironing my father’s shirts and trying to soak other people’s blood from his cuffs, and his own spittle from the collar.

  I thought about Father when I woke up at the hospital and they explained what I had done. They tell me that I was screaming—shrieking, was the word the doctor used to describe it—and not making any sense. They were asking me about you, baby, but I couldn’t understand, partly because Aoife was also my mother’s name and partly because they were saying it wrong. Thank the sweet Lord I didn’t hurt you worse.

  It was like standing inside a thunderstorm, it was so loud inside my head, and if I was screaming, well, it was only because I was trying to let some of it out.

  They tried to tell me I had been skipping my pills, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t. Not all the way sure, but I didn’t think I would do that to you, baby. Even when we ran short of food, I always filled my prescription first, may God forgive me. But that’s what this disease does to you, Aoife: you can be sure and still wrong.

  Do you remember, the two of us went into the city and there was a man in dirty clothes, standing on the corner? He followed us all the way to Fisher Theatre, talking first in an ordinary voice and then more and more loudly, saying that we were sitting on the bench of judgment. I should have been more compassionate than anybody, but instead I looked into his red, sweaty face—and he stank, Aoife, he smelled like shit and sweat—and I was frightened. I picked you up, and you couldn’t understand why he was talking to us, you kept asking who he was. And he was only what I have been, and what I became, again and again, baby.

  You don’t remember, but we’ve been homeless before. We left Chicago with nothing except whatever Ma could carry in her ba
g. Donny didn’t even have his shoes. You were only one egg out of multitudes at the time, but since the Blessed Father must have already had you in His sight, in a way you were there as well.

  When we were still living in the old apartment, I remember being paralyzed by the garbage chute. We were supposed to take the bag of garbage to a room in the hallway and put it into this vent, and let it go. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t open my hand and let it fall down the chute, because I knew that the minute I did, the garbage was going to turn into my keys or my mother’s rosary.

  I would stand out in the hallway with the sack of trash on my lap, weeping.

  And that’s what children are, Aoife. You can’t hold on to them and you can’t let them go.

  All my best wishes,

  Mama

  Chapter Four

  The next time I open my eyes, it’s light again. Uncle Donny is standing in the doorway, telling me to wake up.

  “Are you going to sleep all day?” he asks me. “We still need to eat before church!”

  I sit up in bed and he’s right—the sun is up and I’m hungry for breakfast. It’s kind of mean for Uncle Donny to make fun of me for sleeping in when he’s the one who woke me up last night, but Mama always feels bad after she has a bad night, especially if I have to go to school, and I don’t want to make Uncle Donny feel bad. So I get up and get dressed in my church dress.

  I’m glad we’re going to church, where God and his Blessed Saints will protect us from any ghosts except the Holy Ghost, who does not haunt children in their dreams.

  He’s waiting for us, said Mama. Why did she say that?

  “Uncle Donny, can you fix my hair?” I ask as I come downstairs. Mama always does it fancy for church.

  “Uhh … you know, Uncle Donny has a lot of skills, but fixing little girls’ hair is not one of them.”

  “But you have to do it,” I explain. “I don’t know how.”

  “All right, all right.” He sits behind me and takes the comb out of my hand. “So, uh, what am I aiming for here?”

  “Mama likes to pull it back.” I say. I wiggle in the chair until he touches my head with the comb.

  “Okay,” he says. “How hard can it be, right?” He gathers up all the hair in his fist and kind of tugs on it.

  “Did you take a shower, Aoife?” he asks.

  “No.” Mama tells me when it’s time to take a bath.

  “Okay. Well, let’s just … uh, put it up here, uh, kind of like this, maybe?” He tries to wrap an elastic band around the bunch of hair, but the curly pieces go everywhere. “Uh. Yeah, that looks good, I think. How about some little clips, maybe?”

  It takes probably five or six clips to get all the hair flat against my head, but we get it done. “This is cool,” I say, looking at myself in the mirror. I look like a gymnast in the Olympics. “Mama never does it like this.”

  Teddy thinks it looks really good, too. He combs his hair next, but since he’s hairy all over, it takes a long time.

  “It looks awesome,” Uncle Donny agrees. “Go find a cardigan.” Mama always says that too, because even though it’s hot outside, every place has air conditioning so you get cold if you just wear a dress. I can’t find a cardigan, but I find a raincoat, so that’s just as good.

  “Okay,” says Uncle Donny, “Are you ready for breakfast? I don’t think we have time to eat out; we’ll have to make do. I’m going to pick up some groceries this afternoon so we have something for lunch. Your uncle Donny is sick of mac and cheese.”

  I don’t see how anybody can be sick of mac and cheese.

  “I don’t need to go out for breakfast,” I say. Mama says eating out isn’t worth the money when we’re on a budget, and we’re always on a budget, ever since I can remember. Hannah’s family goes out to eat all the time. They go to the Cheesecake Factory at the mall and Hannah brings home cheesecake slices in a box and sometimes she shares them with me.

  Uncle Donny sits down with two bowls of cereal and we both start to eat. “You know, Aoife, I’m really glad that you knew to tell the doctors to call me,” he says. “That makes me very happy.”

  I don’t tell Uncle Donny that it wasn’t exactly my idea, because I don’t want him to be sad. I nod instead. “Dr. Pearlman wanted to call my father,” I say. “But I told her that Mama found me in a cabbage patch.”

  “Your grandmother used to say that,” says Uncle Donny. His voice sounds strange. “Did Siobhan teach you that?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Aoife,” Uncle Donny starts to say, “you know, everybody has a father—”

  Just then the phone rings again. Uncle Donny glances at the number, picks it up, and then hangs up.

  “Is someone trying to call us?” I ask.

  “No. Just a wrong number. Look, Aoife, I need to swing by work this afternoon, so I’m going to ask the neighbors if you can play there.”

  “Can I come to work with you?” I’ve been to Uncle Donny’s office once, in a place called Southfield. It’s all shiny gray—gray halls, gray carpet, even the music is gray.

  “Sorry, bud, not this time.”

  “Are you going to do math problems?” I ask. “That’s what Mama does.”

  Uncle Donny is stacking up the bowls. “Yup. I’m a tax lawyer, she’s a bookkeeper. That’s because this family is good with numbers. And that’s a skill you can take to the bank, kid.”

  Someday maybe I can work in a shiny gray office like his, instead of in our study like Mama.

  “Did Mama ever work in an office?” I ask.

  Uncle Donny is standing at the sink. “A long time ago,” he says. “But now she … now it’s better for her to stay close to home. But that’s fun, huh? This way she’s around to play with you more.”

  “Yeah,” I say. That’s fun. But he doesn’t sound very happy.

  “I can count really good,” I say. “Do you want to hear? I can count all the way to a hundred and I never get confused.”

  “Uh, sure. But finish getting ready first, okay? We’ve got to get going here.”

  Just then the phone rings again, and this time when Uncle Donny checks it, he puts down the dish towel and answers. “Hello? Yes, this is he … what, now? Um, okay, sure.” He covers the receiver with one hand. “Aoife, can you go play upstairs for a minute? I need to take this, and it’s nothing you need to hear.”

  That kind of makes me want to listen to it, but when Uncle Donny scrunches up his forehead, I guess I’d better go. I drag my feet on the stairs so I can still hear.

  “Everything is fine here, of course,” says Uncle Donny. “I mean, obviously my niece misses her mother, but we’re, you know, holding it together.”

  I want to know who Uncle Donny is talking about me to.

  “Yes, Aoife is asking when she can come home.”

  Then I do a bad thing. I know I shouldn’t do it, but I go upstairs and use the trick Hannah taught me: I sneak into Mama’s bedroom to pick up the phone there so I can hear what Uncle Donny’s talking about. But I only do it because he said my name!

  And Teddy says it’s okay, so I don’t feel bad.

  I have to be very careful picking up the phone, or Uncle Donny will hear me and know I’m listening, and then we’ll be in big trouble. I hold my breath.

  The woman talking to Uncle Donny doesn’t sound familiar. “We’ve stabilized her condition so far,” she’s saying, “but she’s not going to be ready to be released for a while. We’re not able to provide an estimate at this point. But even when she is stabilized, I want to warn you now that she’s going to require a lot of follow-up care.”

  Boring, says Teddy. This is boring.

  “Whatever she needs, we’ll find a way to make it happen,” says Uncle Donny.

  “She’s able to talk for a few minutes today, if you’re ready. But try to remain calm and keep the conversation low-stress, okay?”

  “Uh, listen, I’ve been trying to track down the status of her lease here, uh, I don’t know if she’s paid up on the
rent … can I ask her about that? I mean, it’s going to be a lot more stressful for her if she loses her home when she gets out, you know?”

  I have to cover my mouth so I don’t gasp into the phone. Oh no! I don’t want our house to get lost! I’m so upset about it that I miss what the lady says back to Uncle Donny. The next thing I know, the phone clicks over and somebody else starts speaking.

  “Donny?”

  “Mama!” I say out loud. “Mama, I’m here on the phone, too!”

  “Aoife?”

  “Wait, who is that?” asks the first lady.

  “Aoife, you’re not supposed to be on the phone,” says Uncle Donny, and he sounds really mad. But I’m so happy to hear Mama that I don’t care. “That’s her daughter,” Uncle Donny says. “I apologize, I didn’t realize she was on the line.”

  “Mama, I miss you!” I say.

  “I miss you too, baby,” says Mama. She doesn’t sound so confused to me. I don’t know why the hospital people are making her stay somewhere else. They’re probably just mean and stupid.

  “Mama, hi!”

  “Aoife, you need to hang up now.”

  “No, no,” says Mama, “she can stay. It’s okay. But Donny, you didn’t tell Theo I’m having my troubles again, did you? Don’t tell him, Donny, please. You know how upset he gets.”

  “Oh jeez,” says Uncle Donny quietly. “Siobhan, Aoife’s on, remember? Let’s not talk about this now. Just—you listen to the doctors and get better, all right? We miss you here, but we’re doing all right. Everything’s fine at the house. I’m—I’m taking care of everything.”

  “You were always such a good boy, Donny,” says Mama.

  “Mama, are you coming home soon?”

  “Soon, baby, real soon.”

  That means in time for the fireworks, right?

  “Aoife, you hang up the phone right now,” says Donny. “I don’t know where you are, but I’m going to find you, and you’re going to be in big trouble if you don’t hang up.”