“That’s all right,” I say, looking at the table across from us. A lady with a plastic rain bonnet is holding a doughnut up with two hands and nibbling at it like a squirrel. I listen to the dips and rises of my mom’s voice.
“You know, I brought that hash down for Ali’s mom to help her through her chemo treatments.”
I know this part is true. My friend Alison’s mom has been sick for a long time. She’s lost all of her thick, black hair. How could my mom be so stupid and careless as to “flag down” the police? If she had been smoking that hash as well, she would have put on that awful southern drawl she falls into when she smokes pot. My mom’s transformation when she does drugs is something altogether unpredictable. She’s tried to be cool with me before, and on several occasions she has leaned over me with a joint pinched between her fingers and casually asked, “You wanna a hit?” I was eleven the first time she asked.
“The worst part was that those goddamn Santa Rosa cops strip-searched me like a couple of dogs. Checked every inch of my body inside and out, if you catch my drift. I think they were getting off on it.”
I turn my head around hoping that no one is paying attention. Novato is a small town. Happy Donuts is half the size of a single bowling lane.
“That’s terrible, Mom,” I say, keeping it low, wanting another cinnamon roll to pull apart. I avoid the deep well of her blue eyes. Instead I watch her strong hands, her fingers full of turquoise and silver. The single gold-and-garnet snake ring that is coiled around her ring finger. I hear her words as if they are far away and disjointed, like a radio with poor reception. The jail cell was cold. The cops were cruel. They didn’t believe her story about why she had the hash.
I slide my hands back underneath the table and rub my fingertips along the surface, searching for lumps of old chewing gum. My brothers and I always used to count how many pieces we could find with our fingers as soon as we sat down at a truck-stop diner or a restaurant. We liked the feel of hardened gum and always added our own gum to the collection. It reminded us that there were other kids like us.
My mom lights up a Camel. I know she’s making an effort, trying to share her thoughts and be candid with me. But I don’t want this. These aren’t the conversations I want to have with my mom. I want to tell her that things in the yellow house are starting to spin in all the wrong directions. I want to ask her if she has ever felt so scared of the world that she couldn’t close her eyes at night. I want to ask her if she is going to spend the night on this visit. But I don’t. Because I know better now than to ask the questions that have unpredictable answers.
I take in the edge of the vibrant morning-glory scarf along her neckline, wishing I could feel a small bit of the silk between my fingertips. I take in her breath of sugared coffee, cream, and unfiltered Camels. The diamond eye on her snake ring winks when the light hits it in just the right way. I funnel these small things into myself because that is all I can do for now.
What good would it do me to unravel the anger inside me? I might hurl this heavy ceramic coffee cup across the table. I might stand up and tell her she sucks at being a mom. But that isn’t me. I’ll need to take her as she is right here, right now—fragrant, strip-searched, and full of mystery.
NOW
monsters
Bella calls to ask me if I have seen her stuffed cat Snowflake.
“Yes, I have Snowflake with me. Remember? You packed her in my suitcase—to keep me company.”
“Oh, I forgot.” I don’t think Bella forgot. I think she wants to make sure I’m not neglecting Snowflake. Bella always packs mementos or animals into my husband’s suitcase when he travels. Pure sweetness, this girl.
Bella used to call out for me in the middle of the night. “Mama, stay with me,” she’d cry. I’d stagger into her room and try to talk her into sleeping on her own, but I never had a very good argument. So I’d lie by her side or scoop her up in my arms and take her to our big bed. She’s teaching me how to be a mother. Someday I will tell her that she saved me, and she will probably roll her eyes.
“Make sure you bring Snowflake back,” she says. “And Daddy says to tell you that Uncle Eden called.”
“Okay, but he knows I’m here with Mom, doesn’t he?”
I’m concerned about Eden too but in a different way than Jamie. He has funneled far too many drugs into his body over the years. He’s told me stories about “the people messing with him”—the FBI, the CIA, and the Vietnamese Mafia. And then there are the people who supposedly have been changing the labels on his clothes while he sleeps and the gravestones that he thinks our father is illegally importing from eastern Europe.
Over the years, I’ve found myself memorizing the bizarre things Eden says in our brief and erratic conversations: “I’m like a chicken with a missing feather and they’re coming after me, picking off all my loose feathers. I am in danger. There are mutant creatures living in my storage shed. I’m wearing eight-hundred-dollar fuckin’ pants. I’m smoking crack and chasing it with Jim Beam and liquid Ativan. How many dead bodies have you seen in your life, Melissa? Man, I’ve been shooting for the stars all my life. I just need someone to believe in me. That’s all I need. I’ve got nine thousand dollars stashed overseas and an ace of spades up my sleeve.”
Right now, he’s trying to get clean and his mind is more lucid each time I see him. But the road has been dangerous for Eden. He’s been fighting his monsters and addictions for a long time now.
THEN
brick fight
The yelling comes from the brick patio outside my bedroom window. It’s a fight. I wish I could tune it out, turn up the radio, but I always watch. I always listen.
I hear Eden yelling first. He comes into view in front of my window with its twelve separate square panes. My dad rushes behind him and grabs the back of Eden’s AC/DC T-shirt. My dad’s face is angry and red like the bricks. Eden’s face is tight and white.
“Fuck you!” Eden screams and pushes my dad’s arm out of the way. There is another push and another shove. I watch their bodies—my father, short and athletic, with runner’s legs; my brother, lean and pale, with his gangly legs in a pair of corduroy bell-bottoms. I watch their bodies hit the ground as they roll across the bricks like two kids pretending to be wrestlers.
Then I don’t hear any sound. It’s like the drive-in movies without the volume—the times when our live-in had us sit outside the car without the speakers so she could make out with her boyfriend in the front seat.
Eden has his hand around my dad’s throat. I don’t think my dad can breathe.
I always watch them fight, but usually stay well out of the way. But this time I scream.
“Please stop!” I scream. But no one hears me inside my room.
My dad throws Eden off him. Eden spits at him, scrambles, and runs down the hill toward the long driveway that leads to Center Road. All I want to do is lock my door and be alone, but the handle is broken.
My dad comes through the door.
“I’m sorry, Melissa,” he says.
“I don’t want to talk. I just want to be alone,” I say.
Something is wrong between Eden and my dad. I pick up the paperweight with the golden lion I keep on my desk. A glass dome presses the gold lion safely against the black velvet background. I want to be like that lion, safe behind the thick glass.
“I’m sorry,” my dad says again. “Your mother needs to have some goddamn involvement with you kids.”
I’ve heard this from my dad before. But she’s back living in Washington now. Things are out of control for my dad. I need to put the treasures in my room in order. I cup my hand over the dome of glass that protects the lion and say nothing to my dad.
“He tried to choke me. Jesus Christ, my own son tried to choke me. What the hell am I supposed to do?” he asks me.
I shrug my shoulders. I pull at the frayed threads along the bo
ttom of my sweater pocket. I don’t have the answers anymore. None of us do.
NOW
oh, bean
It was around this time that I began to spend more time away from the increasingly hostile environment of our big yellow house. The tension between my dad and Eden was explosive. Jamie discovered the outlet of hard drinking and vandalizing the town.
I suppose we were all destined to fall into drinking and experimenting with drugs. It was in our blood. Jamie was fearless. Eden was dangerous. I was silent. But we were losing our connection to one another. How I longed to be a tribe of three again. I wanted to sit with my brothers in the cool dirt underneath the house with boxes of cake mix—where we first tasted that sweet powder and were full of hope.
As I pull out more letters, I discover one my mom wrote but never sent to Eden around this time.
You really need to get out of your dad’s house. I strongly believe any place is better for you than there—lotta heavy shit in that space. Oh my Bean, how hard it has been for you. How my heart has bled for you and continues to bleed. Maybe it’s in my head as a penance for all my guilt about leaving you so long ago. I have and will ever mourn the loss of my babies. Some say I “spared” myself the responsibilities of raising you—none will know the agonies of missing you. I still cry, but I know I did what I had to do, and the guilt must be continually held at bay, because it is worthless. How I wish my brother had lived—you are so like him, and he could have helped you be yourself. And of course, how I wish I could have been with you to encourage you and praise you. But my brother died and I was ill and I did suffer from it.
I feel such sadness for both my mom and brother in this letter. She is reaching out to him with such a rare kind of honesty. But she’s wrong about my dad. When we were growing up, he never bad-mouthed her—and he protected us the best he could. We broke his heart over and over—and through it all, he was the one who stayed. From her letter, it seems her guilt was constantly lurking, causing her to hide her feelings from my brothers and me. I remember that feeling of hiding something—holding onto a secret—and hoping someone would rescue me.
THEN
lola asks
Here’s how it starts.
I am turning the dial on my locker and there’s Lola butting up to me. She’s wearing her red velour V-neck and her tight Sticky Fingers jeans.
Her question catches me off guard. Way off guard. I keep turning the dial around and around because my fingers have suddenly forgotten the combination. I focus on the tiny black and white numbers ticking and spinning like a miniature raffle wheel in front of my face.
“Well?” she says.
“What? What’d you say?” I respond, even though I know exactly what she’s asked me.
“I said do you want to get wasted tonight?”
Lola’s lips are covered with thick, shiny lip gloss. She’s so close I can smell it. It’s roll-on Kissing Potion. Cola-flavored. Her large brown eyes dart back and forth with excitement behind her glasses.
My heart is kicking like a rabbit’s foot. Wasted. Something Jamie says to his friends: “We’re going out to get wasted Saturday night.” Or maybe he says “shit-faced” or “hammered.” I kind of get what it means. But not really.
“When? I mean how?” I ask.
Lola raises her voice as a group of ninth graders passes us. “With a couple six-packs of Schlitz.” She smiles. “Suzee got her uncle to score for her. We’re going to see this movie called The Rocky Horror Picture Show and we want to see it wasted.”
Lola sounds as if she’s won a sweepstakes. I look around to see who is overhearing this. Lola wants everyone to know that she is cool and in no way a “teamer.” Teamers are cheerleaders and in sports and school clubs. Stoners hang out on the back field and get high.
So Lola isn’t asking me to get stoned. She’s asking me to get drunk. Wasted. She could have asked Amy Wright or Ellie Nichols but she’s picking me. Probably because I’m not good at saying no.
“Yeah. Okay. Sure,” I say. But my next thought is “Oh shit,” and I’m wishing I had plans already or at least said I did.
“You can sleep over at my house too.”
I push my locker closed and head across the quad to math class. Wasted. As I slip into my seat in Mr. Autry’s algebra class, I keep repeating the word to myself just the way Lola said it with her eyes dancing back and forth. I know how other people act when they’re that way, but I don’t know what I will be like. Granted, it’s not like I’ve never had alcohol before. I often have a sip of my dad’s drinks—Myers’s rum with Coke, Gallo red wine, and every kind of beer. I like the tastes. And I did drink a Coors tall when I was nine but it mostly made me tired. But I have never been wasted.
I don’t want to be out of control like my dad’s friends who come to our house and stay up all night. Or “mean Agnes,” the person my dad told me that Mom turns into when she drinks too much. And I certainly don’t want to be like any of my grandparents, who are all dead because they couldn’t stop drinking.
But I kind of want to know what it feels like. Maybe I’m tired of being the goody-two-shoes all the time, holed up in my room to keep out the world. Maybe it would be good to lose control—just this once.
Mr. Autry, one of the teachers that I actually like in junior high, gives me a strange look—like he knows what I am going to do to tonight and he’s worried about me. I can hear the chalk in his hand moving across the blackboard, but the only words I keep hearing are Lola’s: “Melissa, do you want to get wasted tonight?” I imagine Mr. Autry pulling me aside after class and asking me if everything is all right. What would I say to him?
I rush out of class when the bell rings, holding on tight to the secret inside me.
• • •
My dad has the hose going in the garden. He holds his thumb halfway across the metal ring on the end, spraying it back and forth in an arc around him. He’s quiet, thinking hard about something.
I lift a ripe lemon cucumber from the ground and pinch away its stem. It’s one of the last left over from the summer.
“Dad? Lola wants to know if I can sleep over at her house tonight.”
He keeps watering. “Tonight?”
“Yeah, ’cause it’s Friday.”
I want him to look at me. I want him to rescue me just this once. I want him to see a certain look in my gray eyes that tells him something is not right, that something inside me is wilting and I need his help. I want him to look at me and make a much better offer or just say, “No, not tonight,” or “Let’s go to Straw Hat and order a pineapple pizza.”
But he doesn’t.
He pulls the hose a little bit farther out. I focus on the garden. Those curly lettuces need an extra soak. And something is eating at the squash vines. I take a closer look. Small holes and Rorschach shapes pattern the wide green leaves. I watch the water from my dad’s hose as it seeps into the dry ground and turns the soil dark and gritty, like coffee grounds. Here in our garden there are things that need tending to.
Maybe my dad is relieved that I have somewhere to go tonight. Maybe he’s here because he needs some thinking time. But even in the calm of the garden, the skin is pulled tight across his jaw and there is a subtle but unmistakable tension in his posture as he moves the water back and forth. Things aren’t easy these days. The yelling that goes on inside our house is constant. Jamie and Eden end up with Fs on every report card, suspensions from school, and restriction after restriction. And then there are the money problems that have been creeping under the floorboards like termites and words I overhear like “I’m going to lose this goddamn house if things don’t change.”
Finally he answers my question. “All right,” he says. Just like that. No questions asked.
I look at him one more time in case he wants to change his mind. But all I hear is the sound of water hitting the earth. Tonight I can go out and get wasted
with Lola. It’s that easy. I wonder if it was this easy for Jamie and Eden too.
I walk back up to the house, pull a half carton of Neapolitan ice cream from the refrigerator, and head to my room. I lean up against my bed and shovel stripes of strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate into my mouth.
Our calico cat comes and sits at my feet as she always does when I have something to eat. She stares up at me with her big, gold-and-black eyes. I tell her what I’m about to do with Lola. I tell her that I’m scared but that it’s too late and I’m going to do it anyway. Cats always listen. I let her lick the leftover vanilla off my spoon and fingers. Her small pink tongue is like a tab of fine sandpaper.
I stretch out across the floor in my room and stare up at the ceiling, feeling heavy and full, an overripe peach ready to fall from its branch.
• • •
We walk down the unlit alley behind the billiards hall to find the brown paper bag with the Schlitz beer. Lola, Suzee, and me. It’s way cold out, and none of us are really dressed for this. We run our fingers along the chain-link fence, stepping on bits of broken glass.
“I really shouldn’t be here,” I say as we walk. “My dad has a workshop behind this alley.”
“Melissa, your dad is not going to be working on a Friday night,” Lola says. I can tell she’s getting irritated with me because I keep bringing up reasons why this might not be such a good idea.
“Don’t be so straight,” says Suzee.
“I’m not.”
And so I don’t bother mentioning that the Bit-a-Honey bar is across the street from the movie theater and my dad could easily show up there on a Friday night.
We find the brown grocery bag stashed behind the alley Dumpsters. Suzee leads us over to a small caged alcove with a No Trespassing sign and padlocks hooked onto heavy chains. It smells like urine.
Pieces of My Mother Page 18