We heard pounding at the door.
“What the hell is going on in there?” a woman yelled.
“Just a minute.” I tried to sound normal. I hurriedly wiped the blood off the floor.
“I’m going to call the police if you don’t open up,” the voice outside shouted.
When we opened the door, a squat woman in a pleated skirt and wide-brimmed hat stood in front of us, fist raised mid-knock. With purse in hand, she clutched a small boy in front of her. He was wearing a Cub Scout uniform—kneesocks, suspenders, shorts, and a beanie.
“There’s a line out here, you know!” the lady scolded, even though there wasn’t.
I held my mother upright and guided her out the door.
“Trash,” the woman muttered as she steered the boy past us.
“Bitch,” I muttered back.
CHAPTER FOUR
Anger
On the outskirts of Chicago the miles of pitch-black highway divided and strip malls appeared on both sides. Neon signs streaked by like finger paints smeared on walls. A dazzle of reflections flew off the hood of the car. And as quickly as the carnival of color erupted, it faded and the world outside my window was cast again in shades of black and gray.
We crossed over Indiana through miles of brittle desolate earth. Every day when the sun went down it melted into a blazing pool of orange. It shimmered on the horizon and when it finally slipped away, a scar of bluish purple bruised the earth for hours. And the heat lingered on.
We spent a night behind a supermarket and in the morning, a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts was just sitting on the ground in front of us as if a fairy had left them there. The sun had even warmed them up.
By the time we reached Pennsylvania we’d been on the road for almost seven days. And all the things my mother usually did—tapping the steering wheel with her thumbs when she liked a song, biting her bottom lip when she wasn’t smoking—suddenly annoyed me. We tried playing Sister Sledge again, but the original effect of “We Are Family” had reversed itself. Now the last thing we wanted to be was related. On top of that, something in the car smelled. We sniffed around but never found the source. We rolled the windows up and down—it was unpredictable, which made it worse. It could stink like blue cheese or baby vomit. When we finally entered New York State it smelled like both.
By ten p.m. we were hungry and tired and hot. We’d finished the last of our Pop-Tarts hours before. We needed air-conditioning and food.
A truck whizzed by towing a blinking traffic arrow. For twenty miles it was all we saw. The deserted highway went on and on forever. The posts on the guardrail whooshed as we passed them. A stone caught in our tire tick-tick-ticked against the pavement. I felt as if we were standing still and the landscape out my window was merely scrolling by.
“Look!” my mother said, pointing out the window. A glowing sign emerged from the darkness like a pool of water in the desert. gas, food, lodging, it read, so we took the exit.
A heavyset, bucktoothed, chinless girl sat in the toll booth at the bottom of the ramp.
“Two fifty,” she said, too busy reading People magazine to look at us. With her weight on one hip, she stuck her hand out and chomped on her gum. Her plump fingers wiggled impatiently as my mother dug inside her purse.
With a huff, the girl put her magazine down and rolled her eyes when my mother handed her a fistful of change.
“Pfft,” I said as we pulled away. “What was her problem?”
My mother wasn’t listening. She was still pawing through her bag. “What happened to all our money?” she asked. “Here, you look.” And she thrust the bag at me. “There’s got to be at least another hundred in there somewhere.”
My mother’s bag was more like a sac. It had no zippered compartments and looking into it was like looking into a black hole. The only way to find anything was to feel around at the bottom. So I yanked it open and shoved my hand in.
Neither one of us had kept track of our money, and my mother didn’t use a wallet. She just took fistfuls of whatever change was handed to her and stuffed it in her purse.
Life took a nose dive when I couldn’t feel a single coin.
“Dump it out,” she commanded.
“Seriously?”
“You heard me,” she said. “Just do it.” There was so much crap inside her bag it was scary. But she was in a frenzy. So I turned it over and a whole store of things spilled out.
lipstick
rouge
matches
cotton balls
fingernail polish and remover
fingernail clippers
cuticle trimmer
a toothbrush
a hairbrush
an eyebrow brush
a pad of paper
twelve paper clips
eight bobby pins
three hair clips
eight hair ties
an extension cord with a curling iron attached to it
several crushed cigarettes
three packs of matches
five Bic lighters
a blow dryer
two tubes of mascara
eyeliner
eyelash curler
three compacts
two packs of cigarettes
six plastic straws, two paper ones
two ketchup and three mustard packets
three plastic spoons and a stainless-steel fork
bottle caps
a street map of Orange, California
a crumpled-up Dunkin’ Donuts napkin
numerous tampons both in and out of their wrappers
a tea bag
shoelaces
tweezers
a bottle opener
a can opener
a wine opener
a pair of scissors
travel-size shampoo and hand cream
Noxzema
a razor
Krazy Glue
wire cutters
a screwdriver
three pens, one magic marker, and six pencils
One by one, I cataloged each item and replaced them in her bag. My mother took quick sharp looks in my direction. “Keep going,” she snapped. “I know there’s money in there somewhere.”
She’d been keeping an open bottle of bourbon between her legs ever since I pulled her tooth out. She’d sip it every time she felt pain. But now she swigged it with abandon. Her face glowed dim in the light of the dashboard. Beads of sweat glistened on her upper lip. She gripped the wheel, her knuckles turned white.
She was going to snap, and it was not going to be pretty. I unbuckled my seat belt, maneuvered to the back, and started scouring the seat and floor. I looked everywhere, and when I finished we had a twenty-dollar bill, two fives, four singles, and three dollars and thirty-eight cents in change.
“That can’t be it,” my mother muttered. She swerved off the road and screeched to a stop. She got out, stomped around, and flung my door open.
“Move it!” She pulled my arm.
I jumped out and stood back. When she was like this I’d have to steel myself to get through it.
She pawed through the garbage on the floor. Paper cups, napkins, wrappers, empty Coke cans flew out behind her like dirt. When she started on the backseat, a barrage of Phil’s crap sprayed the ground like bullets. One by one the diarrhea mugs went flying. “Piece of shit anyway,” my mother mumbled, whipping an ashtray to the ground behind her.
By the end, the only thing that survived was Phil’s TV. She’d tried but couldn’t get it out. Wedged between the back of her seat and the floor, she left it looking as if it needed an ambulance. The antenna was mangled, the screen all scratched up.
My mother stood up. She was wild-eyed and panting, her hair a furious mess. She tossed her hands up and shoo
k them. “Fuuuuuuuuck!” she howled.
Then she stomped back to the driver’s-side door, yanked it open, got in, and slammed it.
I stood next to the car, waiting, hoping she’d cool off a bit. There were no streetlights, but the moon glowed so bright it was almost garish.
“Get in!” she screamed.
I slid into my seat, squeezed the armrest on the door, and braced myself. And then it really started.
“You know,” she snarled. She twisted the rearview mirror so she could see herself, then tore her bag open on her lap and began rummaging through it. She pulled out her brush. She whipped her head—back and forth, back and forth—and yanked her brush through her hair. “I don’t know why I ever listen to you.” She pitched the brush back into her bag and fished out a compact. She popped it open, picked up the powder puff, and in a fury spanked it all over her face. She snapped the compact closed with one hand and exchanged it for another one. This time she stabbed a brush into the makeup, and with the same swinging head motion she turned her cheeks and swirled rouge on each one.
“We should have just stayed with Phil!” She’d unearthed her mascara and was pumping the little wand in and out frantically. “I mean, he had a job and a yard and a home!” She screamed all the nouns, simultaneously jerking her head and shoving a wide-open eyeball up to the mirror, applying black to her lashes.
“I tell you, that is the last time I ever let you talk me into doing anything! Do you hear me? Do you?”
My face got hot; my ears were burning.
“You’re all I’ve got to bank on,” she used to say to me. I hardly ever failed her, so when she talked to me like this, it hurt. I pinched my arm hard to keep from feeling anything.
She jammed the wand back inside its tube and pulled out her lipstick. In a sharp nasal tone, with her lips in an O, she mumbled a few more swears. She finally threw the last of her makeup back into the bag and flung it behind her where it hit the rear window with a thud. As she grabbed her cigarettes off the dashboard, her hands trembled. She broke the first two before she got one out. The third one quaked between her lips as she fumbled with her lighter. Flick, flick, flick. When she finally lit it, she took one long drag and half the cigarette burned down. She tilted her head and through pinched angry lips she exhaled a line of smoke that bounced off the ceiling and engulfed her.
“You know what else?” she said smugly. “I’m sick of looking at that stupid nun on the dashboard.” She pointed at Mary. “It’s Catholic-white-trashy and you should’ve outgrown it by now.”
Snap, snap, snap. There was hardly anything left of them, but I gnawed at my fingernails anyway. She’d crossed a line and she knew it. I never believed in fairy tales or Santa Claus. I did not believe in God or Jesus. I believed in Mary.
I rummaged through the glove compartment and found some gum. I crammed two pieces in my mouth and started chewing. But less than thirty seconds into it, I remembered: I hated gum. It was tiresome and tedious and the flavor never lasted. So I spit it out. I went through the whole pack that way, then crumpled up the empty wrapper and threw it on the floor.
My mother had blown off all her steam and was now acting as if nothing had happened. Her arm was draped casually out the window. Another cigarette dangled between her fingers. She eased up on the gas and her shoulders dropped. She swiped a wisp of hair from her forehead and tucked it behind her ear.
“Phew,” she said. Extending her arm, she let the wind snatch her cigarette butt. “Thank God.” She turned her palm faceup. “Finally . . . a breeze.”
My mother prattled on for at least a half hour about how dry and hot the summer was but I didn’t listen. I stared out the window. The broken divider line stitched down the center of the road and the headlights pierced the darkness at always the same distance in front of us. In the heat the insects seemed to multiply, complaining loudly as they hit our windshield. My mother flicked the wipers on and smacked away their juice.
Then finally at a red light, the street ended.
“Hmm, let’s see,” my mother mused, inching slowly forward. I looked at Mary and her eyes rolled back into her head, perfectly capturing my mood.
“If you were a 7-Eleven, which way would you be? Would you be right?” She sat up and looked past me out the window. “Or would you be left?” She turned and looked in the opposite direction.
welcome to fat river! a sign exclaimed. Across from us the street was peppered with half-vacant storefronts.
“What do you think?” my mother asked.
The red light squeaked and swung on the wire overhead. An inflated Walmart bag skipped along the road on its handles, but not a single car went by.
“Huh?” she asked again, and for the first time since her fit, she glanced at me. “Hey.” She patted me on the leg as if she hadn’t just been mad at me. “Don’t be so glum. We’ll be okay.”
The light turned green and my mother looked forward.
“I promise,” she added.
With her palm open on the steering wheel, she glided the car right, rounding the corner smoothly, as if she’d known all along exactly which way to go.
A few miles down the road we found a gas station with a diner next to it, and they both looked open.
“I told you things would get better, didn’t I?” my mother said, as if she’d put this scene in place herself.
Tiny’s Grub ‘n’ Go! had a spinning neon sign out front. The letters flashed one at a time, spelling out the name. The o quivered and made the exclamation point look twice as bright.
My mother turned the wheel and the gravel in the parking lot crunched. “I’m starving,” she groaned.
She threw her car keys in her bag, shoved her purse on her shoulder, and got out. She was almost running through the parking lot.
“Let’s just hope this place is really open,” she said as I followed her. “Cross your fingers.” She raised her hand to show me hers already were.
A neon chicken wing flapped up and down in the front window and a hot dog flashed in and out of its bun. Blinking colored lights outlined the plate-glass windows. The warm hum of electricity stroked the air.
My mother took the few steps up.
“Yes!” she breathed when the breezeway door flew open. At the door to the restaurant she took a deep breath and gave it a yank.
“Fuuuck!” My mother hawked the word out from the back of her throat. It was locked.
She cupped her hands around her eyes and peeked in. I did the same next to her. A plastic jack-o’-lantern sat by the register, a string of tiny American flags hung above the counter, and a fake Christmas tree stood just inside the door as if here all the holidays happened at once.
Karen Carpenter crooned from the stereo. “Why do birds suddenly appear . . .” In the dim light we saw a waitress wiping down the counter. In big, rhythmic strokes she performed the song with her rag.
My mother slapped her palm on the door and rattled the handle, but the waitress didn’t hear us, so my mother pounded harder. The waitress finally looked up and turned the music down.
“Please,” my mother said through the door, exaggerating her mouth and holding her hands in prayer. “I have a kid,” she added pointing to me.
My mother and I were more like best friends. The word kid just didn’t fit for me. But I knew this routine. I smoothed out my T-shirt, and with my best innocent look I stood on my tiptoes and made sure the waitress could see me.
A man peered out the service window as the waitress pointed us out to him. He nodded his head, and, fishing her keys out of her apron, the waitress headed for the door.
“Oh, thank Christ,” my mother said when the door opened. “We’ve been driving for hours.”
“Don’t sweat it, honey,” the waitress said, holding the door open for us. “Just follow me.”
Up close the waitress was taller than she’d first seemed
. Her large hands swung back and forth by her side like a monkey’s. Her shoulders were broad and her voice was deep. Her hair was uniformly blonde, stiff, and shoulder length with a perfect flip curl. She swayed her hips exaggeratedly, the way you would when you were only pretending to have them. And her feet were huge. You should have seen her red mules—they were like boats.
We slid into a booth by the window and I looked up at her. Her eyes were framed by enormous fake lashes that curled up at the corners like a cat’s. And she also had a mustache—not the kind you’d bleach to hide. Hers was a deliberate and grand handlebar with the tips waxed up into an elaborate set of curls.
“We normally close at eleven.” She slid a couple of menus across the table. “But lucky for you the boss is a real mensch.”
“Oh my God, are you Jewish?” I asked excitedly, recognizing the Yiddish. I loved the Jewish people. They were the only sympathetic characters in the Bible and Yiddish was my favorite language. Farkakt and farklemt, I mean, who couldn’t love those words? Just saying them was fun. “Farkakt!” “Farklemt!” “Farkakt!” “Farklemt!” If I could, I’d make Marco Polo a Yiddish game.
The waitress gasped. She drew her big hand delicately to her chest and stooped in toward us. “Is it that obvious?” she whispered, and without waiting for an answer, she swished off.
When the waitress was out of earshot, my mother leaned across the table and widened her eyes. “Oh my God, that’s a man,” she whispered.
“I know,” I whispered back. It was obvious.
“I don’t think she’s had the surgery, though, do you?”
My mother loved watching surgeries on TV. She’d settle for gastric bypasses, but sex-change operations were her favorite.
She started riffling through her purse. I knew before she found it that she was looking for her lipstick. My mother was excited, and there was just something about the act of moving the stick of color across her lips that soothed her.
“I have way too much crap in this bag,” she complained.
“Don’t you just hate that?” the waitress said.
All We Had Page 3