All That's Bright and Gone

by Eliza Nellums

  “I’ve been trying and trying to tell you, Aoife,” she said. “I need you to understand what happened.”

  Somebody shouted something rude.

  “He’s waiting for us,” said Mama. “Theo, stop it!”

  And then she swung the wheel around hard, and we rolled into the intersection just as the light changed and the other cars started coming toward us. I screamed, because they were going to come right through the glass and hit us. Everybody was honking and Mama shrieked, and I put my head down because I didn’t want to see. It was so loud it was like standing right next to the organ at church, how the sound goes right through you into your bones. Then the van stopped dead, right in the middle of the mall entrance, blocking the street.

  “Theo, you can’t,” said Mama, in the quiet. But there was nobody around but me and Teddy.

  “You’re not supposed to talk to yourself out loud,” I told Mama, because she always tells me that. But she didn’t answer.

  She unbuckled her seat belt and got out of the car. We were still in the middle of the road. She didn’t even wait for me. She left the door wide open behind her.

  “Mama?” I said. Teddy was growling and barking like a dog. “Mama, don’t go without me.”

  I unbuckled myself too, but the back door was locked from the outside. I had to climb up between the seats and go out the front, and by then Mama was standing in the road, and all the cars were stopped around her with the van still sideways across the street. We had almost hit the sign, WELCOME TO WESTGATE MALL, right between GATE and MALL, and crushed it like a potato chip.

  “Stop it, Theo!” yelled Mama. She was pulling on her clothes, and then she grabbed her face with her fingernails.

  Nobody was honking anymore. They were all stopped in the street, and everybody was looking at us.

  “Mama!” I said. “Mama, quit it!” I ran into the street after her, even though I was afraid of the cars. I knew Saint Joan would watch over me, and Teddy was with me holding my hand, so it was okay.

  A man rolled down his window when I went past him. “Hey, honey, are you guys all right? You should probably stay out of the road.”

  But I’m not supposed to talk to strangers, so I didn’t say anything. Teddy bared his teeth.

  “Go away!” Mama yelled, bending over so she was scrunched up around herself. “Leave me alone!”

  The man was still leaning out the window. “Is that your mom?” he called to me, and I nodded, but I didn’t talk to him, so I was still following the rule.

  Other people were getting out of their cars, too.

  “Somebody call mall security,” said the first man.

  “Call 911,” said someone else.

  “Theo, I’m here,” said Mama. Her hair had come out of her ponytail, and it was all in her face. “Theo, I’m sorry.”

  I finally got right up to her and pulled on her shirt. “Mama?”

  “Where is he, Aoife?” said Mama, looking right at me. “What happened? What happened to him?” She put her hands over her ears and started to sob.

  A lady in a pretty dress got out of her car and came over to take my hand, pulling me away to stand on the sidewalk. I could still hear Mama crying. Her face was shiny and wet.

  “You stand over here by me while we wait for the police, okay?” said the lady in the pretty dress.

  “Okay,” I said. I didn’t know what else to do.

  Mama was crying and I wanted to tell her to stop, but that never helps me when I’m crying, so I just stood there with the lady and Teddy, waiting until the blue men came.

  * * *

  I wish I could tell all that to Uncle Donny just like it happened, but I won’t be able to tell it right. So I just watch Teddy, who has his face smushed up against the glass, making faces and trying to scare the people driving past us.

  “Listen,” says Uncle Donny, “I know today was rough.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say.

  “Do you … do you understand what happened?”

  “Officer Tom said that Mama was sick, so they had to take her to the hospital,” I say.

  “Well, that’s one way of putting it, yeah.”

  “But she didn’t say that her tummy hurt, and she didn’t close her eyes and lie down like when she has a headache,” I say. “Does she have the flu again?” I don’t know why the flu would make you stand in the middle of the road yelling like that.

  Uncle Donny blows out his breath. “Um, what did the lady at the hospital say?”

  “Dr. Pearlman?”

  “Yeah. You talked to Dr. Pearlman for a while, right?”

  “We played with play dough,” I say. “She made a heart.”

  “That sounds great. But uh, what did she say about your ma?”

  I frown, trying to remember. I mostly remember the play dough. “She said sometimes mommies get confused.”

  “Okay, yeah, that’s—your ma was confused again, like she gets sometimes. So she’s going to stay at the hospital and they’re going to, ah, help get her straightened out.”

  “And then she’s going to come back home?” I want to ask Uncle Donny when, but if I ask, he might say that it won’t be for a long, long time—and then it will be true. “It’s … not like Theo, right?”

  “What? No, baby, not like Theo. Definitely not like Theo, okay? This is a whole different, uh, kettle of fish here. All right? I promise.”

  “Okay.”

  “You believe me, right?”

  “Yes, because it’s wrong to lie.”

  “That’s right! Uncle Donny doesn’t lie about the important things, does he?”

  We drive a little further until we get to my favorite road, Telegraph. “Almost home now,” says Uncle Donny.

  “Mama is going to be home in time for the fireworks,” I say. Because she said she’d take me, and Teddy and I have been waiting and waiting.

  “That’s next week, huh?”

  I don’t know. It’s further away than tomorrow, I know that. We’ll go to bed and wake up and go to bed and wake up, and at some point, it’ll be fireworks. “We’re going to go see them at the lake.” Mama said they make a reflection in the water. “Mama promised.”

  “You don’t happen to know which lake? All right, well, try not to panic. Uncle Donny’s a problem-solver; he’ll figure it out. We will go see fireworks, okay? I guess you like those a lot, huh.”

  I don’t want to go with Uncle Donny and not Mama. He can come too, but I want to watch them with her.

  I put my head down on the side of the car. It’s soft, not like Mama’s car, where the inside of the door is plastic. That’s ’cuz Uncle Donny’s got more money than us. “They already did the Canada ones downtown, and we didn’t go.”

  “Well, we’ll get to see them in living color this time, okay? Pinkie swear.”

  I nod, and I want to say it’s okay, but like a baby, I feel my face getting hotter and my eyes start to burn.

  Uncle Donny parks the car in front of our house.

  “It was because I was talking to Teddy, wasn’t it?” I say. “Mama told me not to talk to him where people could hear, and I did. But it was Teddy’s fault!”

  He puts his arm around my shoulder and squeezes. “It wasn’t because of Teddy,” he says. “Okay? Your Mama is just … sad about Theo sometimes, and it makes … it makes it hard for her to—to concentrate, okay?”

  “She really misses him,” I say. Nobody told me that. I just know it.

  “Yeah, that’s true,” says Uncle Donny, rubbing a hand over his face. “What happened with Theo is, you know, it’s very sad. For, uh, everyone. So it makes your ma sad that he can’t be with you guys anymore.”

  When I try to remember Theo, I remember a day on the beach when I got lost, and then someone found me. I remember his swimsuit. It was red. I was crying, and he found me. And that’s pretty much all I remember.

  “I don’t think I really miss Theo,” I say. Teddy is better anyway, because he can change sizes and he tells me secrets.


  “That’s okay too,” says Uncle Donny, ruffling my hair. “Now, it’s probably a good idea not to talk any more about Theo today, okay? Can we do that?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  Nobody ever wants to talk about Theo. Except Mama, and she can’t stop.

  * * *

  Uncle Donny has to dig through Mama’s purse to find her house keys. I giggle, because boys don’t carry purses, which are for ladies. But finally he finds the right key to fit in the lock and manages to get the door open.

  “Aoife,” he says when we step inside. “What happened?”

  I don’t understand what he means. We’re at the beginning of the obstacle course, but instead of making his way through the trials, he’s just standing in the doorway with the door open, letting in the bugs.

  “You go like this,” I explain, showing him how to squeeze around the wardrobe and down the hallway, jumping over the laundry basket without tipping over the stack of boxes inside. If you get to the pizza box at the end, Mama says that’s home plate, which means you’re safe.

  “What the hell,” he says. Uncle Donny says a lot of bad words.

  Mama is always careful to close the door real fast, because otherwise someone could see in the house and make fun of our obstacle course. Neighbors can be nosy.

  Uncle Donny is frowning at the boxes of detergent that are stacked in the laundry basket. “Aoife, how long has the house looked this way?” He crouches down so we’re the same height, so I know he must be asking something really important.

  “We built the hallway part last month,” I say. “When Mama couldn’t sleep.”

  Uncle Donny takes my hand and walks with me into the kitchen.

  “Why are the dishes piled up in the sink?” he says. “Did Siobhan stop washing up?”

  “We don’t need dishes,” I say. “Tater Tots taste just as good right out of the package.”

  “That’s what you’ve been eating? Tater Tots?”

  “Yeah, because you can make them in the microwave,” I say. Sometimes Mama isn’t hungry because of her pills, but she’ll usually eat something from the microwave. “Tater Tots and chicken nuggets and fish sticks.” When we have them. “And I know how to make them! It’s three minutes. Three-oh-oh. Do you want to see?”

  “No, that’s okay. I’m sure you do a real good job.” Uncle Donny looks at the piles of laundry on the kitchen table.

  He looks mad, so I try to explain. “We like to eat on the couch, in front of the tent.” I take him to the living room.

  “What tent?”

  “Mama and I built it. It’s a safe place, see?” The tent is made out of sheets and pillows, with the floor lamp as the pole that holds it up. Mama and I put it up after she had a bad dream, and we sat inside it and read The Illustrated Volume of the Saints by flashlight.

  I hold up the sheet so Uncle Donny can bend to see inside. There are candles in there, but we don’t light them because that wouldn’t be safe. Uncle Donny sits down under the sheet and puts his head in his hands. I climb in next to him and sit, too. It’s warm under the tent and smells like baby-powder Febreze.

  “Christ, Siobhan,” says Uncle Donny.

  It’s always funny when Uncle Donny says naughty words, but this time he looks sad when I laugh.

  I’ve been trying and trying to tell you, Aoife.

  You can’t imagine, the sight of those loose limbs—that slack, rounded face turning blue. He wanted to be an astronaut, and instead we buried him underground, in the rain.

  I try to visit him there, walking past the rows of graves, and I remember him begging for a cookie or talking about the stars. I can’t even get to the right stone; I just end up back at the car, shaking.

  I wake up at night, screaming that it was murder - it was murder. But I couldn’t stop it, and nobody believes me.

  Chapter Three

  Uncle Donny starts walking around the living room, picking up the paper plates and the plastic cups from the floor. He takes the empty two-liter off the desk where the computer used to be. Mama took the computer away because the spirits can get out of it.

  “Is it time to play clean-up?” I ask. Mama and I play clean-up sometimes, too.

  “Yeah,” he says. He still sounds mad. “It’s time to play clean-up now.”

  So we take down the tent and put the sheets in the laundry hamper. We pick up all the dirty clothes from off the stairs. We clean out the refrigerator, where everything is starting to smell bad.

  “Do you know if your ma has been taking her pills?” he asks. But I don’t know. He takes his phone into the other room while Teddy and I are playing with the laundry bags and calls someone. If I’m very quiet, I can hear.

  “The place is a fire hazard,” he says. “God knows what they’ve been living off of. Aoife says she’s been making microwave dinners.”

  I stick my tongue out at the door. I like microwave dinners. Although they’re better when there’s ketchup.

  “I don’t understand it; I was here a few months ago and everything was fine … No, I don’t know if she stopped taking them or they stopped working. I guess we’ll find out. Christ, I don’t even know if any of the bills are paid.”

  He moves farther from the door after that.

  “Is Stephanie coming inside tomorrow?” I ask when he gets back. If Stephanie is going to come in the house, maybe that’s why we’re cleaning up.

  “Who’s Stephanie?” asks Uncle Donny.

  I make a frowny face. “The babysitter,” I say, and I’m angry because Uncle Donny should know these things already, I shouldn’t have to tell him. He should know where the fireworks are, and how to get through the obstacle course, and who Stephanie is. “So Mama can do work or go visit Theo.”

  Uncle Donny doesn’t answer right away. He goes to the calendar in the kitchen and looks at it. “Does she come on Sundays?” he asks.

  “She comes almost every day in the summer.” Either to our house or to Hannah’s house, but lately always to Hannah’s house. And lately Hannah’s boy cousins are usually there too, because their mom really needs a break from them. They are very wild. Hannah’s mom says she can’t wait for school to start. I can’t wait for school to start either.

  Uncle Donny nods and starts looking through the pantry. “I guess I’d better give her a call, huh. Well, we got … a stick of butter in the fridge that isn’t spoiled. You want, uh, mac and cheese for dinner?”

  “Yeah!” I’m not allowed to make that myself because I’m not supposed to use the stove, and the microwave kind costs more. So it’s a special treat.

  “We don’t have any milk. I’ll have to make it with water,” he says.

  “There’s box milk in the cupboard.”

  He goes and finds it. “Why is your ma buying boxed milk?” he asks.

  “She doesn’t buy it. The church gives it to us. The first Tuesday of the month.”

  Uncle Donny’s whole face pinches up, and he doesn’t say anything else, just makes the mac and cheese. I watch him closely to make sure he doesn’t skimp on the butter. He doesn’t, in fact he puts more in than Mama does, so it’s going to be even better.

  I climb up on the stool at the counter, which has one short leg so that you can rock it back and forth on the tile. It makes a rattly rocking noise, and I bite my lip because there’s been so many nights with Mama sitting at the table while I rock myself on this stool, and now I’m here rocking and rocking but she’s gone.

  “Now, where could I find Stephanie’s number?” Uncle Donny sets a bowl down in front of me, and it’s so salty and good that I want to put my whole face in it.

  “Mama’s phone,” I say with my mouth full.

  He snaps his fingers at me. “Good thinking, kid. Eat your noodles.” So I eat the macaronis, salty and full of butter. They’re so hot that I have to use my teeth to take them off the fork without letting them touch my tongue until they cool down. The loose tooth in front makes it extra tricky. But it’ll be worth it when it falls out and I get a quar
ter.

  Uncle Donny comes back with Mama’s purse in one hand and her phone in another.

  “Is it good?” He takes a forkful out of my bowl. “Wow. Okay. That is entirely made of sugar and fat, isn’t it? Great, Donny, feed the kid cheesy carbs. I promise, Aoife, the next meal will feature vegetables.”

  “It’s good,” I say. I don’t care about vegetables. Unless it’s ketchup.

  “Glad you’re happy, anyway. Now, let me call Miss Stephanie.”

  “She’s just Stephanie,” I say.

  “Drink your water, hmm?” Uncle Donny already knows the code on Mama’s phone, so he doesn’t need my help. He goes back into the kitchen and I hear him talking. Teddy wants to eat some of the mac and cheese, too, so I let him lick the bowl when I’m finished.

  “If you could just take her for a couple of hours tomorrow, that would really be a big help,” Uncle Donny is saying when he comes back into the room.

  If Stephanie comes over, then Hannah will come too and we can solve mysteries. Hannah also wants to play detective ever since she read Harriet the Spy. She also likes to write down things you say. She has a whole notebook full of times and what I said. 10:55, AOIFE SAYS CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’ BARBIES ARE STUPID. She says it’s good practice, but I don’t know what for.

  “Time? Uh, what time. Maybe like eleven?”

  “We have to go to church first,” I say.

  He covers the phone with one hand. “I think we can give church a miss this week, bud.”

  “We can’t miss church! Because if we miss it, Father Paul will tell God and we’ll get in trouble.”

  “I think God will forgive us, this one time,” says Uncle Donny. “And Father Paul is just going to have to understand.”

  But I’m mad. Every Sunday we go to our church, the Sacred Heart of Mary. Then Mama talks to Father Paul afterwards, and then we get ice cream on the way home.

  “No!” I say. “We have to go!” I feel so bad, I want to throw the empty bowl right on the tile floor. And I hope it shatters everywhere and makes a big mess!

  “Uh, Stephanie, let me call you back.” Uncle Donny takes the water glass off the table like he knows what I’m thinking. “Aoife. Calm down.”