I crept over to her bed, really just a box spring and a mattress on the floor and patted her foot to make her wake up. She always, always had white sheets so I could bleach them, because gross. You really didn’t want to be on the propeller end of my mom waking up. She flailed her arms when her motor started and you didn’t want a piece of that. Just because I was spelled wrong didn’t mean I was stupid.
“Ugh–coffee.” She moaned, dragging her body up to a sitting position while keeping her face firmly planted on the pillow for as long as possible. As usual, she had to hug the sheet to her body, still naked from her last ‘payroll in the hay’. Her yellowy blonde hair long and haylike, sticking out this way and that. Black gunk still clung to her eyelashes making her look like some Egyptian princess gone very, very wrong.
“Ok, I’m getting it.” That poor coffee maker was on its last leg. The little swivel job that held the filters, yeah, I broke the hinge on it last week on accident and had to duct tape it together. But thank God it still worked and somehow she hadn’t noticed. Even if she did, I would blame it on her. It’s not like she remembered anything after she snorted, smoked, or shot up–whatever the night gave her.
I poured the thick black stream into one of those huge coffee cups meant for coffee connoisseurs and poured obscene amounts of sugar and creamer into it. I carried it, along with a stray granola bar into the bedroom where she had already started her wake up line of coke.
“Get my clothes, will ya?” She slurred at me while wiping the bottom of her nostrils and taking the steaming cup from my hands. She’d now wrapped the sheet completely around her, toga style, more convenient for sniffing and downing caffeine.
“Yeah, Mom.” I went to the dresser and pulled out jeans and a halter top for her. It was cold outside, and a halter top and jeans was the equivalent of a nun’s garb in my mom’s book.
“Ugh–I hate jeans.” She said, disgusted with my choice.
“It’s cold outside, Mom. It’s just until you get to the club, you know. Then you can change. You don’t want to get sick.”
“Yeah, yeah, you should come to the club, let the girls make you over. You dress like a tomboy.” I looked down at myself. I didn’t really try to stick my style in such a stereotypical cliché like she did. But truth be told, I tried to dress boyish. I wore baggy pants and hoodies outside of the house. I never wanted to draw the attention of men. She did plenty of that for the both of us.
“Um, I don’t think they’d let me wear that stuff to school, Mom.”
“Well, I guess not. But three more weeks and you can start working, putting in around here. I mean, you’re eighteen already, but I guess we have to let you finish high school. I don’t really consider your little paper route putting in.”
Most mothers wanted their girls to be wives, nurses, teachers, doctors or lawyers. My mother expected me to follow in her footsteps and as I looked across the room at her neat shelves stacked with mile high stilettos, I renewed my vow to myself. Don’t be like your mother.
“Um, yeah, Mom. It’s seven thirty, better get in the shower.”
“Ugh–you’re such a goody goody. I’m going, I’m going.”
I heard the water as the pipes squeaked alive and I put on some sterile gloves, a mainstay at this abode, and changed the sheets on her bed. I threw them in the hamper. Around here we needed one of those bins like they had at hospitals marked ‘hazardous materials’ or ‘soiled linens.’ Because when your Mom’s a stripper/prostitute/druggie, there’s just no telling what will make an appearance.
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Love Notes Page 19