Chapter 38
AMELIA
Eight years old
Lillian and I huddled on the couch together as we watched my mother, pacing and pacing, pulling at her hair.
She had a pattern to her pacing, a spiral that started in the kitchen and wound through the living room, around the plywood coffee table, past the thrift store recliner, and back to the kitchen again.
Each lap, she picked up speed until she was almost running, the way a horse gets wild when it senses an earthquake before the ground shakes. She wore a bathrobe over her jeans, the tie dragging like a noose.
Lillian sat beside me, knees tight to her chest, sweatshirt sleeves pulled over her fists. She watched Mom with the blank stare of a goldfish, as if by being still enough, she could erase herself from the room.
I tried to copy her, but I kept peeking at the clock, counting the seconds between each time Mom muttered “fuck” or clapped her hands together.
She didn’t look like herself; her skin chalked out and her mouth gone slack, cheeks hollowed like the pieces of apple left too long in a lunchbox.
Her hair, usually stringy but at least tamed with a comb, stuck out in all directions. Sweat shone on her temples, and her hands kept wringing, wringing, wringing until I thought her knuckles might snap.
That morning, the milk in the fridge was sour, but Mom poured it anyway, filling three glasses and setting them on the table so hard the liquid sloshed out and puddled under our cereal bowls.
She hovered behind us, lurching from foot to foot, as if the floor was a trampoline and every muscle in her calves was fighting to make a break for it.
Lillian took one polite sip of her milk before sliding the glass away. Mom saw it, nostrils flaring, and smacked the edge of the table with her palm.
“Drink it.” The voice was half-broken, but it made me flinch all the same. “I paid for it. Don’t waste.”
Lillian didn’t move. I took a gulp, let the sting of it curdle in my throat, and swallowed, eyes watering with the aftertaste. I was never sure what would happen if I didn’t obey her, but I knew exactly what would happen if I tried to argue.
Mom sucked hard on a cigarette, even though she was trying to quit.
Mom wasn’t like this every day.
Sometimes, things got good for a an hour, or a few days, like a game show host had spun a secret wheel and landed on ‘Functional Mother.’
There’d be pancakes, or at least the promise of them, and she’d hug us with the force of a wrestler, her heart pounding so loud I thought it might knock her out from the inside.
But lately, it was all pacing, all the time, and she had that look people get when they’re climbing out of their own skin but can’t quite make it.
She was trying to quit, or trying to do better, or trying to murder the urge inside her, but whatever it was, it made her cruel in a new, twitchy way.
Instead of screaming, she’d get quiet and stare at us like she was waiting for us to mess up.
Instead of hitting, she’d go into these long, tight silences where she pressed her palms to her eyelids and counted backwards, muttering math that never ended.
Lillian called it “brain lock.” I didn’t know what to call it except broken.
Mom swore this was the last time. She had a plan—she was always saying she had a plan—and this time it meant peppermint tea and cold showers and taping the number for the hotline to the fridge in four places.
I would find her sometimes in the kitchen at night, breathing into her hands, eyes red as if she’d been sandpapered. She’d light a Parliament, then stub it out after half a drag, then light another.
The kitchen filled up with the ghosts of almost-smoked cigarettes. I watched her every time, memorizing her routine so I would know what kind of mother I was going to get the next morning.
Lillian said it would pass. “It’s just a chemical thing,” she promised, like she was some kind of doctor. “Her body just needs time to catch up with her brain.”
But I didn’t believe her, because her hands shook just as badly as Mom’s, and sometimes I caught her looking at the clock for hours, lost in a spell I couldn’t break.
We both had our private panics, but our own separate Doomsday clocks, ticking the seconds until Mom went nuclear.
When she finally stopped pacing that day, she collapsed straight down onto the linoleum, knees knocking the edge of the cabinets and palms slapping flat to catch herself.
She knelt there for a long time, staring at the floor like she was waiting for it to open up and save her the trouble of getting up again. Lillian kept very still, as if sudden movement would set Mom off.
I watched too, even though I didn’t want to. Mom started rocking, not baby-style but like her bones were trying to shake loose.
Her voice was soft at first. Just a whisper of all the old curses, the fucks and shits and goddammits, but then the sound grew, a wind-up, until it was a real howl.
She scared herself, I think, or maybe she didn’t. She just knelt there howling, like maybe she finally figured out that monsters can’t eat each other, they just gnaw and gnaw and gnaw.
After a while, she stopped making noise. Her head hung down, greasy hair blurring her face. The kitchen stared back at us, quiet, and I realized how much I hated the way the light made everything look yellow and dirty, like the whole house was stained with missing.
I wanted to help her. Or hug her. Or maybe just crawl under the table and pull the chair in and wait until the world ends.
Instead, I picked up the milk glass and finished it. The taste was sour, but it was something to do.
The next day, she was worse. Lillian and I skipped school to keep an eye on her. She lay on the floor, one cheek pressed to the dirty floor, arms splayed out like she was making a snow angel in reverse.
I sat next to her for a while and watched the way her eyelashes stuck together, wet and clumpy.
She stared at the oven, unblinking, like she was waiting for the timer to go off and announce the end of something important. When she did speak, her voice came out in pieces.
“Amelia,” she whispered, voice all scratchy. “You ever wish you were made of glass?”
I shook my head, but that wasn’t good enough.
She rolled over slowly, her hair leaving a greasy streak behind, and grabbed my hand, squeezing so hard the bones clicked.
“If I were glass, you could see right through me. You could see all the cracks. All the reasons.” Her hand started to shake, but she didn’t let go.
“You could see if there was anything worth saving.”
I tried, but when I looked at my mom, all I saw was a mess of bones and the outline of an animal that was once meant to be human. I squeezed her hand back, hard as I could, then let go.
Lillian came in and put a blanket over Mom’s hips, like modesty actually mattered at this point. She knelt down, pressed her lips to the top of Mom’s head, and said, “We’re here,” which sounded stupid, because of course we were.
There was nowhere else for us to go.
The day passed in a slow, syrupy blur. No TV, no talking, just the constant background hum of Mom coming apart.
I brought her water, but she only sipped, and when I tried to feed her instant oats, she made a hissing sound and pushed the spoon away, flinging a glob onto my arm.
It burned, but I didn’t tell her.
Even Lillian gave up after a while, retreating to the bedroom.
When it got dark, I stood in the kitchen and watched the moths batter themselves against the window, desperate for the light inside. Though, the only light in here was coming from the lightbulb. Everything else felt dark.
Their wings made a powdery noise, a sound I liked, and for a minute I pressed my cheek to the glass, wishing I could be outside of it instead of in here with the hunger and the garbage stink and the sound of my mother dying in slow motion.
I left the window and crawled into bed with Lillian. She was wide awake, eyes shining in the near-darkness. “She’s going to get better,” she whispered, but her voice trembled like a popsicle stick bridge. “She just has to.”
It was the kind of lie you say to a little kid to make them shut up and go to sleep, but Lillian said it to herself, over and over, as if she could will it into truth.
I wanted to tell her it was okay if Mom didn’t get better. That we would be fine, that we were already good at being alone together in the world, but the words stuck in my throat.
I just hugged my knees and listened to the creak of the house.
In the middle of the night, I woke to a sound that was almost nothing, except for the part of me that could never rest when she was in the house.
It was a humming. I followed it out of bed, dragging my blanket like a cape. I paused just outside the frame of the door, peeking through.
Mom was in there, hunched over the counter, the skin on her neck loose and creased like a bag that had been wrung too many times.
Her hands were shaking so hard she had to steady the spoon against the edge of the sink to eat whatever was in the bowl.
I watched her, shivering so hard I thought I heard my teeth moving.
She didn’t notice me. Or she did, but it didn’t matter. Nothing could reach her when she was like this.
She just kept eating, tiny bites at first, then bigger ones, like the food was running from her and she had to chase it down.
After a while, she set the spoon aside and leaned forward, pressing her forehead to the cupboards. Her whole body went rigid, the way stray cats do when they’re about to scream.
Instead of a scream, though, it was a sob, like a dog trying to cough up a bone and failing. She made a sound like she was breaking in half, and then her shoulders started to shake.
I wanted to turn away. I wanted to throw up or run until my legs fell off, but I just stood there watching her, because I was afraid that if I stopped looking, she might really disappear this time.
When she finally lifted her head, the light showed the streaks running down her face. Rivers of snot and tears and whatever else got left behind when a person lost control.