Chapter 57
My mom’s new apartment was a chipped, century-old building in Upper Northwest with lobby chandeliers, skinny gold mail slots, scary red-carpeted hallways.
Ahead of her move-in date, I’d felt her absence mostly through the personal items that went missing around the house: no more work blouses draped limply on the ironing board, no blue-and-white contact lens case on the sink, no pink house slippers by the steps, a cruelty I hadn’t accounted for.
I knew she had reasons to leave and, in moments of generosity, those reasons felt like good ones.
This didn’t ease the lurch she’d left us in.
Nor did it negate that she had one good reason to stay.
Because what the fuck were my dad and I going to do about money?
She’d said she’d “help out,” but we had a whole mortgage.
They’d owned the house so long, maybe they were only paying taxes and HOA fees.
Either way, it was more than my volatile tips, my eight-dollars-an-hour pay, my dad’s DoorDash wages he wasn’t even collecting at the moment, and his shitty social security check.
I looked up short-term disability benefits for him.
Apparently, you couldn’t get them if you were unemployed.
We would’ve been better off had he kept his job and then shot himself in the foot.
My mom and I entered her new unit. It was littered with boxes she’d forced me to carry upstairs for her.
A large window leaked light onto the hardwood floors.
The kitchen had beige cabinets with wood banding and grimy tiles.
She set the keys on the counter and stared at the peeling ceiling with an inscrutable expression.
I’d yet to reconcile this woman with the one who raised me, this woman who casually undid her life like unclipping a barrette from her hair.
Watching her glide through the space, peeking into drawers, folding back closet doors, settling in, I became a child again wanting to sink my face into the fleshy underskin of her arm.
I’d always hated listening to the dry crunch of popcorn between her teeth when we watched TV, but I missed it then.
I didn’t want to be left alone with my father.
I didn’t know how to be a daughter to a shell of a man, and I knew he didn’t know how to be a father to me.
We shared nothing but DNA and my mother.
She turned out of the bathroom, flicking off the light. “What do you think?”
“It’s nice.”
She frowned. “Let me show you something.”
Off her bedroom was a tiny balcony. We stepped out into the humidity, the sliding door whooshing shut behind us. In the cloudy distance were the sharp gray fangs of the National Cathedral biting the sky.
“I’m thinking of putting a garden out here.”
I nodded.
“Oh, baby.” She took me in her arms. “You can come over whenever you want, you know that, right?” She didn’t say anything about coming to us.
When we were back inside, I noticed a small bald spot at the nape of her neck and wondered if her hair was falling out or if she’d pulled it out.
I reached to touch the patch when she grabbed my wrist, then saw my nails.
During a particularly ravenous bender, I’d accidentally bitten off half my pinky nail, revealing the pink, sensitive flesh beneath. She gasped. “Catherine.”
I pulled my hand away. “What’s gonna happen to the house?”
She was still gawking at my nails when she answered.
“Your father and I have been smart with our money.” By that she meant she’d been smart with their money over the years, probably investing it behind his back, though the stock market kept tanking because of the uncertainty around tariffs, but maybe she knew something I didn’t about all that.
She held my shoulders firmly the way Janine had when I was losing it in the hallway. “You’re going to have to help out, you hear me? You’re both grown. This is what grown people deal with.”
I didn’t feel grown. I felt like I fell out of her uterus an hour ago and landed in this random apartment.
There was no way I could afford to stay in the creative writing program now.
I’d probably have to get a second job. I kept this revelation close to my chest, worrying it silently while my mom took in the sight of her life without me.
The Nablus soap arrived in a little brown package at the door with a handwritten note: “For the American ‘Cat.’ ”
I tore it off, studying the pointy castle of Anwar’s A, the sensuous curve of his C. Upstairs, I slipped it into my diary.
Later, my dad came out of the bathroom on his crutches, saying, “What’s this block of cheese doing in here?”
I went to see what he was talking about. “It’s not cheese, Daddy, it’s soap.”
“Well”—he paused—“it looks like cheese to me.”
“I adopted a tree in the West Bank from a family farm. It’s from them.” I paused. “I actually named the tree Joel. After you.”
“What for?”
“I dunno. It’s a nice name, isn’t it?”
He looked at me like I was lying. “Just clean this cheese up before a daggone mouse shows up.”
I didn’t see how we were going to survive without my mom.