All the Ugly and Wonderful Things(8)

“This is your little brother, Vonnie. This is Donal. Give him a kiss.”

I didn’t know why Mama wanted me to kiss him, when she was the one who said the mouth was a dirty place. In case it was a trick, I only pretended to kiss him.

After the funeral, Mama and Donal and I went to The Transitional Program.

“Everything’s going to be different this time,” she said.

The first two weeks at The Program, it was different. She was Good Mama and followed the rules. She washed our clothes and put them away in drawers in the new apartment. She cooked dinner. She didn’t hide in her bedroom and smoke her pipe like she did before she got arrested.

Then one day she woke up Scary Mama instead of Good Mama, and I knew things weren’t going to be different. I never knew which Mama she would be when she woke up.

I read the books she got from The Program. She was supposed to RECONNECT WITH YOUR FAMILY! That meant we were supposed to EAT DINNER AS A FAMILY, but every night, after Scary Mama fixed dinner, she sat on the back porch, smoking cigarettes and yelling through the screen door for me to eat. I wasn’t falling for that. I knew what could happen if she caught me eating.

Even Good Mama could all of a sudden say, “Don’t eat that! That’s dirty!” and stick her fingers in my mouth to get the food out. Even Good Mama could pour burning Listerine on my tongue to get it clean. She always said, “Things can get into you that way.” Bad things could get in through your mouth and make you sick. Just like my germs could get on other things and make them dirty.

When Megan the social worker came to check on us, Mama smiled so hard it made my stomach hurt. She wasn’t going to be Good Mama.

“So, what are we cooking for dinner tonight?” Megan said.

“Oh, we’re having spaghetti.” That’s what Mama always fixed. I had Grandma’s recipe book, but Mama wouldn’t let me cook. She didn’t want me to make a mess.

“How is everything else?” Megan said. “You missed one of the group sessions this week.”

“Oh, everything’s super. I just had a little headache, that’s all. Thanks for checking on us.” Mama smiled and smiled, but as soon as Megan left, she said, “Fucking busybody! It’s like a sitcom with a nosy neighbor always dropping in. Except you’d kill your neighbor if she dropped by the way they do on TV. Kill her! God, I don’t want to be on this stupid TV show anymore!”

While Mama was yelling, Donal took her hairbrush out of her purse and put it in his mouth. Before I could take it away from him, Mama saw.

Once when I was little, I put her pipe in my mouth, just to see what it was like, since she liked it so much. Boiling and bleach could get most things clean, but not the pipe. It was so dirty after I put it in my mouth that it had to be thrown away.

Mama grabbed the hairbrush out of my hand and carried it into the kitchen. I knew she was coming back with Listerine or bleach, so I picked up Donal and carried him into the bedroom. Scary Mama dragged me out of the closet and spanked me until the brush left bloody spots on my legs, but I stopped her from putting Listerine in Donal’s mouth.

After that, I took care of Donal. I fed him and bathed him, because Scary Mama, she would give baths so hot it made your skin bubble.

The Program’s book also said, BE COMPLIANT ON YOUR MEDS, but Mama wasn’t.

“How am I supposed to keep all these f*cking pills straight?” she said, but when I tried to read the bottles, she smacked me. When she stopped taking her pills and started bringing home bottles of whiskey, she was Scary Mama all the time. One night, after the whiskey was finished, when Donal and I were supposed to be asleep, I heard Mama’s keys jingle. The apartment door opened and closed.

I wasn’t afraid to be alone, but Donal was too small to take care of himself. He was standing in his crib, whimpering. We were both hungry, because Mama had thrown dinner in the trash can. She said the spaghetti was dirty and the milk was sour. Even Good Mama would throw dinner away, but sometimes Scary Mama did it to be mean.

The spaghetti was sticky and still warm in the middle, and it was safer to eat it from the trash than have Mama see me eat it. After I ate, I took the jug of milk out of the trash and filled a baby bottle. Donal drank it all, and after the bottle was empty, I cleaned it and put it away, so Mama wouldn’t know.

I never knew which was dirtier, my mouth or what I put in my mouth.

Liam was like that, too. He was a bad thing that could get into you. He wasn’t supposed to touch me. He would get me dirty. When Mama was mad at him, she told me, “Don’t you call him daddy. He’s not your daddy. He’s not to be trusted.” She would make me say it: “Liam not to be trusted.”

When she was mad at me, she said, “Don’t you touch him. Don’t even look at him.”

I was dirtier than Liam, because I wasn’t supposed to touch anyone except Mama and Donal, and sometimes not even them. I broke the rule when I touched Grandma and Amy.

The day after she left me alone with Donal, Mama called Dee and asked her to come visit. Sometimes Mama said Dee was her best friend. Sometimes she called her a dirty whore. They must have been friends that night, because Dee came and brought Mama a new pipe. They smoked and drank all night, and talked about Liam.

“He gets inside me. Like an infection. All he has to do is look at me with those eyes. I could just drown in them.” The way Mama said it, I knew she wanted him to get inside her. She wanted him to infect her.