Burn Our Bodies Down(2)

It’s not that she forgets about me. I really don’t think that’s it. More like Mom usually has only enough energy to look after one person, and that person’s always her.

It’s easier when I’m in school. Lunch in the cafeteria, people who call themselves my friend as long as I’m right in front of them, and the lingering looks of the teachers who notice that I’m still wearing summer clothes deep into fall. I can pretend Mom’s just like the other parents, pretend there’s more for me than this apartment, than waiting for her to want me again.

Because she does, sometimes. Tucks me into her body and whispers, “Nobody but you and me.” Good, because she’s decided she loves me, and bad, because the hooks we’ve got in each other are too deep to ever come out, no matter how much we pull at them. But I don’t care. Me, and Mom, and the whole world right here.

Today she’s brought home a six-pack of seltzer and a bag of baby bell peppers. I know what she’d say if I shopped like that—we have tap water at home, and produce is too expensive—but I’ve watched her in the grocery store, watched how she freezes, how the sight seems to drain from her eyes. I stay quiet, put everything in the fridge alongside the hot dogs and American cheese from her last trip.

“What should we make?” I ask. I’m picturing it, the two of us at the counter together, our dinner disgusting and oddly assembled, but ours.

That’s my mistake. Maybe it wouldn’t be one on a different day, but I see it happen in her. See her jaw tighten, her eyes narrow.

“Make?” she says.

I can save it. I can pull it back. “Yeah,” I say, grabbing the hot dogs from the fridge, ignoring the horrible slide of the liquid in the package. I have to show her I meant I’d do it for the both of us. That I don’t expect anything more from her than what she’s already given. “I could sauté the peppers, or—”

“If what I brought home isn’t good enough,” Mom snaps, “you can go back out yourself.”

She pulls the car keys out of her pocket, tosses them down on the counter. I will myself into stillness. If I take the keys, the argument has started, and I won’t be able to end it without getting into the driver’s seat and weaving to the nearest gas station for a bag of pretzels. Mom’s like that. So am I—I learned it from her. Ride it until the end, no matter what.

“No,” I say carefully, “it’s fine.”

But she’s picking up steam. “Take some of my money, too, and just go get whatever you want.” She leans into me, pressing the keys against my chest, the metal cold and scratching. “Go on. If you don’t want to drive, you can walk.”

I knot my fingers together, squeezing tight to keep from snatching the keys and taking the bait. She’s feeling guilty. That’s why she’s picking a fight. But understanding that doesn’t make it feel any better.

“Really,” I say. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

That’s not what she wants from me. I know it’s not. But if I can get out of this without giving that to her, I will.

“Do you want me to make you a plate?” I try instead. I can end this fight. I can. I’ve done it before. “I’m not hungry.”

“Since when does it matter what I want?” Mom says, turning away from me and going to the sink, twisting the tap until water is pouring over her wrists, cooling her blood.

“It always does.” And fine, fine, if it gets us out of this stalemate, I will give up some ground. I will take another piece of blame—those pieces are the only things I can really call my own. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It was my fault.”

For a moment she doesn’t acknowledge that I’ve spoken. And then she looks up, an emptiness in her eyes like I’m one of the bodies she sees at work. The water running over her paper skin, until I reach across her to turn it off.

She blinks. Reaches up to touch my cheek, brushing the spot on my skin where the scar sits on hers. Her palm is cold and wet, but all the same I can feel my face flushing, feel my eyes flutter shut.

She moves then, and there’s a tug at my hairline. When she draws back, it’s with a long gray hair pinched between her fingers. She went gray right at my age, later than I did, but I can’t remember who told me that, and suddenly it’s seeming like it couldn’t have been her.

“Oh,” I say, blinking back a moment of dizziness to watch as she winds the hair around her finger so tightly the skin turns red.

“What a shame,” she says, almost to herself.

She leaves me to handle my own dinner and disappears into her room. Runs the bath all night, and at first I think she must be cooling down, but when I go in later to brush my teeth, the mirror is fogged and the taps are hot.

How to keep a fire burning. How to stitch a fight up until it’s only a scar. That’s the kind of thing you learn with a mother like mine. Mostly, though, you learn how to be loved without any proof. Seventeen years and I’m still getting that part wrong.





two





mom wakes me up before she goes to work. My room is right next to hers, not even really separate. A speckled beige partition we bought at an office supply store, a foot too short, cutting the room in half, and on the other side, her bed. Now, in the early gray light, she perches on the foot of mine, yesterday’s candle cupped in her hands.