Burn Our Bodies Down(4)

That doesn’t keep me from looking for another way out. If I can’t find the will to leave on my own, I’ll need someone else who wants me. Another Nielsen. Another shot at family.

I asked Mom about it once. Just once. I was ten, and a girl at school came in with a batch of cupcakes for her birthday, said her grandmother had baked them. And I’d known about grandparents, and I’d known about fathers, but she set a cupcake down in front of me and I had to throw up in the trash can by our teacher’s desk. The nurse asked me later if I was sick. I said yes because that seemed easier than explaining. Easier than telling her I’d just realized there was a part of my life left empty.

When I got home I asked Mom where our name came from. I started with my father because that seemed easier, seemed like it would matter less to her, and I was right, because that she brushed off. But my grandparents. It was the first time I couldn’t recognize her.

She didn’t say anything at first. But she got up and she locked the apartment door, and she sat down on the couch, leaned back with her arms crossed over her chest.

“We’re not moving,” she said then, her voice flat, eyes fixed on me, “until you promise to never ask that again.”

I remember I laughed, because of course she didn’t mean it. We would get up to eat dinner, to go to the bathroom, to sleep. But that laugh died in my throat as I kept watching her.

“Not an inch,” she said. “We’ll die right here, Margot. I don’t care. Unless you promise me.”

If we had that conversation now, I wouldn’t be able to let her win. We’d sit there deep into winter, until one of us gave up. But I was small and I was hungry and I said, “Yes.” I said, “I’m sorry.” I said, “I promise.”

So naturally I went looking the second I got the chance. Bought a notebook from the Safeway, wrote my last name on the first page and started pecking away at the library computers, flipping through the archived newspapers. But all I ever turned up were phone-book listings and disconnected numbers, or other confused Nielsen families who’d never heard of a Josephine or a Margot.

I gave up. There were more important things to keep track of. Me and Mom, for one. That’s what’s in the notebook now, tucked under my mattress next to the money. Fights we’ve had, word for word. Moments she looked at me like she wanted me with her. All of it evidence that things happened the way I remember. You need that with someone like Mom, someone who fights more about whether things happened than whether they hurt.

Yesterday’s not worth writing down, though. There’ll be dozens more days like it before the summer’s over. Break, and break, and bleed back together. That’s how it goes with us.

And when I can help it along, I do, which is why I’ve got a fold of that stolen money tucked in my pocket, why I’ve got my eyes fixed on the storefront across the street. Heartland Cash for Gold, where Frank’s got half of Mom’s belongings in his display cases. She goes through cycles—spends too much on groceries she won’t eat and then sells Frank a jewelry box full of fake gold earrings; saves money on rent and buys half the earrings back. It’s ridiculous. The buyback price goes up every time, and it’s not as if she has to keep them out of someone else’s hands. She could leave them in that pawnshop for half a century and nobody would touch them. But try telling her that.

I don’t know what I can afford with the bills in my pocket, but whatever it is, I’ll bring it back to her and hope it buys me a few days of quiet. A few days when it doesn’t seem like the wrong decision to stay.

I cross the road, asphalt burning through my sneakers, and hurry into the pawnshop. The bells on the door jingle softly as I ease it shut behind me. It’s dark in here, cool from the fan working overtime in the corner, and for a second I think about just sitting down on this grimy gray carpet and never moving again. But then there’s a noise from the back of the shop, and I hear Frank’s low, tuneless humming.

He’s in one of his short-sleeved button-downs. Sweat stains the armpits, darkening the plaid, which looks better suited to the holiday season. He’s nice, Frank. Never turns Mom away when she brings stuff to sell, even though it’s all shit. Never cuts her a deal when she wants to buy it back either, but I wouldn’t if I were him.

“Margot,” he says, waving me over to the counter, where he’s thumbing through a stack of receipts. “Your mom coming?”

It’s not one of her rules, the way the candle is, but I’m not supposed to be in here without her. After all, this is her life in boxes, her life before I came into it. I hesitate, wonder if I should just go home. No, this is a nice thing I’m doing for her. She’ll appreciate it. I’ll buy her back a pair of earrings, or some old clothes she can take to the tailor and make new again.

“Not today,” I say, crossing the shop toward Frank. There’s a display case running along each wall, and two shelving units split the space left in the middle, objects cluttered and close. Their tags flutter lightly as the fan turns, the breeze catching each handwritten price, a slash drawn through it and a lower one written just underneath.

I step up to the case against the back wall, the register on one end, Frank’s stool waiting behind it. “How’s your wife?”

“Still dead,” Frank says, just like he always does, and he waits for me to laugh, even though I never do. “You all right?”