Sorta Like a Rock Star(38)

There are paper towels and some sorta blue spray cleaning stuff under the driver’s seat, so I clean up Mom’s throw-up, which is full of blood and tiny shredded pieces of chicken.

I gag all the way through.

I try to think of something nice to take my mind off the present reality, so I think about all-time Amber-and-her-mom moment number two: I’m tiny.

I cannot talk.

My arms and legs are wrapped up in a sheet—like a mummy.

I’m in a baby stroller and it’s late summer.

I’m shaded by one of those baby awnings above me—that rounded half dome that covers half of the baby stroller.

Bob is pushing the stroller and Mom has her elbow linked to my father’s and I hear the cry of a seagull, so maybe we are near the beach.

Suddenly—we stop moving.

Bob leans down and kisses Mom.

Baby me watches Bob and Mom kiss—baby me smiles.

Now, I know that there is no way I could remember this moment because I was only a few months old when my dad took off, and he probably wasn’t so in love with Mom before he took off, because why would he take off if they were actually in love?

So maybe I made the memory up?

It’s still my number two—regardless.

Back in the present moment, while I was trying to remember, while I was cleaning up puke, BBB has been hiding on one of the back seats, because I have been sobbing the whole time, and that scares him.

By the time I am finished, I reek of throw-up, and since there is no sink or anything around, I’m going to smell like puke for the night unless I wash with the dirty black slushy snow in the bus parking lot, which would make me smell like gas and bus emissions. I don’t even have a water bottle tonight. Nothing.

When I go back outside to throw the puke towels into the woods, BBB follows and starts his jumping routine—and I just can’t take it right now, so I scream, “Stop jumping!”

He stops.

He looks up at me with his little ears pointing straight up—like I hit him or something.

And then he starts whining, as if he is crying too.

So I throw the puke towels over the fence, into the woods—erasing Mom’s mess—and then I pick up BBB and give him a kiss on the lips.

“I’m scared, Bobby Big Boy. I’m scared. I can’t keep doing this.”

“Rew!” he says in agreement before we walk back to my mom.

“I have to go out,” Mom says, exhaling mentholated smoke.

“Where?”

“I’m going to get medicine for my stomach.”

“Where?”

“At the drugstore.”

“The Childress Rite Aid?”

“Yes.”

“Let me come with you,” I say. “It’s late.”

“You have school tomorrow. I’ll be fine.”

“Mom. Are you going to get more vodka? You can tell me the truth. I won’t try to stop you. I just want to know the truth.”

Mom will not look me in the eyes. “Going to the drugstore. I just need some Pepto-Bismol. I’ll be back in a few minutes. You just go to sleep,” she says before she starts walking away from me, staggering a little.

I know that I should stop her, that I should maybe follow her to make sure she is okay, but I’m only seventeen—I’m still a girl, just a stupid confused chick—this is nothing new, and I have nothing left in my tank. I’m on empty, and so I go back into Hello Yellow and cry myself to sleep without even praying first. Sorry, JC.





CHAPTER 12





When I wake up, the streetlights are off. “Mom?” I say.

Silence.

“Mom?”

Somehow I know she is gone.

My heart is pounding.

I stand.

Slowly, as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I feel every seat in the bus with my hands and keep on saying, “Mom? Mom? Mom? Mom?”

BBB sniffs the entire bus floor.

Mom is not on Hello Yellow.

I know it is after eleven, because there are no streetlights on, but I have no idea how late it is. Mom goes out to the bars all the time, but for some reason, I have this very bad feeling that something horrible has happened. I can’t really explain it—I just instantly know, or maybe I just feel it in my gut.

“Come on, B Thrice,” I say, and then we leave Hello Yellow.

I know Mom went one of two places: Charlie’s Pad, which is the bar on the edge of town, the first bar in the ghetto; or the liquor store next to Father Chee’s church, where they sell big plastic bottles of vodka for very cheap—less than half the prices charged in Childress, plus the store in the ghetto is open later.

I’m not thinking too clearly right now—granted. I just know that something bad might have happened to my mom, so I’m sorta on autopilot—walking super fast.

I go right by Private Jackson’s house, walk a few more blocks, and then I am in the ghetto, trying to open the metal front door to Charlie’s Pad. The neon beer signs behind the high windows—which are covered with mesh wire to keep out burglars—those signs are off and the door is locked. “Hello?” I yell. “Hello?”

No one answers.

“Hello! Anyone in there? Mom? Mom!”

“Shut up, bitch!” someone yells, but when I turn around no one is there.