The Other Mrs.(68)

By bedtime, Mouse was hungry. But she knew better than to ask about dinner because Fake Mom told her explicitly that she did not want to see her until she said it was okay. And Fake Mom never said it was okay.

As the sun set and the sky went dark, Mouse tried to ignore the hunger pangs. She heard Fake Mom moving about downstairs for a long time after she had finished eating, doing the dishes, watching TV.

But then the house got quiet.

A door closed, and Fake Mom, Mouse thought, had gone to bed.

Mouse pulled her own door open an inch. She stood just behind the door, holding her breath, making sure that the house stayed quiet. That Fake Mom hadn’t only gone in the bedroom to come right back out again. That Fake Mom wasn’t trying to trick her into coming down.

Mouse knew she should go to sleep. She tried going to sleep. She wanted to go to sleep.

But she was hungry.

And, even worse than that, she had to use the bathroom, which was downstairs. Mouse had to go really badly. She’d been holding it for a long time, and didn’t think she could hold it much longer. She certainly couldn’t hold it the whole night. But she also didn’t want to have an accident in her bedroom because she was six years old, too old to have accidents in her bedroom.

But Mouse wasn’t allowed to leave her bedroom until Fake Mom said she could. So she pressed her legs together real tight and willed the pee to stay inside of her. She used her hand, too, squeezing it into her crotch like a cork, thinking that might hold the pee in.

But in time her stomach hurt too much, because she was both hungry and had to pee.

Mouse coaxed herself into going downstairs. It wasn’t easy to do. Mouse wasn’t the kind of girl who liked breaking rules. Mouse was the kind of girl who liked to obey the rules, to never get in trouble.

But, she remembered, Fake Mom didn’t tell her she had to go to her bedroom. Mouse had decided to do that. What Fake Mom had said was Go somewhere I can’t see you. If Fake Mom was asleep, Mouse decided, then she wouldn’t see Mouse on the first floor, not unless she could see with her eyes closed. In which case, Mouse wasn’t breaking any rules.

Mouse opened her bedroom door all the way. It groaned as she did and Mouse felt her insides freeze, wondering if that would be enough to rouse Fake Mom from sleep. She counted to fifty in her head, and then, when the house stayed quiet, no sign of Fake Mom waking up, she went.

Mouse crept down the steps. Across the living room. She tiptoed toward the kitchen. Just shy of the kitchen was a hallway that veered off and toward the room Fake Mom was in. Mouse peeked around the corner, trying to get a glimpse of the door, grateful to find it all the way closed.

Mouse had to pee more than she was hungry. She went toward the bathroom first. But the bathroom was just a few feet away from her father and Fake Mom’s room, and that made Mouse scared as heck. She skated her socks to that bathroom door, trying hard not to lift her feet from the floor.

The house was darkish. Not entirely dark, but Mouse had to feel the walls with her fingertips so as not to run into anything. Mouse wasn’t afraid of the dark. She was the kind of kid who wasn’t afraid of much of anything because she had always felt safe in her home. Or at least she had before Fake Mom arrived. Now she no longer felt safe, though the darkness was the least of her concerns.

Mouse made it to the bathroom.

Inside, she gently closed the door. She left the light switch off, so that it was pitch black in the bathroom. There was no window there, no scant amount of moonlight sneaking in through glass, no night-light.

Mouse felt her way to the toilet. By the grace of God, the lid was already up. She didn’t have to risk making noise by lifting it.

Mouse pulled her pants down to her knees. She set herself so slowly on the toilet seat that it made her thighs burn. Mouse tried to control her urine, to let it seep out slowly and inaudibly. But she’d been holding it for so long. She couldn’t control the way it came out. And so instead, once the floodgates were open, the urine came rushing out of her in a way that was turbulent and loud. Mouse was sure everyone on the whole block might’ve heard it, but especially Fake Mom, who was right across the hall in her father’s bed.

Mouse’s heart started to race. Her hands got all sweaty. Her knees trembled so that, when she was done on the toilet and pulling her pants back up to her bony hips, it made it hard to stand. Her own legs wobbled like the desk legs when she tried to climb over it to avoid the hot lava spewing into her bedroom. They shook beneath her, threatening to break.

With her bladder emptied and her pants pulled up, Mouse stood there in the bathroom for a long while with the lights turned off. She didn’t bother washing her hands. But she wanted to make sure the sound of her pee hadn’t woken Fake Mom before she left the bathroom. Because if Fake Mom was in the hall, then she would see Mouse.

Mouse counted to three hundred in her head. Then she counted another three hundred.

Only then did she leave. But Mouse didn’t flush the toilet for fear of the noise it would make. She left everything inside the toilet bowl where it was, urine, toilet paper and all.

She opened the bathroom door. She skated back out into the hallway, grateful to find the bedroom door on the other side of the hall still closed tight.

In the kitchen, Mouse helped herself to a few Salerno Butter Cookies from the cabinet, and a glass of milk from the fridge. She rinsed her glass and set it in the dish rack to dry. She gathered her cookie crumbs in her hand and threw them in the trash. Because Fake Mom had also said, You pick up after yourself when I’m here, you little rodent, and Mouse wanted to do as she was told. She did it all in silence.