In her worst moments, my mom is her sixteen-year-old self again, searching for meaning in her mother’s abandonment. If her mother had been kidnapped, had been devoured by a monster, had been murdered and dumped on the side of the road, even, she might sleep better at night, because that would mean her mother hadn’t simply walked away.
“Mom, your mother—”
“I know what you’re going to say!” she screeches. “I know what you’re going to say, but that’s just what he makes you think!” She sweeps a deafening cascade of silverware from the dish rack to the floor. “The flayed man, he watches me! He’s waiting!”
Plates and bowls follow the silverware. My ears ring with bright flares of crashing melamine. My mom’s alone at night when I work, and most of the day while I sleep. The flayed man is imaginary, but what if someoneiswatching her?
Before I can collect myself, she shifts her attention to the fridge.
“I’m hungry,” she whines, tugging at the door. All of the rage bleeds out of her in a second. So fast that if I’m not careful, I’ll start to wonder if it was ever there at all.
“Mom.” I try to control the worry seeping into my voice. It might be nothing. She gets paranoid sometimes, and she was already agitated over the Post-its. “Has anyone but me and Joanne come into the apartment?”
Joanne is our upstairs neighbor, who drops by every so often to help scrub the shower or clean out the fridge. She’s the person my mom calls if she needs something while I’m at work.
“No.” She pulls the fridge door open, then slams it closed again with a dull thud. “Stop being dramatic.”
“But you said—”
My mom juts her lower lip out, childlike. “Well, I made that up.”
“You—” I can’t tell if my disbelief is real or just another form of frustration. “Why?”
“You were being a brat.”
Something in my gut untwists. We’re back on familiar ground now. We’ve played this game before, my mom and me.
“Okay.” I pick through the kitchen shrapnel scattered on the floor and stretch across her, reaching for the freezer. “Let me get you something to eat.”
She beats me to it, wrenching the freezer door open with all her strength. Impact rings in my ears, and my vision shatters into a haze of sparks. By the time I put together what’s happened—she opened the freezer door right into my face,fuck—I’m already sagging against the sink. I brace myself on one elbow and shake my head to clear the explosion away.
A thump, and ice chips skitter across the kitchen floor. Another, heavier, the sodden cardboard of a microwave meal landing on its side. I catch a bag of frozen peas, toss them into the sink, but miss another bag of corn that hits the ground with a slap.
“Ellis?” My mom wavers. Under it I hear the clear command:Fix this.
I think of Uncle Bill, and the heartless way he urged me to live for myself. My mom can barely feel her way around a syringe some days, and cries in the shower because she confuses the hot and cold. What would she do without my Post-its, my reminders, my assurances, my sacrifices?
She’d be devoured by the curse in her heart, and no sacrifice, no patience, no love is enough to stop it once it’s jumped its chain. So my mom will die quietly, her mind run out on her, and I’ll put a kitchen knife through her ribs to separate her from her hunger. Until then, I’m tied to her. She needs me.
A shattering noise wrenches me back to the present. Then, the smell. Blood like nitrile gloves and rubber coating, like chemical heartburn, like loneliness.
Another vial rolls over the lip of the freezer and smashes on the linoleum. It smells like hope, like need. My mom is on her knees, hands thrust into the leakage, lifting a ruddy mess of glass and ice to her mouth. Red drips through her fingers, melting where it meets skin, splattering her pajama shirt.
“Mom.” I kneel next to her, wrap my arms around her wrists. I need to secure the remaining vials, but I need to help her first, before she swallows those slivers of glass into places I can’t fish them out. “Mom, put that down.”
She bucks against my grip. “Mom, listen to me. There’s glass in there. Put your hands down, and I’ll get you a fresh vial.”
Glass on plastic, rolling. Another one shatters. She twists, trying to snatch for it, and growls a sound that scrapes warning down my spine.
“Mom!” She whips around, and her lips are pulled back, canines glinting too large, the tongue behind them blackening and something primal and ghastly menacing me through her eyes.
Then it’s gone. She relaxes. She lets me maneuver her to the sink to shake the glass from her clenched fists and flush clean the lacerations made by that fistful of sharpened points. My temple stings. It’s going to bruise. I’d better come up with something good to tell my supervisor about that, and about being late. But if I hadn’t snapped at her, if I hadn’t imposed, if I hadn’t stacked the vials so precariously…
I know it’s not my fault. But it’s still my responsibility to fix it.
I scrub the floor and stack the dishes and return the frozen vegetables to their rightful places. I change out of my blood-soaked pants, settle my mom in front of the couch, and turn onThe Golden Girls. I call my supervisor as I fumble with my car keys and explain in a breathless rush, unable to pause even as she talks over me, assuring me it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.
It’s not okay. It’s getting worse every day.
