Dirty Little Secrets - C. J. Omololu [11]
At that moment the kitchen phone rang, the sound ricocheting around the still house, and I jumped, my heart beating almost visibly in my chest. Before I could think about what to say, I ran to get it just to make the noise stop.
“Hello?” It came out as more of a croak, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hello?”
“Joanna?” I wasn’t sure if I was relieved it was only Nadine, Mom’s supervisor at work.
“Oh, hi. No, it’s Lucy.”
“Are you okay, dear? You sound like you’re breathing hard.”
As much as I knew that I should, I couldn’t tell her what had happened. For now, that fact had to be another part of our secret. Once I told someone, I wouldn’t be able to take it back. “I, um . . . yeah, I’m fine. I was just racing for the phone. From the backyard.”
“Sorry about that, darlin’,” she said. “I’m looking for your mama. Her shift started at seven, but she hasn’t been in or called or anything, and that is just not like her. I came by the house a little bit ago on my break, but nobody answered the door.”
I glanced down the hallway toward the fallen pile of cheerful yellow magazines.
“Right,” I said. “I’ve been outside doing some stuff in the backyard, and I must have missed you. Mom asked me to call you, but I forgot. She’s, uh, got some sort of flu and probably won’t be in for a few days.” Mom was an oncology nurse, and the last thing they wanted was sick people down at the hospital.
“Oh dear,” she said. “Is there anything I can do?”
I thought about Mom where I’d left her lying all alone. “No,” I said. “Not really.”
“Chicken soup? Advil? I can stop by on my way home,” she said.
“Really,” I said, “we’re fine. I’ve got it under control.”
“Your mom is blessed to have you,” she said. “I don’t know what she’s going to do without you when you go off to college, especially now that everyone else is gone. It’s always hardest when the baby leaves.”
“I’m sure she’ll manage,” I said, wondering how blessed she’d think Mom was if she could see us now. I tried to tune into the conversation, but my eyes were scanning the tops of the debris piles that clogged the kitchen and the dining room. The smell was so bad in the kitchen I stretched the cord as far as I could into the dining room so I wouldn’t have to breathe it in. Even in here, the visual noise from the garbage made it difficult to see the individual pieces that made up the mountain. A plastic bag from the grocery store full of God knows what. A stack of old margarine tubs. A box full of empty egg cartons and toilet-paper tubes. A pile of clothes still on their wire hangers from some adventure to the dry cleaners years ago. And green plastic storage bins stacked so high they brushed the ceiling in every room. Green plastic bins were like crack for Mom—she couldn’t get enough of them.
“Lucy, honey?”
“I’m sorry.” I shook my head trying to pick up the last threads of the conversation. “You cut out on me there for a second.”
“I was asking you if you’d picked a college yet. Don’t you have to start applying soon?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Well, really, we have a whole year before things are due. They don’t make you decide until senior year.”
“Well, you be sure to come down here soon for a visit. You haven’t been in here to see us for such a long time.”
“I will,” I said. “Soon. Oh, listen, I hear her calling me. I really have to go.”
“Okay, doll,” Nadine said. “You tell your mama just to take it easy and not worry about us. She works so hard, I’m sure she needs the rest. You holler if you need anything.”
“Thanks. I will.”
I leaned into the kitchen to put the handset back and wiped it with the sleeve of my jacket. We still had one of those big, square, wall-mounted phones