Dirty Little Secrets - C. J. Omololu [17]
Phil and I walked behind the two of them, me carrying several bunches of flowers from her hospital room and Phil carrying Mom’s small suitcase.
I was so excited I felt like I was going to explode. We’d worked so hard to get everything finished—even the big Dumpster had been taken away just this morning, leaving only two parallel scrapes in the street to show it had ever been there. “Can we tell her now?” I asked. I was practically jumping up and down, and wished they would hurry up and get to the door.
“Tell me what?” Mom smiled. It was probably the first smile I’d seen since her accident. The worry lines in her forehead had gotten so deep they looked like scars from a lifetime of hurt.
Aunt Jean concentrated on finding the right key on her key ring. “Oh, just a little surprise we cooked up for you.”
Phil hung back and didn’t say anything.
“Open the door already!” I practically shouted.
Mom had a confused smile on her face as Aunt Jean swung the door open.
I scooted past the two of them and into the sparkling hallway that still smelled faintly of pine cleaner. “Ta da!”
Mom placed the front legs of the walker in the hallway and pulled herself into the house. She took two tentative steps and stopped, craning her neck to see into the dining room and then back to the living room. “Oh no,” she said quietly. The walker rattled on the tiles as she tried to hurry down the hallway. Her voice got louder and more frantic as she went. “Oh no . . . oh no . . . oh no!”
Aunt Jean followed behind her, but Mom didn’t seem to notice. “Now, Joanna, it just needed a bit of sprucing up in here,” she said. “It’s no big deal, really. Joanna?”
Mom continued her noisy scraping along the hallway until she got to her bedroom. One hand gripped the walker as the other flew to her mouth. “Where are they? Where are all my things?” She turned and started back down the hallway to where Aunt Jean had stopped. “My papers and photos? All of my quilting supplies—some of those fabrics are irreplaceable!”
“You need to calm down,” Aunt Jean said. “We kept everything that was valuable. It’s all put away. The kids did such a wonderful job—”
“The kids? You made the kids do this to me?” Mom looked at Phil and me. He hadn’t even made it through the doorway yet—he stood outside with his eyes planted firmly on the ground.
“Phil and Lucy worked so hard trying to make this place livable,” Aunt Jean said, an edge creeping into her voice.
“I knew Sara would never betray me like this!” Mom said. She looked frantically around the living room. We had found the photos and put them on the mantle along with a big vase for her flowers. Mom walked up to it, and, with one swipe of her arm, pulled everything onto the floor with a crash.
Aunt Jean rushed over to the pile. “Lucy, honey, would you grab the dustpan?” she said, the waver in her voice the only sign she wasn’t as calm as she looked. She took my fourth-grade picture and gently placed it back on the mantle.
Mom turned on me. “You’ll do no such thing,” she said. She turned back to Aunt Jean, gripping the handles of her walker so tight her arms were shaking. “Where is everything? I want everything back in this house by tonight,” she said.
Aunt Jean straightened up to face her. “It’s gone, Jo,” she said quietly. “It’s gone. You can’t get it back. It was garbage. Don’t you remember what it was like with Mama when we were kids? Can’t you see you were living just like her?”
“I am nothing like her,” Mom said, every word sounding like it had come from the center of her body. She was practically spitting with anger. “I am a collector. Everything in this house has . . . had a purpose and a meaning. How dare you come in here and get rid of my treasures!”
I hugged the wall as I crept back onto the porch where Phil was still standing.
Aunt Jean’s eyes were wet as she tried to reason with Mom. “But all of the mold and mildew—and what I found in the refrigerator! It’s not healthy living