Dirty Little Secrets - C. J. Omololu [22]
I smiled weakly, but it seemed wrong to joke in a place that held this much pain. “I got it,” I said.
Nadine reached out to pat my shoulder. “Been a hard day for you?”
I shrugged. It had been weird to see Mom so efficient, so capable of taking care of other people when I knew deep down she was a failure at taking care of her kids. Maybe she used up all the good stuff before she got home. The person Nadine saw at work every day and the person who slept in her robe on our green recliner every night seemed like two different people.
Nadine peeked through the crack in the door. “I’d tell you it gets easier, but it doesn’t, really.” She nodded toward Mom. “Joanna is one of the most caring and knowledgeable nurses I’ve ever worked with. Plenty of times she’s caught things even the doctors have missed.” She turned to me. “Think you’ll ever become a nurse? Or a doctor?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, but that was really just to be polite, because I did know. Nursing was one more way I wouldn’t be like Mom when I got older.
I could hear Mom’s shoes squeak as she turned to leave the room, so I took a couple of steps away from the door. She forced a smile as she closed the door behind her.
“She’s having a tough time,” Mom said to Nadine. She looked at a chart in her hands. “I tell you what, Lucy,” she said. “School would be almost over by now, so what’s say I run you home on my break and then come back here for a while?”
“Okay,” I said.
“You come back and see us anytime,” Nadine said, and gave me a quick hug.
“Thanks, I will.”
Mom drove me home, and then stayed at the hospital until way after I went to bed. As I lay there alone in the dark that night, I wondered if you had to be sick or dying to get Mom’s full attention. I never asked, but I always pictured Mrs. Collingwood dying that night, with Mom sitting next to her, talking softly and rubbing her feet as she slipped away. It was an image I tried to keep with me whenever she was being particularly unreasonable or screaming her head off at how stupid I was. I would remember back to the day I was proud of her, and somehow that made it not so bad.
chapter 6
12:30 p.m.
Once the first boxes were filled and put away, I had to drag more empty ones out of the garage. I tried to look at it as though I was getting rid of two things at once, and from the looks of the garage, Mom probably had enough cardboard boxes to handle most of what was in the house. She always said she could start sorting through her things once she got enough boxes. I was guessing she finally had enough.
My stomach started rumbling as I picked my way through the piles in the front hallway, and I wished I’d gotten something to eat when I’d gone out before. As I was lifting a pile of newspapers from the far corner of the living room, I stumbled and the stack hit something that made a faint tinkling sound. I tossed some newspapers off the top and saw the familiar dark wood. Our old piano. It had been so long since I’d seen it, I’d actually forgotten we had one. Shoving years of junk off the keyboard, I hit a few notes that were wildly out of tune but left me with a strangely satisfied feeling inside.
Somewhere in a distant corner of my mind, I remembered being a really little kid and sitting with my back against the side of the piano, feeling the notes run up my spine as Mom’s hands flew over the keyboard. When Daddy first left us, Mom spent all her free time playing the piano. She didn’t play lullabies or pretty music, though. Her songs were loud and harsh and demanded that you pay attention. I would sit for what seemed like hours with my head just barely touching the dark wooden piano leg, watching as her feet worked the pedals furiously. I used to think that someday she would pedal that piano so hard it would start up, crash through the wall, and drive off down the street.
My fingers left prints in the dust that had settled on the faded