Dirty Little Secrets - C. J. Omololu [9]
There was a spot in the dining room where you could look out the window without anyone seeing. Just as I reached it, I heard a car pull away from the front of the house and exhaled the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Having someone at the front door always tied my stomach up in knots.
As I walked back to my room, I wondered why Mom didn’t open her door even a crack. Usually she at least listened to see if she could figure out who it was. She must be sick or something if she didn’t bother to come out at all. Her room was so full of stuff that she hardly ever slept in there anymore, but she occasionally shoved everything off the bed if she really needed to use it.
Feeling like I should at least make sure she was okay, I headed toward her room. The National Geographics blocked a good six feet of the hallway, and I’d slowly started to pick my way over the mountain of fallen magazines when I saw it. One of Mom’s slippers sticking out from under the pile.
“Mom?” I bent down and threw some of the magazines off until I had uncovered her leg. I shook it. “Mom?” It didn’t jiggle like it normally would; it just felt solid and heavy. “Mom!”
Because the paths we’d carved through all the garbage over the years were only wide enough to accommodate one relatively skinny person, I had to kneel down by her foot and stretch out on my hands so I could reach her face. I frantically tossed magazines to the side until her head was completely uncovered. Her eyes were closed and her mouth had a purplish tinge around the edges. I followed her outstretched arm and saw her inhaler just out of reach on the ground. She must have been having an asthma attack when she fell, pulling a decade’s worth of magazines with her as she went.
“Mom!” I reached up to shake her shoulder, but only felt the heaviness of her body as it refused to move. “Mom!” I yelled a little louder. “Come on!” This was not happening. This was not happening right now. My heart was pounding so loud it sounded like the ocean in my ears.
I reached up and with a quick motion put my index finger out to feel her face. Her cheek was mottled and cold. Even though she was pale, my finger made a faint mark on her skin where I’d touched her. I scrambled backward, slipping on the magazines, and slammed into a pile of newspapers, sending them cascading down on us both. My breath was quick and short as I tossed them off me, throwing them as far as I could down the hallway until I could struggle to my feet.
Standing alone in the cold, dark hallway, I felt my teeth start to chatter, and I couldn’t keep my hands from shaking. “This can’t be real. This can’t be real,” I repeated over and over as I crouched down, pulling the newspapers off her, revealing her face one more time.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she was just out cold. I grabbed her shoulders and shook them so hard her head flopped from side to side. “Get up! Come on, Mom, please, this is not funny. Get up!” If wishing really worked, she would have jumped up and scared the crap out of me right then—that would teach me to leave her and try to get on with my own life. It would have been the best trick ever, except practical jokes weren’t her style.
I dropped her shoulders back to the floor and crumpled down beside her as I realized nothing I could do was going to make any difference. This was not the way things were supposed to go. I sat, leaning carefully on the stack of newspapers behind me, trying to pull rational ideas through the swarm of thoughts running through my head.
What if the stack of magazines had fallen when I’d slammed the door last night? She was in the living room when I left, but what if they’d moved just enough to send them crashing down as she walked by? All she had to do was clip the corner of one, and the whole