By the afternoon, however, the satisfaction of staying in bed and being waited on had run out. I was tired of the color of my bedspread, the sound of the ticking clock, and having to get attention on Dad’s timetable. I set off, a little lightheaded, down
the stairs, but before I reached the bottom, there was Dad with a ballpoint pen between his fingers.
“Back to your room, Tillie.”
“But, Dad.”
I tried again when Phil returned from school. I would have been happy even to hear him turn the pages of his textbooks, but once more, Dad stood at the bottom step, shaking his head.
“Can’t I eat at the table?” I asked when he brought me dinner.
“You’re being a real pest,” he teased.
That night, after he said good night, my legs felt restless in the hot and tangled sheets. I had turned my pillow over, but both sides were sweaty, and I’d been lying down all day and couldn’t stand the idea of not moving until morning.
I walked downstairs, my legs not as sturdy as I thought, and I needed the handrail. The stairway was cooler, and I walked slowly so my nightgown wouldn’t rustle. When I reached the bottom, I felt the relief that my father wasn’t waiting there to send me back to bed.
All the lights were out for the night, and I found my way to the kitchen. I quietly opened cupboards, looking for something to eat, when I heard a creak below the kitchen floor, and then the sound of water running through the pipes. I froze in place, first not wanting to be caught, and then, and more urgently, not wanting to be alone. My father had been so adamant about not going to the basement that to hear him down there, and so late at night, made me curious. I grabbed a butter knife, remembering the rats.
I opened the door that led downstairs, surprised to find no light on. Knife in hand, I stepped onto the cold, wooden stair, and walked into the dark. I continued to the bottom and felt the shock of the cold concrete floor. The noise seemed to be
coming from behind that lone door with the knot holes showing through the paint. But in the dark, it was hard to see anything at all so I slid quietly along the drywall, feeling for the handle.
My shoulder was the first to hit the door, and the noise behind it became louder, more certain. I tried the handle, but it was locked. I knew it would be; I’d tried every door in our house. I felt hot, woozy, and didn’t want to turn around and climb those stairs again.
“Dad?” I called, hoping he’d open the door, call me Pest again, and carry me back to bed.
There was no answer. And then I remembered—how stupid of me to only remember now—that in our old house, when Phil and I chased each other, I often locked myself in one of the rooms to catch my breath. I learned quickly that Phil could always get in by turning a knife in the keyhole.
I inserted the knife and heard the button pop out on the other side. When I slowly pushed the door open, there was a flickering blue light. This was not a closet at all, but a room with no windows. And as my eyes adjusted, I noticed shelves stuffed every which way with books. Another step inside, and I discovered a couch, lamps draped in scarves, a side table, and on top: sticky jars of Pond’s cold cream, Oil of Olay and ivory makeup, cups filled with pens and makeup brushes.
The floor was full, too: stacks of books, junk food wrappers. And in the corner, on top of an ottoman, providing the room’s only light: a TV. Though the sound was turned all the way down, I was sure I heard a very faint and high-pitched hum, and the picture on the screen was nothing but bright-colored vertical bars.
Behind a second door was the noise I’d been searching for—definitely water running, then the shriek of a faucet and
the water was off. It sounded very much like someone taking a bath.
Someone is here,
I thought, though somehow I no longer expected my father. That would have been reason enough to hurry up the stairs, but instead I took a step closer, compelled by something stronger than logic, stronger than fear. A color had caught my eye, a color barely visible in the weird blue light, until I took another step into the room. I stared long and hard at the kelly green fabric slung over the arm of the couch. Momma’s sweater. And scanning the room again, I began to recognize other items that had belonged to her: the sewing basket, a Raggedy Ann doll lying on its side on a shelf.
Behind that inner door I heard water draining, and my heart pounded. I pressed close against the wall, not hidden by anything but the shadows of the room. And when the inner door opened, someone thin and ghostly pale walked into the room. A woman in a bathrobe, leaving a trail of wet footprints.
Only now did I let myself think it:
Momma
. I didn’t realize I’d said the word aloud until I heard my own voice. I quickly covered my mouth, afraid she’d heard me, too, but she continued on toward the couch, and clicked on a small lamp on the side table. The lampshade was covered with a scarf, so that corner now glowed warm like a fire.
Momma.
Her face was not as soft or full as it had been, but there was the orange hair twirled on the top of her head and held there with bobby pins. It was her. And still, I could not move, feeling I’d now waited too long to know how to begin.
My mother. I found her
.
Again, the dizziness. I swayed a little and held to the wall, wondering what exactly I had stumbled upon. It was all stranger
and more terrible than I had imagined. She propped a magnifying mirror on top of a pillow and leaned into it to cover her face with cold cream. But soon, her hand froze in place as her eyes slowly opened wide and found me.
“Momma,” I whispered, feeling so nervous I thought I’d collapse. “Momma, it’s me.”
It seemed to take a very long time before she answered in a trembling voice, “Of course, oh darling, of course it’s you.” She frantically wiped her face with a washcloth, and cold cream smeared in her hair along the edges. “It’s okay, darling. It’s such a wonderful thing to have you here. It’s just that you surprised me. You were so quiet.”
I smiled, finally —a shy smile with my shoulders hunched. Momma closed the gap at the top of her bathrobe, covering her sharp collar bone. “I wondered when you’d find me,” she said, and she tapped the far corner of the couch. “Come sit here.”
This was the singsong voice she used when she tucked me in at night, and I remembered her holding me tight, whispering as she spun above me,
I don’t deserve you, Bear. All I can do is ruin you
.
“Come on over. I have a spot for you right here.” She moved a few items onto the floor to clear a spot. “Here, I want to fix my face,” she said. “I look like such a mess.” And with shaky hands, she fumbled through several clear plastic bags until she found the one she wanted.
I held my hands in my lap, feeling afraid, glorious, ashamed—all of this.
She dug into the bag filled with makeup, then colored in her eyebrows with a copper-colored pencil. She shook a container of liquid black eyeliner and drew a line along the inside of her bottom lashes.
“I stayed home from school today,” I said, realizing the
strangeness of mentioning an entire world she’d not been a part of. “I’m feeling better now,” I added, and smiled into my lap, watching her out of the corner of my eye.
“That’s good. That’s very good.” She painted her lips a shimmery pink inside the red lines she had drawn, then asked, “Would you like to try some lipstick?”
I nodded and cupped my hands. Momma set the lipstick in them and closed my fingers over it. Her touch was warm like bathwater.
“We’re having such a nice visit, but soon it’ll be time to run along.” She took the lipstick from my hands, uncapped it, and colored in my lips. “You’ll need a note for school, right?”
I wondered if she thought it was daytime. How could she know in this room without windows? And what was happening here?
“We had a splendid time,” she said, reaching for a pen and notepad among the stacks on the floor. She wrote something down and then looked at me very seriously for a long while. “Now, you can’t mention this to
your father
. This has to be our secret.”
I’d been waiting to hear if she’d mention his name. Something about the way she said the word
father
gave me chills, as if she were warning or protecting me. There were questions forming deep in my gut that I couldn’t yet put into words, a feeling that I was on the verge of learning something terrible that would change everything.
She handed me the note. “Remember: Not a word to your father.”
In perfect handwriting, she had written:
Please excuse Tillie from missing her classes. She was with her mother. Mara Harris.
I read the word “mother” and the name “Mara,” and felt an
emotion so strong I wondered if it was joy. But it seemed more complicated than that—something that rumbled deep down, like the dehumidifier right outside the door.
Back in my bed, I lay there, restless, thinking and not thinking, staring and thinking again.
My mother lives in our basement
, I thought.
How long has she been there? And what did she mean, “Don’t tell your father?”
My head hurt. I felt hot and kicked off the covers, then immediately felt too cold and curled up by the pillow, my legs shaking. I had to tell someone.
I crept down the hall and peered into my brother’s room, which was darkened by an American flag draped over his window. I wanted badly to see him—his schoolbooks on the floor by his Eagles and Bad Company 45’s, and on a shelf over his head the pyramid of beer cans he pulled from dumpsters.
“Phil.” I could barely hear myself.
If I could just see him, I’d know this moment was real, that my mother was real, that this whole strange night was true. I took another step into his room.
A little louder I said, “Phil?”
At first, he only turned over as if he’d go right back to sleep, but then he woke up, startled. “What are you doing in here? Get out!”
“Phil, I found a secret room that lights up blue, and Momma’s in it.”
“Would you get out of my room!”
“It’s blue because of the TV, and she put makeup on me and said she knew I’d find her.”
“Stop bothering me,” he said. “I mean it. Get out of my room.”
“Phil, listen!”
“You’re sick,” he said. “And I mean sick in the head.”
“No. I saw her.”
He turned over, threw the covers over his head.
“Phil, you have to listen to me!”
And then he sat up violently, the covers falling to his waist. “You
didn’t
see her,” he said. “And you know why? It’s because she’s
gone
. Because she left us. Get it? It’s why we don’t visit. She didn’t want to be here.”
“You’re wrong!”
I took a step backward, moving away from his doubt, as if it might find its way into me. He had always been the smarter one, the one you could believe. Maybe it was all too impossible, too strange to be true.
“I said, ‘Get out!’”
I felt my face heating up again. When I was back in bed, weighing his words against mine, I didn’t know which to believe. I rolled it all through my mind—the blue light, my pale mother, her voice, the perfect handwriting on her note. The note! I searched on the floor and all around my bed, felt in my pockets, checked the hallway, but it was gone. And rather than searching anywhere else, I crawled under my covers while the memory of our time together was still fresh, so I could fall asleep, believing.
I
GATHERED THE POEMS I’D
watercolored and took hesitant steps down the stairs for breakfast. I tried to remember how to walk like an eight-year-old getting ready for school, how to hold in the electricity of knowing things I wasn’t supposed to know, of doing things I wasn’t supposed to do. When I walked into the kitchen, I didn’t look at my father, in case this wonderful, terrifying secret showed in my eyes.
“Feeling better?” Dad asked.
I nodded, looking only as high as the bars on his uniform, then poured some Grape-Nuts into my palm and stuck my tongue out until it was covered with little nuggets. At the sink, I filled my hand with water and took a slurp, my mind straining to understand what I’d uncovered.
I think the fight they had, the one Phil overheard, could be when it happened.
Hope was right: Whatever crime my father had committed must have happened just after the fight Phil told me about. But
what exactly happened, and how did Momma survive it? Had he locked her in and left her to die? Did she play dead, and he closed the door, believing he’d hidden her body? When did she give up trying to escape?
“Did you hear me?” Dad asked. I turned off the tap, noticing the sink was now filled with water. “I said, ‘Don’t forget to empty all the wastebaskets before you go to school.’”
“I know.”
“Did you finish your homework?”
“M-hmm. I did it.”
When my brother walked through the kitchen, Dad’s spoon stopped short of his mouth. “Trash day, Phil. Don’t forget to take the cans to the street.”
“Right,” he said, but bristled because he took pride in doing his chores without a reminder. He grabbed a stack of books and used them to push open the screen door.
“Wait for me,” I said, sprinting into the living room.
“Not so fast, Tillie.”
“I know. I know. The trash.” I heard the screen door close behind Phil, so I hurried through each bare but spotless room, grabbing paper bags.
“Hurry!” he called. “You have to get those bags on the street before the truck comes.”
I whispered it as I went through the house and out the door, bags in hand and bare feet mashed into my sneakers:
Villain
. I threw the bags by the curb, and chased after Phil, calling, “Wait up!”
He slowed only enough for me to know he’d heard me, but kept walking.
“I said, ‘Wait!’ Dad says you’re supposed to walk me to school.” I was out of breath by the time I caught up to him.
“You’re old enough to walk by yourself, you know.”
“Just tell me something,” I said, panting as I spoke. “Do you think Dad was angry enough at Momma to try to kill her?”