Buried (18 page)

“Mom?”

“Hey, baby.”

“Mom, I have to ask you something.”

“Ask anything.”

“Why did you start again?”

“It's simple. If I don't drink, I feel.”

“What's so bad about feeling?”

“You should know.”

“What are talking about?”

“You're the same as me.”

“No, I'm not. I'm totally different from you. I'm the exact opposite. I'll never drink.”

“You don't drink, but you cover up your feelings with too many words and with things to wash and fix. Princess, you care for everyone else but yourself.”

I closed my eyes to change the pictures; they wouldn't stop coming. Too many pictures came. Mom in bed, Mom white-faced and hurt, Mom screaming at me, Mom crying, Mom begging. Me walking away.

“Angel, your Pleasure Zone is when you think everything is going according to your plans, the items all checked off your list. You think you have it under control, but you don't.”

“Go back!” I picked up a jar of bath salts and smashed the mirror. The rain of glass cleared the images. The clinking of the pieces smoothed out my memory.

A muffled mew brought me back. Moonpie again. He was still under the trailer complaining.
That should teach him not to go out in hurricanes,
I thought.
Most animals can tell if a storm is brewing and they want to stay in.

I sat on the floor beside the bags and pulled out a long Indian-print skirt and put it over my legs. I shut my eyes and let my mind play pictures on my screen.

I stopped the pictures and took a sweater from the plastic bag and put my bare feet in it. “Mom?”

“Mmm.” It was the way she'd answer when I went into her darkened bedroom.

“I'm cold.”

“Snuggle in,” she said, like she always did in the big bed.

I pulled out more clothes and piled them over my legs. “Tell me about when I was really little and Grandma still lived with us.”

“The three of us lived together as long as we could stand it. I was seventeen, like you are, but I was a kid with a kid.

“She helped me get a routine, and it was okay for a while. Then, just as I was starting to get it, she took over. She did everything. She fed you, she put you to sleep, got you up, she cleaned everything. She even potty trained you. Nothing I did was good enough. But the last straw was one night when you had a bad dream and I went in to comfort you. You said, ‘No, I want Mommy!' I told her to leave and never come back.”

“Did she?”

“She left and I didn't see her for a long time. But I couldn't handle being alone, either.”

A cry that I couldn't ignore rose up through the floor. I came out from under Mom's blanket of clothes and opened the door to face the wind. A slap of cold rain pelted me as I stepped down into the mud. Under the steps I could see Moonpie's eyes glow and hear him cry, but I couldn't reach him on the pile of wood where he sat. When I put my hand out to him, he went to the other side of the trailer and crouched. His eyes squinted at the wind, and his fur flattened against his shivering body. He didn't want me; he wanted Mom.

I stayed close to the sides as I made my way around the trailer to where he hid. Salty rain slapped me as I came around to the front. I reached for him, and he dodged me and scooted farther under and out the back side.

I shivered in the drenching rain. My clothes stuck to me, and water dripped from my nose and chin. The gardens were puddles of soggy herbs and flowers. The sunflowers were on the ground, their heavy heads in the puddles that had sprouted over the day. A gust of wind picked up a five-gallon bucket from across the road and tumbled it into our yard. Pushing against the steady wind, I went over and picked it up and made my way to the shop.

Inside, I waited to get adjusted to the darkness. I went to the back workbench and lit a match. Green, white, and blue sea glass was sorted into jars. Violet and silver mussel shells were piled in small, medium, and large piles. Wreath molds made from grapevine sat waiting for Mom. For what? There were chunky white candles lined up on a shelf next to a finished model. I lit one. Warm light made the blue glass glow as I turned the wreath and followed the pattern. I could see that she had created the up and down motion of the ocean, the wind, and sea life with her design.

Her plan was tacked on the wall. They were going to be candle wreaths. She'd played with some names: Sea Candles, Sea Wreaths, Sea Lights. She'd circled Sea Lights. Clusters of glass and shells were to be glued on in an intricate design. One kind with only mussel shells, another in circles of green and blue glass, and a fancier model called for a driftwood stand.

I worked to the screaming of the wind through the old garage door. Elmer's glue was not what Mom had in mind, but I didn't have a choice. I stuck the pieces in a hurried design, racing against an invisible clock. My Sea Light was not at all like Mom's. I stared into the flame. She'd spent a lot of time in here after the summer people had gone home. When she began drinking again, I wasn't surprised. It was her usual time.

But she was making Sea Lights. So why the drinking when things were going this well? A limb smacked the roof, and I ducked. No damage, but I tipped over some candles. When I picked them up, I saw I'd uncovered a letter. It was written to Grandma:

 
I flipped the envelope over and looked at the address.

 
Ruth Ann Bunker 166 Tern Sands Lane Sarasota, FL

 
She'd never sent it. The back of the envelope was filled with numbers. The cost of living here, there, food, electricity, and me. My cost. I recognized the amount of her aid check. In the end everything was scratched out.

I tore apart the bench, looking for Grandma's letter, and found it in the box of broken shells.

 
As I tucked the letter away, a new picture of Mom formed before me. In this picture she was trying to do the right thing, tired of failing but screwing up still.

I lined up the wreaths in a straight row and blew out the candle. Her fall chores were listed on a piece of scrap wood in black marker: mulch, deadhead flowers, transplant herbs, harvest lavender, penny royal, purple statis, compost.

The rain and wind stopped like someone had turned off a faucet. The quiet made me look up. The eye of the hurricane was overhead. I took the clippers off the hook, grabbed the five-gallon bucket, and went to the garden. I started on the cosmos. They were pretty much destroyed. I picked them up and held a clump in one hand. Snip, snip, drop in the bucket. I cut more and dropped them in the bucket. I was reminded of my dream.

I topped off the bucket as the wind began again. Moonpie cried from somewhere.

“Here, kitty! Here, Moonpie!” I carried the bucket to the compost behind the workshop. I turned the corner and saw Moonpie sitting on a wet mound of dirt.

“Hey, baby, come in with me. It's starting again,” I said. He acted like he didn't know me.

Rain fell in sheets again. I dumped the flower heads on the mound. Moonpie jumped back and flattened himself against the building. A moat had formed in a depression in front of the dirt pile. I stepped over it and reached for him. “Here, baby,” I said. He took a step away.

I'd abandoned him. I stepped into the muck. “I won't do it again, Moonpie. I'll never leave you alone. I was wrong to forget about you.” He looked at me and opened his mouth in a silent cry. I made my move. My fingers grazed his wet sides and he was gone. I was on my hands and knees in the earth. Flower heads floated around me. My hand clenched a blue tarp. I reeled back at the sight. Up on my knees now, I tucked it back down into the watery soil. Crying out at the sight of another corner, I crawled to it, praying not to see what I knew was there.

Her pale hand poked from the surface. I reached for it, cold and clean, washed by the rain.

Mom's white fingers curled, as if she were holding an invisible garden spade. A blast of white, painful light burst open the door that had been locked. No, this can't happen. Go back, go back. Lock the door. Please.

I scrambled in the muck, following the length of the tarp with my hand, pulling it up and toward me as I moved down the length of the mound, trying to cover her up and make her go away. Make her gone away to rehab. Make it so I don't know anything; make me forget.

I tugged again, and Mom's heel broke the surface and slapped in the water. It wasn't a dream. It was happening, and I was a part of it.

I took the five-gallon bucket and scooped soil into it and dumped it onto the grave. I went back and filled it again and dumped it again in another spot. The plastic guard on the handle cracked and cut into the fat of my hand. I dropped the bucket and sucked at the cut.

I shook out the questions and went back to the dirt pile and dropped the bucket in front of it. Bending to scoop, I ripped my gauzy shirt in the process. “Mom!” I cried, hugging the torn material to me. I filled the bucket with armfuls of composted soil and dumped it over her tarpcovered body. “Mom!” I filled another bucket and knelt in front of her, tipping it onto the mound.

 
I walk in after having dinner at Liz's neat-as-a-pin house, and you're there at the kitchen table, cigarette smoke fogging the place, five empty beer bottles in the middle of the table, hair all stringy like a witch. Now I get why you wouldn't come with me. You wanted to stay home and drink. It doesn't make sense. It's only the beginning of September, and besides,
this time you've stopped on your own and you're doing great. Seeing you back in the drinking chair with the smoke swirling around you makes no sense to me, Mom.

 
The wind was dying, but the rain continued in sheets. I filled the bucket again, even though the soil was being washed away as I worked. The soggy moat that encircled her grave was almost filled in, but I still had to cover all the edges of the tarp. I grabbed the spade that leaned against the workshop. Maybe I needed to pile on some heavier soil, or maybe I knew that stepping on the spade as it penetrated the ground would trigger something more.

 
You throw a burning cigarette at my feet. I stomp it out and clean up the mess while you tease me for being a “neatnik.” You tell me that you knew I'd clean it up. We are back to living in hell again, Mom. How dare you?

 
I lifted a spade full of sod and a potato-size rock and tipped them onto the grave. They tumbled down. I stabbed at the ground again and lifted. This time a round, shiny ball tipped off the end of the spade and fell at my feet. I picked it up, running my hands over the familiar surface, first wiping it on my sweater and then with the torn edge of my shirt until I could see the yellow hair and pink dress. The wooden stand had long since rotted, but my snow globe was intact. Through the smear of mud, I saw the princess stare back at me, her eyes the same intense blue as always. I ran with it to a puddle in the garden path and laid it down carefully. Cupping my hand in the water, I bathed the floating kingdom until it was clean.

 
It's the five beers on the kitchen table that make something in me snap. It's like you put them there to taunt me. How come you never leave a sixth beer on the table? I ask. Why is that? Is it because it would mean admitting that you've actually drunk the entire six-pack? It's no secret that you do that on a regular basis. Hiding the evidence doesn't make it untrue.