What she’d done.
“Mom?” I was surprised at how young, how scared I sounded. “Should we go upstairs? We can get away from the door. Away from those sounds.”
Confusion clouded her eyes. I reached for her. She watched my hand advance, flinched from it. “I can’t leave,” she said, shocked. “Not until your father gets home. Who will guard the door?”
She suddenly grabbed my hand and yanked me on the sofa next to her, wrapping me in an embrace. She was cold and trembling. “I’d die for you, Heather. That’s why I had to do it. I’m so sorry, baby. I couldn’t let you hear the voices. I didn’t want them to live in your brain like they do mine. You understand, don’t you?”
I nodded in her arms, my heart a bird beating against the cage of my chest. Her hand found my nub, cupped it. The first time she’d touched it since the accident.
The first time we’d been in the basement together since then.
That night, we’d just returned from a barbecue at the Taft house. It’d been a hot day, so we’d taken the tunnels. We’d brought the grill gear and a watermelon. Something happened at the party that upset Mom, something with Mrs.Hansen, and we left early, Mom snagging our lighter fluid and lighter as we left. I remembered that, and Dad tromping upstairs to put little Junie to bed once we got home, and Mom staying downstairs in our basement.
I’d come to check on Mom, maybe have her read me a story, or brush my hair. I’d found her in this spot, on different furniture but in the same mental state. She’d been so quick, me so small.
As soon as I’d gotten close enough, she’d grabbed the lighter fluid and then me, squirted my hair—the smell, the slick, sick kerosene smell—and then lit it, holding me tight. I shrieked and kicked, but she had the strength of a madwoman. Dad bounded downstairs within seconds, tossed a blanket over my head, but the damage was done.
My ear had melted.
Mom sacrificed some hair, her favorite sweater, the couch.
She also took her first “vacation.”
I knew now she visited the hospital’s psych ward, but it seemed easier to continue to call it a vacation. This smoothing over of reality, especially when it was something ugly, didn’t happen in only my home. It was that way in all of Pantown, maybe all of the Midwest. If we didn’t like something, we simply didn’t see it. That’s why I’d never spoken aloud the words I’d read on Mom’s chart (manic depressive illness), why Dad hadn’t helped Mrs.Hansen, why Claude’s parents hadn’t told on Father Adolph. In our neighborhood, the problem wasn’t the person who made the mistake; it was the person who acknowledged the truth.
Those were the rules.
Everyone here followed them, including me. That’s how I kept me and Junie safe.
“Mom,” I tried one more time, twisting my neck so I could see her face, my voice hoarse. “Will you come upstairs?”
The clouds in her eyes cleared for a moment, long enough for me to glimpse her back there, trapped inside her own body.
“Iwouldlike to play with Junie,” she said tentatively, releasing me. “Iwouldlike to put makeup on her.”
My muscles relaxed so dramatically that I feared I’d fall off the couch. Mom’s favorite soothing behavior was treating pretty Junie like a doll. I latched on to it. “That sounds good. I bet she’d like that.”
She didn’t. Junie wanted to watch her movie—I could see it on her face—but once she laid eyes on Mom, who I’d guided upstairs gently, like she was made of porcelain, Junie understood. She flipped off the television without complaint and followed us into Mom and Dad’s bedroom. Mom perched her on the edge of the bed and ran to get her curlers from the bathroom.
I was liquid-bone tired all of a sudden. If I sat on that bed, I’d fall asleep, and I couldn’t let that happen, not until Dad returned. So I leaned against the wall, digging my nails into my palm when I grew dozy, and I watched, watched Mom prep Junie’s face, pushing her copper-colored hair behind her ears.
Behind her perfect pink seashell ears.
Searching the tunnels would have to wait.
CHAPTER 24
My face burned.
It made no sense, being this embarrassed. As an employee of Zayre Shoppers City, I’d visited every corner of the complex. I felt most comfortable in the deli, obviously, but I bought my clothes there, picked up groceries, even stopped by the hardware section when Dad needed something for around the house. I’d never talked to someone at the jewelry counter, though, and somehow standing there made me feel enormous and clumsy, a ham-fisted giant staring down at the beautiful trinkets beneath glass.
“Can I help you?”
I attempted a smile, but my lip snagged on a tooth. Both my hands were drumming on my thighs, the opening beats to Cream’s “Toad.” “I have a question about an ID bracelet.”
The idea had come to me when I couldn’t fall asleep last night after Dad arrived home, even though I was exhausted. I’d taken him aside after I’d made sure Junie was safely in bed. I told him how close we’d been to another vacation for Mom. He’d been furious.
I felt terrible for tattling. I didn’t think Mom could help it when it got bad. My heart hurt for Dad, too. It couldn’t be fun to come home to so much fuss. Their voices had started out angry but urgent, that fight-buzz that hummed in the floorboards beneath my bare feet. Then it escalated, Dad yelling about her scaring me, Mom screaming abouthowheshould be the one we were all scared of. I finally put my good ear into the mattress and covered my bad one with a pillow, squeezing my eyes shut.
