When she finally stopped pacing that day, she collapsed straight down onto the linoleum, knees knocking the edge of the cabinets and palms slapping flat to catch herself.
She knelt there for a long time, staring at the floor like she was waiting for it to open up and save her the trouble of getting up again. Lillian kept very still, as if sudden movement would set Mom off.
I watched too, even though I didn’t want to. Mom started rocking, not baby-style but like her bones were trying to shake loose.
Her voice was soft at first. Just a whisper of all the old curses, the fucks and shits and goddammits, but then the sound grew, a wind-up, until it was a real howl.
She scared herself, I think, or maybe she didn’t. She just knelt there howling, like maybe she finally figured out that monsters can’t eat each other, they just gnaw and gnaw and gnaw.
After a while, she stopped making noise. Her head hung down, greasy hair blurring her face. The kitchen stared back at us, quiet, and I realized how much I hated the way the light made everything look yellow and dirty, like the whole house was stained with missing.
I wanted to help her. Or hug her. Or maybe just crawl under the table and pull the chair in and wait until the world ends.
Instead, I picked up the milk glass and finished it. The taste was sour, but it was something to do.
The next day, she was worse. Lillian and I skipped school to keep an eye on her. She lay on the floor, one cheek pressed to the dirty floor, arms splayed out like she was making a snow angel in reverse.
I sat next to her for a while and watched the way her eyelashes stuck together, wet and clumpy.
She stared at the oven, unblinking, like she was waiting for the timer to go off and announce the end of something important. When she did speak, her voice came out in pieces.
“Amelia,” she whispered, voice all scratchy. “You ever wish you were made of glass?”
I shook my head, but that wasn’t good enough. She rolled over slowly, her hair leaving a greasy streak behind, and grabbed my hand, squeezing so hard the bones clicked. “If I were glass, you could see right through me. You could see all the cracks. All the reasons.” Her hand started to shake, but she didn’t let go. “You could see if there was anything worth saving.”
I tried, but when I looked at my mom, all I saw was a mess of bones and the outline of an animal that was once meant to be human. I squeezed her hand back, hard as I could, then let go.
Lillian came in and put a blanket over Mom’s hips, like modesty actually mattered at this point. She knelt down, pressed her lips to the top of Mom’s head, and said, “We’re here,” which sounded stupid, because of course we were.
There was nowhere else for us to go.
The day passed in a slow, syrupy blur. No TV, no talking, just the constant background hum of Mom coming apart.
I brought her water, but she only sipped, and when I tried to feed her instant oats, she made a hissing sound and pushed the spoon away, flinging a glob onto my arm.
It burned, but I didn’t tell her.
Even Lillian gave up after a while, retreating to the bedroom.
When it got dark, I stood in the kitchen and watched the moths batter themselves against the window, desperate for the light inside. Though, the only light in here was coming from the lightbulb. Everything else felt dark.
Their wings made a powdery noise, a sound I liked, and for a minute I pressed my cheek to the glass, wishing I could beoutside of it instead of in here with the hunger and the garbage stink and the sound of my mother dying in slow motion.
I left the window and crawled into bed with Lillian. She was wide awake, eyes shining in the near-darkness. “She’s going to get better,” she whispered, but her voice trembled like a popsicle stick bridge. “She just has to.”
It was the kind of lie you say to a little kid to make them shut up and go to sleep, but Lillian said it to herself, over and over, as if she could will it into truth.
I wanted to tell her it was okay if Mom didn’t get better. That we would be fine, that we were already good at being alone together in the world, but the words stuck in my throat.
I just hugged my knees and listened to the creak of the house.
In the middle of the night, I woke to a sound that was almost nothing, except for the part of me that could never rest when she was in the house.
It was a humming. I followed it out of bed, dragging my blanket like a cape. I paused just outside the frame of the door, peeking through.
Mom was in there, hunched over the counter, the skin on her neck loose and creased like a bag that had been wrung too many times.
Her hands were shaking so hard she had to steady the spoon against the edge of the sink to eat whatever was in the bowl.
