Small house

When we moved into the house, the first thing my mother did was pull up the old shag carpet. It came up easy to reveal smooth, oak hardwoods underneath. We swept up the carpet tacks and the years of dirt that had filtered down through the fibers to form a grainy sediment. The carpet backing had acted as a fine sieve, only letting the finest particles through.

It was a small house, but there was room enough for the three of us. It had a tiny pink kitchen with a pink push-button stove. A narrow staircase led to the second floor where there were three small bedrooms. My mother’s was the largest, and my brother’s and mine were exactly the same size, both with a ceiling on one end that followed the steep slope of roof above. Even though there was only a short stretch of hallway in between them, sometimes it seemed that my mother’s room was miles away.

I was a kid who wanted to exist below the radar. I had good grades and a bookish nature. My teachers liked me and I had friends, so there was little to worry about, especially in comparison to my brother, who kept getting into trouble at school. He took more of my mother’s energy. Sitting each night at the dining room table, struggling to get my brother to do his school assignments, her own college books piled on one end of the table and a mass of bills and receipts before her, she had little time for me.

But it was easier for me without my mother’s attention. So much so, that when I spent time at my friends’ houses I bristled to be around their parents. My friend Nicole, especially. When I was at her house, I felt uncomfortable until we escaped to her bedroom to listen to tapes and read magazines. Her mother stayed home during the day, and every evening her father would walk in the door and they would eat dinner together at exactly 4:30. Her mother would place neat piles of freshly laundered clothes on the foot of her bed. Nicole would ask her mom if she could go out that night. I thought, “Why bother asking?” Sometimes her parents would make her stay in, or ask her to be home by nine. My mother was just leaving the house by then, her friends pulling in the driveway ready to go out dancing. I didn’t ask to leave the house, I just went.

So on New Years’ Eve 1989, I expected my mother to be gone. She had arranged for my brother to sleep at a friend’s house, and had plans to go out with her new boyfriend. But by eight that night, she was taking off her smart red shirt dress and black heels, washing the makeup off her face, taking off the gold, braided hoop earrings, and putting on her pink bathrobe. From my room down the hall, I heard her crying.

I walked quietly to her door, and stood on the edge of the rose-colored rug. She was laying on the edge of her bed, with its large dark spindled frame that had to be arranged at an angle just so it would fit in the room. The matching dresser took up most of one wall, and a giant, heavy-framed mirror hung over it. I could see her back, reflected in its surface. She was breathing deeply, her head tucked into her chest and arms wrapped tight around her sides.

“Mom?” She didn’t answer. “Mom, I invited some friends over tonight. They’ll be here soon.”

“Shit,” she said. She got up quickly and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. She was running the water in the sink, and opening bathroom cabinets, banging their doors closed again. I heard her sharp footsteps across the tiles. The doorbell rang, and I went down the stairs to answer it. From the window on the landing, I could see Nicole’s parents pulling out of the driveway, dressed up for a new year’s party.

Nicole was there, and so was Gail, and ten minutes later, Seth and Erick arrived. They had a liter of Coke, potato chips, and a bag of M&Ms. We all crowded into the little t.v. room, Gail and Seth on the loveseat, and everyone else sprawled on the blue rug to watch a movie. I left my friends who were making rude noises and loud, stupid jokes to get glasses and ice for the Coke. The ice clinked, the floorboards creaked under my feet in the small kitchen, my friends turned the volume up on the television. I knew every noise was making its way up through the ceiling to where my mother was likely weeping.

She stayed upstairs all night in her room, maybe making a feeble attempt to watch Dick Clark, or maybe just listening to me and my friends. I knew she was trapped there, but I wanted her to stay out of sight. But just before midnight, she came down the stairs and went into the kitchen. She was still in her robe.

“Your mom is home?” asked Gail.

My mom appeared in the doorway. She had a stack of plastic cups and a bottle of champagne in her hands. “It’s almost 1990,” she said, and looked around the room at us. My friends were quiet. No one answered her. So she said, “Let’s have a toast.” She handed us each a cup, and popped open the champagne. She poured a small amount into every glass.

I sat there and just stared at her. Her hair was a mess. She looked tired. I didn’t want to know this lonely woman in her pink bathrobe. I had let others in to witness the look on her face, the same one I saw from the stairs when she thought I had long fallen asleep, and sat tucked in the corner of the couch listening to the same song over and over again. A tiny fragile thing, she was thinking of my father and where it all went wrong. The look that made me want to blow the roof off the place, shatter the windows and tear down the walls. Throw her out into the cold and walk the other way. The look that made me feel it was up to me to keep this place together. I wanted to wrap her up in a little package, bundle her tight and place her in a drawer or cupboard to hide her away where others couldn’t hurt her. Where she would be safe.

“Happy New Year, everyone,” she said, the tone of her voice strained into false gaiety. And then she disappeared upstairs again, leaving us to sip our champagne.

My friends’ parents pulled up shortly after midnight to pick them up. The house was quiet, and I made sure to sweep up the potato chip crumbs and stray M&Ms from the floor. My mother’s room was dark when I went upstairs, but I could heard her shifting positions under her covers as I got into my bed. I settled into place too, and drifted down into sleep.