The Pantry Door

Mama always left the pantry light on, on account of the roaches.

It didn’t help. When I wanted to make tuna salad for my little sister (with extra mayonnaise so there’d be enough for me too), I would open the pantry door and then cough a little bit before going in. I didn’t want to see the vermin scurrying across the tins of beans and boxes of biscuit mix. I’d grab a can of tuna fish from the mostly empty shelves and run out as quick as I could, slamming the louvered door behind as though it could keep the roaches in.

If Mama had let the cats inside maybe the roaches wouldn’t be so bold. But Mama had said no when I pleaded. She said didn’t want their dirty paws and cat hair on the kitchen counter. So, she pretended the roaches weren’t running all over the shelves, and I pretended not to notice the mild insanity of believing that a bright lightbulb would keep roaches at bay.

It wasn't easy to tell Mama that I was moving to Chicago. My boyfriend had moved there three months earlier and he said that if I moved there, we could live together. I didn't tell Mama that. I told her I was getting my own studio apartment with the money I had saved from working those two jobs. (I assembled plastic anchors in a factory and was a cashier at McDonalds.) Anyway, she didn't like my boyfriend much. I could see it in the way she spoke abruptly to him when he came over and served him tea in the chipped mug. Once she had made chocolate pie with her tall meringue and she didn’t even offer him a slice as he sat on the porch with me. Dad had put that porch swing there when we moved in and when we all sat on it, the weight of us all straightened the S-hook and the chain had fallen right on my head. I hadn’t passed out but I had wanted to. I saw stars for a good while and my head had hurt for days. I didn’t tell Mama because I didn’t want her to be mad at Dad.

Chicago is a long way from Texas, Mama said, when I left.

She sniffed but didn’t cry, and I hugged her and my sister quickly. I didn’t look back as I pulled out of the long driveway lined by pine trees that she and Daddy had planted when I was only little.

Cocoa the cat was sleeping on the badly rutted blacktop and startled awake with a high leap as my car approached. I smiled at my favorite cat out of the half-feral lot of them. Cocoa would climb the mimosa tree when I skinned up the smooth bark to get away from my sister and my mother and everything I didn't want to think about. Whenver he saw me up there, he would dart up the trunk in a flash, settling onto my lap as I nestled in the cradle between the trunk and largest branch. He was as friendly as his mom had been before she died. I slowed the car and whispered, “Run, run, run,” hoping he wouldn’t return to sleep on the warm surface.

I couldn’t remember how many cats Mama ran over as she barreled up the driveway without pausing at all to consider who might be sleeping in the drifts of pine needles. Seven? Eight? My Dad would scoop up the little body with the shovel and walk into the woods behind the house to bury it.

Chicago roaches were tiny in comparison to the Texas roaches. They disappeared in the winter and just a few roach hotels banished them entirely.

The house my kids grew up in had no pantry. No roaches deterred them from ripping into a package of cookies and leaving it open in the cupboard. The only light I left on was in the bedroom closet of my daughter’s room. The one she was sure was inhabited by a monster.

“Is the door really shut mom? Are you sure?” Lucy asked every night after I kissed her good night. I gave the closet door a mighty shove on my way out so she would know I was taking her seriously.

We laughed about it when she was older, her fear of the closet. But when I explained that she was afraid of something and had just transferred that fear to the closet because it seemed dark, she got real quiet.

“I was always afraid Dad was going to leave.”

I nodded. He sometimes said he would, when he had been drinking. Then he would say he was sorry the next day.

He was watching TV and I was in the kitchen late one night, making the weekly shopping list, when she trod soundlessly from the dim hallway. She leaned on the counter, chin in both hands, watching me.

“What is it?”

When she told me that she and Jack were moving to Austin, I smiled and nodded. Then, I reached into the cupboard for two cans of tuna fish. Jack was a nice boy.

I made us some tuna salad with dill pickle, finely diced celery, tiny bits of onion, and only a touch of mayonnaise. We talked about what I remembered of Austin: Barton Springs, taco stands, and Threadgills.

A few weeks later she pulled out of the driveway, her car packed with clothes, shoes, guitar, and all the food she had room for. From the street she waved and waved until the car behind her honked and then she sped up and was out of sight. Austin was a long way from Chicago.

It never occurred to me to warn her about the roaches. I realized my mistake only when she called.

“Why didn’t you tell me!”

I held the phone away from my ear until Lucy stopped yelling. She went on for a few minutes about how mothers should warn daughters about things like the size of insects in Texas.

I reached over to pet the white patch on Penny’s neck and she purred, the end of her tail twitching in pleasure. I hadn’t thought about roaches in twenty-five years.

“I can’t live like this!” Lucy wailed.

I thought back to Mama’s house and the pantry and its light and the scurrying that I pretended wasn’t going on behind the louvered door.

“You don’t have to, honey.”

We talked for a long while and not just about roach hotels. Then I heard a muffled voice in the background.

“I’ve got to go, Mom. Jack just got home and he brought dinner.”

Jack had moved all the way across the country for her. He was such a nice boy.

“What are you having?”

His voice sounded suddenly loud as he stood nearer Lucy’s phone.

“I picked up some sandwiches from that deli on the corner. Pastrami on rye for me.” I heard the paper bag rattle loudly but his next words were clear. “Tuna salad for Lucy.”

I smiled. Mama always hated tuna salad. She said it made her stomach hurt.