Seven Rooms

Entryway

I am standing in the entryway of my mother’s small house, holding empty boxes, keys hanging limply from a finger. The silence holds me like a vise. My body is poised, waiting for the blare of Fox news, the raspy call of her angry need.

“Reyna! Where’s my damn Newports?! Cheese and rice, girl, I’ve been waiting all day, get a move on!”

Her voice echoes in my mind, but the house remains eerily quiet. I can’t stop staring at the dust bunny that has formed in the corner near the old bench where I learned to tie my shoes. Mother won’t stand for it - no, wouldn’t have, Reyna.

My wrist goes numb, and I let the boxes drop. The sound echoes through the house as if it were already empty, impels movement. I cross into the parlor.

Parlor

The smell of cigarettes is strong here. The acrid smell embedded in her recliner from years of exposure assaults my nose, burns my eyes. For a moment I think a wisp of smoke is rising from the ashtray, next to the dented Zippo and half pack of Newports stacked in fussy tidiness. I imagined it, she’s just in the bathroom…. But no, it’s just dust motes drifting in the light coming between the old curtains, raggedy yellowed strips she stubbornly refused to replace, even after Gorby shredded the bottoms.  

I look around for Gorby. His grey fur is everywhere, standing out on the dark upholstery. He’s not in his usual spot under the window, where he lolls spitting and hissing at me, raspy as my mother. Maybe he managed to get out, and she’s out looking for him… I should put the groceries away before she… But my arms are empty. And she isn’t out looking, she’s dead, Reyna. How can you keep forgetting?

Bedroom

I pass through the parlor into the tiny bedroom, where they found her. Her body.  

They didn’t take the soiled sheets when they took her. Some bile rises in my throat and I grit my teeth - why don’t they take the sheets, don’t they realize the family shouldn’t have to deal with that on top of everything else? The sheets have been sitting in this tiny room for three days and the funk is thick, palpable. I gag a little.

Damn Chick, and his stupid family! Why isn’t he here? He could have missed the stupid ballet recital, Tessa isn’t even good yet, and there’ll be more. Maybe I should leave this room for him. But it’ll be another three days before he gets here. If I leave it that long it’ll be unbearable.  

It’s just like Chick to avoid coming home until the work is done. Her fault. She always let him get away with everything, he ALWAYS got his WAY, and NEVER had to do ANYTHING AND -

l feel my heart pounding, my nails digging into my palms. I close my mouth and take deep breaths until my blood pressure normalizes.  

Stop procrastinating, Reyna.

I grab some gloves and a trash bag from the bathroom, start cramming in the soiled sheets. Mother would want me to wash them, avoid the cost of buying new ones, but fuck her. If she wants ‘em washed, she can come back and do them herself. 

Bathroom

After I stripped the bed, I just continued around the room, most of her clothes following the sheets to the landfill. I pulled out a few of the nicer pieces - if I could get the smell out, I could put them on consignment.

I’m in the bathroom now, scrubbing the floor, dust free, but yellow with age and nicotine. I’m surprised to find the toilet less than gleaming. It was always spit-shined, the whole bathroom was, even on her worst days, a holdover from her nursing days. How long has it been since I’ve been in here? Surely I would have noticed the dinginess of the bowl, the fine dusting of face powder on the counter. Jeezus, how long since I’ve seen her wear makeup? 

I guess I shouldn’t be so hard on Chick. My visits had been less frequent, and shorter, the past few years. I feel a pang of guilt, and accept it. Not for her death, nothing I could have done would’ve changed that. But her bitterness wasn’t entirely the cause of our distance, I guess. I could have been here more, paid more attention.

I look at myself in the toothpaste-spattered mirror and heave a sigh. I should have noticed this sooner, should have wanted to clean it for her. No matter. I want to do it now. I want to do it for her, and for me. I pull my hair into a sloppy bun, roll up my sleeves and start cleaning.

Kitchen

I’m sitting at the kitchen table in the dusk of the afternoon. There’s a cup of tea steaming in front of me, Lipton, the only kind she ever bought. A good reward for the good scrubbing I gave the bathroom.

There are two boxes behind the cup, one carefully labeled ‘Chick’, the other with just an R hastily scrawled on it. I found them after I’d cleaned the sink and opened up the cabinet underneath. 

They were just sitting there. What was so obvious was the lack of dust on Chick’s, while mine had dust, and some rust rings, as if she’d left some Bon Ami on it for too long. Don’t cry, Reyna, don’t you dare, I tell myself, but it doesn’t stop the hot salt spilling down my cheeks. I pick up the ratty tissue and blow my nose again. It rips, leaving my fingers sticky with snot and white shreds. I wipe them on my jeans, already dirty from kneeling on the bathroom floor.  

I hear my mother’s voice, scolding. “Don’t wipe your hands on your pants, Reyna. I can’t buy you new ones. Go wash up.” It brings on another surprising bout of tears, but also compels me to the sink to wash my hands. The voice in my head was scolding but also carried humor, from my childhood, when she still knew joy sometimes.

I sit back down, and stare at the boxes, tugging my bottom lip. I want to look inside. I don’t want to look inside. I know what I’ll find in Chick’s. Newspaper clippings of every football game, every award and 4.0 posting. His wedding invitation, and baby announcements, maybe the occasional letter.

What will be in mine? I was surprised to even find a box for me.  

Despite my stuffy nose, the smell of cigarettes mixed with years of fried food becomes too much to stand. I scoop up my box, balance my tea on the top, and head to the bedroom.

Bedroom

I sit on the old creaky twin bed, in what was my room. Sort of. Mom had the master bedroom, Chick gotthe only other one. Mom had pulled the shelves out of the pantry/laundry room when we first bought the house, which sort of made enough space for a girl to grow up in. The only really horrible thing about it was Chick wanting to do his laundry early on Saturdays, when I wanted to sleep in. I didn’t mind the dryer at night, though. It helped me fall asleep, once Chick dismantled the buzzer.

My tea sits on the wooden crate that was my night stand, along with the Zippo, Newports and the hippo ashtray from her one vacation. To New York, I think it was. One vacation that I know of in my whole lifetime, and all she had bought herself was this stupid ashtray.

I light a cigarette, take a soft drag. I haven’t smoked since high school, but I can tell these are stale. No matter, it’s just this one day.

I lift the lid off the box, and can’t breathe for a moment. There is a bit of blonde hair tied with a pink ribbon, resting on a photo I’ve never seen, a photo of Mom holding me as a baby. She looks beautiful, and for a minute I am lost in her eyes. There’s some spark in them that was gone by the time I started forming memories. I carefully lift the picture out without disturbing the frail looking wisp of baby hair. There are a few report cards, one newspaper clipping of a poem that got picked for publication in third grade. Then I feel the book. A copy of my self-published book of poetry, poems I had written in my college writing classes and polished up later. I know I didn’t tell her about it, defiantly keeping it a secret in our most difficult years. 

How did she know, then? Chick wouldn’t have told her. At least, I can’t imagine him doing so. I pull it from the box, and something falls out. A pressed flower, the tiny white kind with pink underneath the petals. I open the book to see if I can figure out where it came from and close it again. I carefully stub out the cigarette.

I open the book again, and read through the whole thing from start to finish, as my tea cools and the sunlight fades.

Every page has doodles, underlines, highlighted words. There are dog-eared pages, and a spot that it falls open to every time, a poem about the loss of childhood dreams. There are no notes or underlinings on this page. But I think the smudges resemble mascara-smeared tear drops.

I close the book, turn on the light and relight the cigarette. I pull my knees to my chest, not sure if I want to laugh or cry. I glance quickly through the rest of the box. A few more photos, a couple of recipe cards, recipes from Nana’s kitchen, things Mom knew I loved, a few ticket stubs and some plastic jewelry I loved as a pre-teen. I can linger over these later, but the idea of Mom reading, liking my poetry, I want to savor for a minute longer.

It comes on suddenly, or maybe slowly. The realization that the box of Chick’s stuff was for her, to remember her golden boy, all the years after he left, and rarely returned.

This box was assembled for me. She must have known, on some level, I would be the one, when the time came. I would be the one cleaning, the one packing everything up, the one closing the lid on her life. This was for me. Because she loved me. Because she trusted me to be the one to take care of things. 

Sun Porch

I’m standing in the sun porch. I hand the realtor the keys. Yes, I assure her, I have everything I want, the new owners can keep or sell whatever is left.  

The box is on my table at home. I shipped Chick’s to him on my way here. Something came up, sis, really sorry, he’d said. It’s okay, I’d answered, and meant it. It really is okay.   

I wave to the realtor and start the car. I pat the Zippo-shaped lump in my jacket pocket, and pull away.