Mom

She loved her Mom. 

She made her favorite sandwiches and took her to read books with the story lady sometimes. She was also very smart. Dolores, age five, wanted to be like her one day. Her Mom said she was smart, but she wanted to be Mom Smart, not just Dolores Smart. 

Everything she said always made sense to her even when it didn’t, like the morning she bit her tongue jumping on the bed even when she knew she wasn’t allowed to. As soon as the dull pain of teeth cutting into flesh and the metallic tasting blood started to flow, she was running barefoot across the wooden floor down the hallway to her Mom’s room. 

“Mom, my tongue is bleeding!” 

She was in bed alone; her dad was usually gone because it was early in the morning, the moon was still standing in the sky. She sometimes heard him leaving in the morning because he was a soldier and they get up early. 

“Put a Band-Aid on it.” Mom muttered; face turned toward Dolores on the fluffy pillow. She could smell the sour breath that she always had before she was reminded to brush her teeth. 

“You have dragon breath too!” The astonishment of the fact made her sound shocked, never having smelled Mom bad breath before! It always smelled like gum or coffee. Periodically, she would try and catch her using her big girl toothbrush with no pictures on it and never could see her brush her teeth, but somehow it always smelled good.

“It’s six in the morning Dolores. Put a Band-Aid on it.” 

Dolores left the room quietly, leaving the door open and went to the bathroom, porcelain floor cold on her feet in the winter chill that snuck past the windowpane to slither and nest on the floor overnight. They were in the closet that she kept the towels and the lotion that made smelled like flowers. She didn’t like the stinging spray so she wouldn’t use that because it was in her mouth and it would hurt more. Mom didn’t tell her to use the spray anyway. 

Dolores peeled the plastic cover off after tearing it from the package and stood in front of the mirror. She learned how to tie her shoes the other day so she could do this. Mom did this all the time and she always did so good putting Band-Aids on bites and scrapes. 

The sticky side caught on her thumb, then stuck to the inside of itself

This never happened to Mom. 

Determined, she grabbed the next and tried again. 

The paper was the easiest part. It was like a banana, both sides fall away and what’s left is a present that the monkeys really like. The plastic fell to the floor and her little, slightly chubby fingers dropped the it sticky side face down on the floor. She tried to peel it off the floor and place it on the tip of her tongue, but it fell away with the white middle showing pink blood diluted with saliva. 

Frustrated, Dolores threw the box on the floor, feeling tears making her eyes hot and she sat down to carefully open the next one and make sure it stayed for good. She’d be really safe and not drop it or make it stick together. 

Mom be really proud that she did it herself. 

The alarm clock in the master  bedroom started ringing the way it does every morning, for a very long time.

She quickly stuck it on her tongue, putting the sticky on the bottom where it touches the bottom of her mouth. It stayed for the smallest bit, then Dolores could feel it start to come away from being wet. 

The alarm stopped ringing and her mother sighed, and the bed creaked with protest at the movement of getting up as if it too, were tired to accommodate the shifting weight. The floor talked when stepped on. Dolores talked back to the floor sometimes, because it would only talk you step on its ouchies. 

The door to the bathroom was closed so Dolores, quickly cleaned up the trash and stood up real straight because Mom always went potty first. The door opened and she saw her daughter standing there so proud as the little pink tongue stuck out and she said almost indistinguishably, “Look, I did it!” 

Her Mom stood for a little bit and rubbed her face.

“Dolores, what are you doing?” Her voice sounds different. Like Dolores’ did when her friend, Lauren, down the street got so sick she had to stay at the hospital, leaving her with no one to play with.  

“You told me to put a Band-Aid on my tongue because I bit it. It isn’t staying.” She had to take it out because it was already rolling around her mouth like a plastic Cheerio. 

“No, I was being sarcastic, you woke me up too early. The sun hasn’t even come up yet.  Let me see.”

Tongue out.

“It’s a little cut, you still have all your pieces.” Voice wavering and sounding thick.

“Why do you sound like that, Mom?”

“I have a cold.”

Doing what a child does who loves her mother, Dolores turned around to the closet and snatched the green bottle that was always around for colds and placed it in her mother’s soft hands. “Here, there’s medicine for it! You always have all kinds of things to make everyone feel better. Except for the stinging spray.” 

She looked at Dolores so stricken with sadness and the touching comfort of seeing how much her daughter loved her and enclosed the bottle with her fingers, then bending over to pull her little brown daughter in for a hug. 

“You’re such a good girl, Dolores.” Mom began to sniffle and let out a small sob.

“Mom?”

Dolores could feel her start to shake and felt drops fall onto her shoulder through the fabric of her favorite sleep shirt and she was so confused because her Mom never cried. She couldn’t understand what was happening and started to get scared. Little arms held on tight to her soft robe’s belt. 

Moms don’t cry. 

Dolores had never seen her Mom cry before, not even when she cut her hand with a big knife making dinner. She had been cutting potatoes and talking to Dolores about her colors, there was so much blood, even more than the day Dolores fell off of her pony bike on the street and had scraped her knee. She didn’t even know her Mom could cry. That’s why Dolores wouldn’t be a mom one day because she cried a lot.

“I’m sorry I called your breath bad.” Dolores said, her face pressed into the robe. She hadn’t meant to make her cry. 

Her Mom peeled her away and looked at her with the sad face Dolores sometimes used when practicing her faces so she could be in a movie one day. 

Mom leaned over to kiss her forehead, still letting out that bad breath into little nostrils. 

“I’m not crying because you said my breath is bad. Everyone’s breath is bad in the morning, that’s why we have to brush our teeth and why we have to shower. I need to tell you, that your dad loves you very much.”

“I know.” She didn’t know why her Mom said this, her Dad always said how much he loved her when he came home from work and took off his boots. 

“Your dad and I are going to take some time apart, but you can see him whenever you want, you just tell me, ok?”

Just like that, her Mother that always packed her extra snacks when they went to run errands, and always had things in her purse to make her feel better or color on seemed like a different person. Her Mother always knew what to do, like the day she cut her hand on the potatoes, so they ordered pizza instead. No muss, no fuss. Mom always had the answers and knew everything. So why was Dad not wanting to stay home with them? 

“It’s going to be ok, Dolores.” Her Mother whispered. “I’m sorry I scared you by crying, but I just don’t know how to fix this.” 

She had heard other mother’s say, ‘I don’t know.’, and felt sorry for the kids because they didn’t have her Mom. Now she felt sorry for herself and her Mom. That morning she learned that her Mom could cry, and that all this time she pretended to know everything. She used to think that her mother was so special, that she had powers to make things happen, but now her dad didn’t come home, and her Mom was crying. 

The End