Somewhere Buried Deep Beneath it All

Ma,

I started with the first room down the hall expecting to find it hoarded to the ceiling. But you had left my room as it was.

It had never been wholly mine. The stack of family heirlooms in the corner, your clothes stuffed in the closet, bins of outgrown toys in the corners. And all over the floor, the bags of recyclables you always promised to trade in every weekend. All of it still sat in my childhood bedroom as it always had. But you hadn't stored a single thing more, there.

And on my bedside was the notebook you gave me the year we had to open dad’s old boxes when you couldn't afford new clothes. I was 13 and wearing dad’s khakis, and shirts fitted for an 8 year old.

Sitting on the bed, I took up the notebook. Its black cover is soft and curls in my fingers when I open it.

Inside are drawings of mice. You told me not to go in your room, Ma, but that's where the mice were. They were like pets to me. They skittered around their little tunnels, climbed the boxes and leapt between them. They were like superheroes. I drew comics of them here.

Partway through the notebook the drawings end. The next few pages are journal entries.

Do you remember the beach trip grandma took us on? Neither of us had a swimsuit. Your old ones were too small, and back then they didn't make suits big enough for you. And we didn't have one from dad's old things that would fit around my skinny hips. So you and I wore normal clothes and waded along the water, picking up shells and cool rocks. You collected them all in your beach bag.

The bag is still here beside my bed, still full of the gravel we picked up together. As a kid it felt like a dream. It was stuff I collected, my memories that got to stay this time. The house was not only yours.

As a teenager I begged to throw it out. But you never let me.

--

Home still looks the same, Ma. Only older.

The stacks of boxes, unopened overstock, the corner of a garbage bag, still visible through the front door window. And no one was here when Sophie sent my things so there’s a stack of delivery tags on the doorknob.

When I moved out I threw my key into your hoards and hoped you’d never find it. I only came because they said you weren’t home.

The neighbors glared at me from their side of the patio where they spent their days with their chew cans and sweat-wet ball caps. They were as constant as the fold-out chairs they sat on.

"Here to finally fix that dumpster pile?” one brother said.

I ignored him, feeling for the key the social worker gave me.

"Get that crud out of there in a week or I'm suing." The other brother pointed at me. "I won't sleep with this reek seeping through the walls no more."

How many of these printer cartridges would you have to sell on eBay to afford being sued, Ma?

--

You left no space in the entryway for my pack.

When I came in the floor was covered in dust and flyers and spiders and a stain of cleaning product on the linoleum.

I can picture what happened. You set out to scrub the floors, made a splash, then cried. You sat in the only seat on the couch, enthroned by junk wrappers and old clothes. And somewhere buried beneath it all, the open photo albums, degraded by years of garbage weight and moths.

The social worker asked me to clean while you’re away. She figured I would know what you’d keep and what you’d toss. But I don't care about what you want, Ma. It's all going out. All of the garbage, all the clothes you loved but couldn’t fit when I was 6, the photos.

I'm going to get rid of this nightmare house.

--

Ma,

Today I took five bags of cans to the trade-in center. That place and your kitchen smell the same: warm beer and root soda. I got a few bills and a receipt.

It feels right to keep the receipt. So I taped it here in the notebook. I am fulfilling the promise you made. Things are changing.

Instead of throwing your boxes out the back door, I’ve been opening them. I kept a few more things in the notebook, too, like your favorite shirt. The pink tiger print you wore when you were a beauty model and had thicker hair, livelier skin, and bluer eyes. I cut a corner of it off and taped it on the next page with the photo framed of yourself wearing it with your friends.

I also drew the stacks of overstock you kept in the living room. When you would ship them to buyers, we'd walk hand in hand to the post office and you'd buy me some mints with your earnings.

And I threw out the beach bag, but kept one flat shell.

--

I brought more cans to the trade-in center again today. And I cleared enough space in my room to pick up my things from the post office.

My boxes were different from yours. Their contents were listed in thick, black markers on the outside. And inside, everything was mine. I bought these paintbrushes with my own money. And the expensive oils. And the suit I bought when all Sophie's friends were getting married. The fun socks, too. That was my rebellion.

Near the end, our condo was smothering. Our photos hung on the walls from the days when Sophie still ate meat and ice cream. Before we had the dogs that only bundled in their beds all day. Before Sophie’s design textbooks crowded the computer desk, and the software packages made the closet dark. She called it passion but her body was a desk chair, her life a fantasy beyond a screen.

Then she said my paintings were stuck in the past. That I hadn't sold a painting in over a year and it was time to move on.

So here I am.

I left my boxes for the garbage truck to take away in the morning.

--

You slept on the couch most days, in your spot. The red fabric is worn grey and ripped open now from your many years sinking into it. When you sat on that couch I thought of you as part of the hoard. It surrounded you completely, no matter how large you became, and you were gone from me.

--

Your doorway was always flush with things, but I had no idea what you kept in your room.

I knelt down to check out the mouse tunnels.

I used to imagine the tunnels were like a castle. Deep inside the room could be giant halls where mice gathered and slept together, maybe even danced, and revered the queen mouse.

All I saw now were mouse droppings, like peppercorns lining the boxes.

I hauled the top box from the first pile and opened it. Inside were my father's clothes, picked through and then thrown back in when I refused to wear them anymore.

I used to feel clothed in dust, in funeral clothes, and in expectations when you put me in father's clothes.

Inside the next box were my father's glasses and sunglasses. A green banker's lamp. Camel-colored leather shoes. Paperbacks.

You always told me that he wrote in the margins.

I left the open boxes for the mice. I sat on the couch and was absorbed by it. I retreated, surrounded by dark stains until the sun went down.

--

I was cleaning when they knocked. I dropped the brush and stood from the carpet stain I’d been scrubbing.

The man curled his nose when I opened the door, and the police officer behind him scratched his mustache. I hardly noticed the smell anymore.

"You're being evicted," the man in the suit said, and shoved a bright orange paper in my hands. "This is your last notice. Be out of here in 4 days or we're taking you with the building."

"How much has mom missed on the rent? I can cover it."

"That's not the problem, kid," the man said. "Your mother has dealt too much damage to the building. We've already done the assessment," he nodded to the brothers watching like gargoyles from the neighboring porch, "and it's not worth fixing. We're bulldozing the whole thing on the first."

One brother pulled a folder from beside his chair and snuck it to the police officer with a jerk of his head. The officer gave it to me. Once I held it in my hand he said, "And you've been served."

"Bright side is, kid, you don't need to clean up anymore. Leave it all in the unit and it'll be taken away with the wood."

They walked down our porch steps with swagger. The beating sun made them squint their eyes, and before getting back in his vehicle the landlord looked to me, hand over his brow, with a cowboy's grin.

--

The social worker's number was on a card by the telephone. "I need to speak with my Ma," I said.

"I’m sorry, Pat, I can't do that. She's in hospital."

"They don't take calls? She can’t be in that bad shape."

"You know I can't talk about specifics."

"Does it have anything to do with the red stains I've been scrubbing from the carpet for two days?"

My voice shook.

The social worker took time on the other side. "I know this is hard."

"Did she do it because of the eviction?"

Even when they would do the work you still wouldn't leave this place, Ma.

"I don't know."

I hung up.

--

Ma,

My notebook is now full of drawings, the recycling receipts and the thick wad of bills totaling $20,039.11, and my letters to you.

Ma, this money could have been new clothes for us. Swimsuits. This money could have been a college education. It could have been a professional cleaning team. It could have been mints from the post office.

This money had been bottles around my feet while I slept with a fish-ripe beach bag beside my pillow.

I can’t bear to open the court folder. I don't know if either of us can open it. Opening the folder would mean pouring all our boxes on the table. Might even mean a few more days of scrubbing bleach into the carpet. So we’ll settle and give them our soda money.

I drew some of the things you kept of dad's. His lamp, his glasses, a cartoon of a skinny kid wearing his dad's old shorts all bunched up with a belt.

I'd only gone back into the boxes to rip out a page from one of his paperbacks. I taped the page with a few lines of his handwriting into the notebook.

Finding my old house key was a surprise. After peeling off the dust bunnies, it was still brassy.

I taped the key in my notebook, too, Ma. Don’t worry.

Tonight I'll stay at a hotel, where no mice or memories can pull me in. For once, we’ll learn how it feels to have no tie to a place, or to a person. Maybe it feels like being a rock washed ashore on the beach.