Her eyes welled up. She looked around for someone to help her. She needed something to get the potato salad and spilled milk off the floor. But the adults in the room didn’t see, or if they did, they ignored her.
She knelt and started picking up the trash, her plastic plate and utensils and carton of milk. She used her napkin to try and get up some of the potato salad. She gathered it all on the tray but was afraid to pick the tray back up. She watched the tears plop onto her empty plate. She wondered why she came into the cafeteria today. She wasn’t even hungry, but she wanted to create a semblance of normalcy. If she did what she always did, then she wouldn’t be crazy.
“Here,” someone said gruffly. She looked up to see the custodian looking down at her. “I ain’t got time to clean this up. Just use this mop then roll it over to the corner. There.” He pointed to a section of the cafeteria she never ventured into. And she would have to walk by him on her way. Her heart began to ache with panic as fresh tears fell.
“Can I put it over there?” she asked. She pointed in the opposite direction.
“Girl, put it where I said,” the custodian snapped, then took out his radio at the sound of a buzzing metallic voice. “This is Jeffrey,” he responded and walked away.
“Could you please hurry up with that,” a girl said from behind Clara. “It’s gross.”
Clara walked her tray to the trashcan then returned to the mop and bucket. It was one of those gigantic buckets on wheels, and she couldn’t figure out how to wring the mop. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand grateful that she wasn’t wearing mascara today. Some students watched and snickered as she tried to figure out how to wring the mop until someone approached her. He told the giggling students to go fuck themselves, and they looked at him reproachfully before turning back to their conversations.
“You know how many times I’ve been in detention?” he asked Clara.
She looked up at him, a scrawny freshman with an acne-pocked face. She shook her head.
“A lot,” he replied, and smiled. “Here. This is how you do it,” and he turned a handle on the side of the bucket that squeezed the mop between two thick plastic grids. He took the mop out and started on the floor.
“I’ll do it,” Clara offered reaching for the mop.
“Nah, it’s okay,” the boy said, dunking the mop and wringing it again. He slapped it to the floor once more and wiped up the remaining milk.
“Thank you,” Clara whispered. Her chin quivered and as much as she tried, she couldn’t help letting out a quiet sob. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, and the boy shuffled uneasily.
“They’re just a bunch of assholes,” he said. “Don’t let them make you cry.”
Clara nodded. She reached for the handle of the bucket and started rolling it towards the corner of the cafeteria where the custodian instructed. She was shaking so much the bucket rattled, and the boy, sensing that at any moment she might faint, walked beside her.
“You want me to roll it?” he asked when she hesitated before passing Evan’s table.
Evan looked over at her. She stared back. His green eyes appeared tired and defeated. There was anger there still, but it was subdued, and sadness seemed to fill its space. He looked like he felt the humiliation she now felt, the spilled food, the laughing, the loss of any remaining dignity she might have had. It fell to the floor along with her lunch, and the boy mopped it up and drowned it in the dirty water.
She tore her eyes away from his face.
“No, I can roll it,” she said absently. “Thank you, though.” And she pressed forward.
***
“I had sex with a man for money!” she screamed at her mother. “It’s not about a goddamn dress!”
Ellen flinched and took a step backwards. They were in the middle of another fight, Ellen arguing that Clara had to let go of what happened at prom and Clara screaming that her mother didn’t understand.
“You want to know why I can’t forgive you?” Clara went on. “You turned me into a fucking whore!”
Beatrice slipped into her bedroom and closed the door. She slid down against it until her bottom hit the hardwoods. She placed her hands over her ears, but she could still hear her sister—a person she no longer knew—yelling obscenities in the next room.
“Clara, calm down,” Ellen urged.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Clara yelled, and continued to pace the living room. She looked at her mother with disdain. “We had nothing! My boyfriend had to pay to get our gas and electric back on! We were sleeping by the fire on your goddamn mattress freezing to death! And you left us with all of that! The bills. The unpaid debt. The fucking property tax. What could I do? I couldn’t make enough money, not even with two jobs!”
Ellen was crying outright.
“You made me old. You made me a whore,” Clara sobbed.
Ellen knew Clara might hit her. She deserved it if it happened, but in that moment nothing would stand between her and her daughter. She would go and touch Clara and suffer the consequences.
Clara had no more fight in her as she felt her mother’s arms go around her. She simply cried into her neck saying over and over how much she hated her.
“I know,” Ellen whispered. “I know.”
“Why?” Clara sobbed. “We needed you! Why did you leave us? Why?”
Ellen walked with Clara to the couch still holding her tightly, unable to let go for fear it was the last time Clara would ever let her touch her.
“I left because I was a bad mother,” Ellen said.
Clara continued to cry into her mother’s shoulder.
“But I’m not going to be a bad mother anymore,” Ellen said. “I’m going to take care of you Clare-Bear. You don’t need to worry about a thing. I’m here, and I’m going to take care of you.”
She rocked her daughter from side to side.