“I love you, sweetie. I love you. Pretty soon I’m going to go and be with your Grandpa Irv, but God willing, you’ll see me again, Wavonna. Not for a long time, but some day,” she said.
For a while, Grandma slept, and Aunt Brenda went into the kitchen to make coffee, but she sat at the table and laid her head down on her arms to cry. When the big clock should have chimed three o’clock, it didn’t, because no one remembered to wind it. Aunt Brenda was asleep.
“I wish I weren’t afraid. It seems so silly to be afraid, but it feels like driving to a new place and not knowing where I’m going,” Grandma said when she woke up. We were alone, so I held her hand.
I thought about Mr. Arsenikos, our neighbor where we lived before Mama got arrested. When Mama and Uncle Sean used to fight, Mr. Arsenikos let me hide on his back porch. He called me his “stray cat,” and gave me bacon sandwiches. Sometimes they were just bacon grease spread on soft, white bread, but sometimes they had whole pieces of bacon on them. After I ate, he would sit out on the porch swing and tell me the names of stars. He used his cane to scratch them out in the dirt, so I could learn them. He was a sailor on a boat called USS San Diego, which is also a city in California. His boat sank in the Great War, and he knew which way to row the life raft toward land, because of the stars.
On the chenille bedspread that was stretched over Grandma’s belly, I drew Ursa Minor, with his tail pointing down.
“Ursa Minor is north tonight. Little Dipper,” I said, because Grandma called it that. I drew it in the palm of her hand, so she would remember. She nodded. By the time the sun came up, she was asleep again, and she didn’t wake up.
Mr. Arsenikos said if you knew the constellations you would never get lost. You could always find your way home.
*
At Grandma’s funeral, the only real thing was Grandma in a fancy box. Everything else was pretend.
Aunt Brenda pretended she wasn’t mad at Mama.
“Oh, Val, I’m so glad to see you,” she said.
Uncle Bill pretended, too. Before Mama came, he said, “Let’s get this over with and get her out of our lives,” but then he hugged her and said, “You look great, Val. You need to visit more often.”
“I want us to get together for Christmas. We can’t just see each other for funerals,” Aunt Brenda said.
“I know! We have to keep in touch. I can’t believe it’s been so long since we saw each other. I’ve missed you so much,” Mama said.
Then she brought the new baby to me.
“This is your little brother, Vonnie. This is Donal. Give him a kiss.”
I didn’t know why Mama wanted me to kiss him, when she was the one who said the mouth was a dirty place. In case it was a trick, I only pretended to kiss him.
After the funeral, Mama and Donal and I went to The Transitional Program.
“Everything’s going to be different this time,” she said.
The first two weeks at The Program, it was different. She was Good Mama and followed the rules. She washed our clothes and put them away in drawers in the new apartment. She cooked dinner. She didn’t hide in her bedroom and smoke her pipe like she did before she got arrested.
Then one day she woke up Scary Mama instead of Good Mama, and I knew things weren’t going to be different. I never knew which Mama she would be when she woke up.
I read the books she got from The Program. She was supposed to RECONNECT WITH YOUR FAMILY! That meant we were supposed to EAT DINNER AS A FAMILY, but every night, after Scary Mama fixed dinner, she sat on the back porch, smoking cigarettes and yelling through the screen door for me to eat. I wasn’t falling for that. I knew what could happen if she caught me eating.
Even Good Mama could all of a sudden say, “Don’t eat that! That’s dirty!” and stick her fingers in my mouth to get the food out. Even Good Mama could pour burning Listerine on my tongue to get it clean. She always said, “Things can get into you that way.” Bad things could get in through your mouth and make you sick. Just like my germs could get on other things and make them dirty.
When Megan the social worker came to check on us, Mama smiled so hard it made my stomach hurt. She wasn’t going to be Good Mama.
“So, what are we cooking for dinner tonight?” Megan said.
“Oh, we’re having spaghetti.” That’s what Mama always fixed. I had Grandma’s recipe book, but Mama wouldn’t let me cook. She didn’t want me to make a mess.
“How is everything else?” Megan said. “You missed one of the group sessions this week.”
“Oh, everything’s super. I just had a little headache, that’s all. Thanks for checking on us.” Mama smiled and smiled, but as soon as Megan left, she said, “Fucking busybody! It’s like a sitcom with a nosy neighbor always dropping in. Except you’d kill your neighbor if she dropped by the way they do on TV. Kill her! God, I don’t want to be on this stupid TV show anymore!”