“I lost the only family I ever had. I get to act how I want,” I scream.
Mom winces. We both pull back, surprised.
But I press. “You lied to me. Don’t you dare act like that’s a nonissue. I am entitled to act however I choose. And if you don’t like it, you can leave. Get the fuck out of here. Go back where you came from.”
She pinches her lips and goes quiet. “I’m sorry about Mel,” she says after a moment. “That was so sad. She was real young.”
I don’t know how to respond to this. I sit down, cross my legs, run a hand through my hair. It’s greasy, peltlike. I rummage through my robe pockets, locate a joint I rolled days ago. It’s squashed, but I light it anyway.
“Smokin that stuff’ll make you stupid,” Mom says.
“Mission accomplished. But will it make me boff creepy old child molesters like you?”
She sniffs. “It’ll make you walk out into traffic without your drawers on, that’s what it’ll make you do.”
“Well, shit. Check and mate, Mom.” There’s a stem on my lip. I pick it off, flick it away.
“That Donnie sounded real upset on the phone,” she says. “She’s worried about you. A lot of people are.”
“Go home. You flew up here for nothing.”
“No ma’am. I wanna see the sights. I never been up here, whole time you’ve been livin here.” She picks up her bag, wheels it into the hallway. “You got an extra room?”
“Nope.”
“I’ll put this in your room, then.”
She disappears into the apartment, tripping and cussing and sighing over what she sees. I throw an empty Ensure can after her. It hits the wall.
It’s sort of invigorating, feeling this angry. After all these months of surfing through the vanilla, I can almost appreciate being pissed off for its novelty.
“Where’s the commode,” she calls out. I turn the TV on, turn the volume up and up.
—
When I fall asleep on the couch, she changes the sheets on my bed and sleeps there. The next morning, she cleans house, emptying ashtrays, tossing mossy soup cans, stomping at the roaches with her puffy mamaw sneakers. She mops floors and pokes at my ankles with the handle to get me to lift my feet.
“I think a roach just bit me,” she says.
“Yeah, they’ll do that.”
Donnie calls later in the day. “Did your mom arrive safe and sound?” she chirps.
“I hate you.”
“You’d be surprised how easily I can accept that.”
“I was going to thank you for bailing me out of jail. But I think I’ll skip it and just tell you to go fuck yourself, Donnie.”
“Have fun with your mom, Sharon. Give me a call when you’re ready to come back to work.”
—
Mom finds the Xanax on my dresser. She marches into the living room, holding the bottle. “What is this?”
I’m watching Scarface. “What’s it look like?”
“Looks like pills.”
She strides over and taps me hard on the head with the bottle. “We sent you to that fancy-ass school for you to get out and get started on this?” She shakes the bottle. “You know what they call this? Hillbilly heroin.”
“Hillbilly heroin is technically Oxycontin. Xanax is a prescription antianxiety medication.”
She whacks me on the head with the bottle again.
“You know what, that really hurts. Stop it.”
She puts her face close to mine. Her eyes are watery, white-blue. Says, “You know better.”
“I have a prescription,” I tell her.
“I don’t give a shit.” She storms into the bathroom and flips the toilet open, grimy and ringed. “Nasty,” she mutters, and dumps the contents in.
I keep still. “Go ahead. I’m just gonna get another prescription. That’s how it works when you’re under the care of a physician.”
“You just try. I’ll kick your ass up between your shoulder blades.”
She finds Mel’s ashes in the back of my closet and plunks them down on the coffee table while Tony Montana does Eskimo kisses with a big pile of coke.
“Sharon, is this drugs?”
“What the hell.” I get up, grab them. “These are Mel’s ashes.”
Her eyes go wide. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. What, haven’t you ever seen cremated ashes before?”
“As a matter of fact, I have not.” She crosses her arms over her chest. She’s in pissed mode, what she resorts to when she’s wrong and she knows it.
“Jesus.” I lift the lid, show her. Clap the lid back down. “How Baptist are you?”
“Sharon Kay, that’s enough.”
“I’ll tell you when it’s enough.”
“It ain’t sanitary, keeping those around your house.”
“Leave. Them. Alone.”
“Fine,” she says. But it shakes her up. I can tell by the careful way in which she straightens the coffee table. Leaves the room. Does what I ask for once.