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The candy on my tongue was getting smaller and smaller. I flicked it up and down the roof of my mouth and behind my teeth trying to suck out all the juice before it disappeared. We were on our way home and it was late. I could tell because everyone on the train looked tired. Not as tired as my mom though, she was a different kind of tired. The kind that made her nod heavily with every jerk of the subway, that made her body feel oozy and soft as if it was melting as she leaned against me. The sugary taste of the candy was starting to get stale in my mouth like bubblegum I’d been chewing too long , "Mom," I nudged her and she shook a little, her eyes still closed tight, her bent head leaning from her chest onto my elbow, her chin hanging deeper and deeper down, slow motion as if she were underwater. She reminded me of a girl I’d seen at the pool in the park, floating slowly down to the bottom, so slow you could hardly tell she was moving until she hit bottom with a quiet thud. When they’d pulled her out her face was blue, her mother was screaming and flapping her arms, while the men pushed and pushed at her chest, her face turning from blue to purple to red, the air finally forced out into her coughing and crying. All around the pool, the people from the neighborhood had been shouting happily, she’s okay, she’s okay, ." Congratulating her mother and sisters as if she had just won the spelling bee. I tried to imagine what mommy’s face would look like blue, I pinched her arm and her eyes fluttered open, she muttered and coughed just like the girl, except I was the one who had saved her. I breathed a sigh of relief, wondering if anyone realized I had just brought my mom back to life.
There was a woman across from me staring at us. She reminded me of our new teacher that year. The one who always looked like she was about to cry before she yelled at me or sent me to the office. She tried to follow me home one day, until I ran and hid, putting my hands over my ears to stop hearing her beg, "Anna, Anna ! sweetie I just want to help you." Finally she had gotten my mom to come to school by telling her if she didn’t she would call someone, someone scary like ACS or the cops. Mom had shown up in the middle of class, in the clothes that the women on the block called "ho wear," clothes that made the men on the street scream and holler and call to her if Joe wasn’t with us. I would say, "why are they screaming at you ma?" And she’d say "’cause they think I’m pretty," At school I told Miranda, "my mom’s the prettiest one on this block, all the men scream at her" Miranda, who was two years older said, "that’s because a how she dress, you can see Everything." It was true, the dress she was wearing today was made out of denim, little rectangular slats were cut out all the way up. When she leaned against me, I could feel the warm ripples of light brown flesh, the same color as mine. "Coffee with lots a cream," mom would say when she stood me in front of her in the mirror stroking my cheek, "you got the same coloring as me, and good hair too, maybe you’ll be a beauty queen some day." And she would wind my hair into tight little braids pulling gently, kissing my neck in the back where it parted every now and then. That wouldn’t happen tonight, Joe was with us tonight and that meant...
"Mommy," I nudged her again this time rougher and she roused herself, mumbling, she turned to me, her eyes still half closed and reached (instinctively)for her purse. "Whaa, wha... is it... baby?"
"You got another candy?"
"Yeah....yeah," her voice was deep and droopy like her head and arms and neck, her whole body slouched and slumped. Miss Mandy the music teacher would say she had terrible posture," I giggled at the thought. Mommy didn’t care what those snotty teachers thought of her, she said, "you sit however you wanna sit, baby, you’re My child, you do what makes you comfortable, don’t let nobody tell you you’re no good not even those teachers." Sometimes I slouched just like mommy in class, letting my head hang almost to my knees and my shoulders bend inwards like folding wings. I couldn’t keep it up for long though before my back would start to hurt and I’d straighten up, just like the teachers wanted me to. Mommy’s back never seemed to ache, not when she was droopy. Mommy picked through her purse, her hands like floppy cotton, then she nudged Joe who was leaning against her in the same droopy position, he was knocked out harder than she was, she practically had to smack him to get him up,
"You ga...ya ga.. ga any candy? canny Joe. Ya ga .... candy?"
"Wha?" His blue eyes fluttered half open then closed again. He was lighter than me and mommy, he knew Spanish but he looked like a white guy. When Joe was around I was pretty much left to myself. The two of them would go into mommy’s room and lock the door for hours, sometimes days. Then after a while I would come home and mommy would be there, standing up straight, smiling, she would draw me into her arms, and say, "you are Such a good girl, what did I ever do to get a girl like you?" Sometimes we would go shopping or get an ice cream at the corner. One night, Joe came over and he didn’t leave for a week. Every few days I would hear him sneaking out through the door, then back again quickly. Mom was in her room and I could hear her mumbling, moaning something. I had moved to go knock, but Joe had come back then and shoved me aside, "Go to bed" he said, "she don’t want you to see her like this". I wondered what she looked like behind that door, had she changed, become some sort of monster? All that night I’d stayed awake imagining her looking all freaky, with only one arm and one leg, with no face, imagining her like a Zombie, coming towards me, her hair falling out, imagining her skin scaly and green like the creature from the black lagoon, I pictured her standing in front of me, green and toothless saying, "I ain’t coffee and cream no more..." laughing and chasing me around the block.
That was the reason she’d had to come to school. The next day I fell asleep in class. The new teacher, Miss Macy had taken me to another woman who had her own office and a desk covered in photos of children and the pictures of rainbows and butterflies that they’d drawn her. She was old and dark and smiling like a grandmother, she wore glasses that looked like half moons and her heavy arms smelled like lavender. She’d shaken my hand and asked me to draw a picture in the kid’s room next door while she talked to my teacher. The room was divided from her office by a blue folding screen. I’d pulled the chair up close to the screen and listened to Miss Macy’s voice on the other side, rising up and down like a screechy violin,
"I don’t know what to do," It’s so awful, this poor, poor child, it’s neglect, the woman is an addict, it isn’t right, it isn’t right,"
I’d taken a handful of crayons in my fist as many as I could hold, not checking the colors, imagining Miss Macy’s trembling white face, her blue veins running over her pink cheeks like monster scales, like strange blue rivers. The way she always bent her lip and pulled at her hair when she spoke to me, and started to crash the crayons against the paper, up and down, faster and faster, sheets of colors, like the lines of Miss Macy’s face becoming scales, like the scales of the monster in my nightmare, up and down I clutched the crayons tight, the colors bleeding into each other, like the lines all over Mommy’s arms, the streaks of red and purple that bled into her, until there was no more coffee color there anymore... The paper ripped, the crayons fell from my hand and scattered at my feet.
The next day, mommy had showed up at the door of my classroom, and I’d sat between them, Miss Macy and my mom, while my mom stared at her, and Miss Macy stared at me and I stared at the floor, just like right now, with the girl across from me, looking just like Miss Macy, and me staring up at the top of the subway car, reading all the red letters of the trains...
"Joe u guut any... y got an yy c an ca canny?" Mommy asked him again.
He searched his pockets, straightening up a little, "naw, nothin"
Mommy was waking up, I snuggled in closer to her, swinging my legs, reading the numbers of the trains aloud making them into a song. I folded my arm though the crook of my mom’s elbow and licked my lips, the taste of the candy was still there a little. Soon it would be time to get off. "Next stop, mom, I warned her", she had started to sink again,
"nesttop" she repeated her voice sounding as if it were under water. I looked down once and met the eyes of the girl across from me, I knew what she wanted to do to me and my mommy. I knew she wanted to take me away.
The day after Mommy met Miss Macy, she was there waiting for me on the step, like she used to do a long time ago when I was still in day care and Grandma used to bring me home. Her arms were open and I’d walked right into them, inhaling the smell of soap and powder and cigarettes and mouthwash. She’d sat me on her lap, her legs so skinny I thought I might hurt her with my plumpness, she’d looked right into my eyes, tugging gently at my neck the way my teacher said Lions do to their cubs, and she was crying, tears making little silver tracks on her cheek, darkening the skin like leopard stripes. "I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry," she said whimpering.
"Don’t cry mommy" I said, wiping her tears with the back of my hand still sticky from ice cream. "I’m sorry I’m such a bad, bad, mommy to you, I’m so so sorry, I’m just sick, baby, I can’t help it, but I’m sorry, sorry," She had buried her head in my neck, her hot breath making me itchy, her tears wetting my neck. I ran one finger up and down her arm slowly, "shhh" I’d whispered to her the way grandma used to do to me, the way I’d seen the nurse do to a kindergartner who had scraped his knee, "It’s okay mommy, I love you," I’d said.
Now she looked like she would fall onto the dirty floor and I moved her head gently onto my shoulder as the train pulled into the stop. I stood, gripping the pole, shaking my mommy, "Come on, we have to go," I said. I walked quickly to the doors, I turned behind me and saw mommy pulling herself up as if it were a dance, straightening her tight short skirt around her thighs, wrapping her hands loosely around her bag, pulling on Joe until he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and stood as well, his hand holding tight to her waist as if it were a cane. The doors opened and I stepped onto the landing, waiting for them to catch up. I could still feel the girl’s eyes on my back, I knew how she was looking at my mommy. The same way Miss Macy had looked when Mommy had stood up suddenly from the peeling red rubber chair in the principal’s office, grabbing my hand , pulling me up beside her and guiding me, forcefully towards the door with her arm on my back. "This child is Mine," she’d said to Miss Macy at the door, "and she Ain’t coming back to this school no more." I’d looked up at mommy and seen her face hard and mean as I’d only seen it a few times before when someone was bothering her for money. Her chin was tilted up high and proud but there were tears in her eyes, making the brown circles seem magnified like two fish in a glass bowl. I’d jutted my chin up high just like my mom’s and walked home with her, not looking down guided only by the firm hold of her hand on my back.
Now her hand was pulling at the back of my shirt slipping down and then grasping on again to the loops of my jeans. I lead them down the crowded platform to the exit, Joe still clutching at her, the weight of the two of them making me move slower than I wanted to in that crowd. I turned around just once to look in the window of the subway, waiting silently while the streams of people rushed on. The girl was in the same spot, watching me. I turned quickly away from her gaze. No one’s gonna take my mommy away from me, I thought, as I led her out the door of the station.