“Hey …” I object, eyeing the half-empty glass. I am slouched back in the chair, arms crossed, making it clear that I’m not okay with the grounding, despite her attempt to make it fun.
She gives me a look. “That’s enough for you, Hon,” she says, but then she picks up the bottle and adds a little more. Which is pretty much how she is, always saying the right thing, like “You’re grounded” or “No allowance,” but in the end letting me get my own way. It’s like she’s a kid who is only acting the role of a parent. She can’t possibly enforce a rule because she feels bad for me. It’s as if she still feels all the pain of being young. Like instead of being thirty-five, she’s only twenty.
She’s decided to stay in tonight, which I know is a big deal to her. Usually she’s out with one of her boyfriends, so I try to be good about it. I try to be happy, but my mind keeps wandering off.
We pop popcorn and make ice cream floats with Baileys. We get into our pyjamas and watch my mom’s favourite movie: Ice Castles. It’s this sappy movie from the ’70s about a figure skater who goes blind and still wins the competition.
I look over to her near the end, already knowing how I’ll find her. She’s curled up in a ball, red-eyed and sniffling, using her sleeve to wipe her nose. If anyone walked in the room, they’d think she was my little sister. Already I’ve outgrown her. She’s petite. And skinny. And beautiful, with darker olive skin and really nice blue eyes. Beside her I’m this clunky, beefy, pale girl with dark roots and the occasional pimple. Lucky me. I got all my father’s genes—except for my boobs. My mom and I have great boobs.
I throw a cushion at her. “Jesus, Mom, stop crying, you’ve seen this a thousand times.”
“I know. I know. I can’t help it.” She laughs at herself and then sniffles some more. I think the problem is that my mom has too much emotion, which makes us polar opposites. Sometimes I think that when she was pregnant with me, she sucked all the feelings out of me and kept them for herself.
I don’t cry at movies, but I do sometimes lose it when I watch nature shows. Like the episode I saw last week about a leopard in a South African zoo. The leopard had just had a baby and the doctors were holding it because the baby was screaming in pain. And then one doctor discovered that the baby was missing a hind leg, and he put him back down because now he would not survive. He explained that the mother, in her excitement at delivering it, had severed the leg while chewing off the umbilical cord. The cub was so cute and so tiny, and his life was never even given a chance. Oh, I cried and cried and cried watching it alone on this cold metal surgery table. And I thought, how sad, because the mom would never understand the damage she caused.
Around eleven, I say I’m going to bed. In my room, I smoke a popper and stare at my cellphone. My mind is stuck on the thought of Michael.
Where did he go? Where did he go?
People don’t just disappear like that. Leave without saying goodbye. Things so unfinished. It’s like leaving in the middle of a sentence. I wish I didn’t walk out that last night before he got to tell me why he wanted to break up. Then I’d at least know the reason instead of being left wondering what I did so wrong. Was it because of our age? Was it because of my suspension and that I don’t do good in school? And to not say goodbye? Why? He loves me too much to say goodbye? Not enough? He’s a coward? He had a breakdown? He had given hints about feeling low and there were signs I recognized from my mother’s experiences with depression. Sweating. Staring vacantly at the television. Slow to respond to questions. Not being able to make simple decisions like what toppings to order on a pizza.
Or maybe he met another woman. I think of him in the arms of some lady, maybe someone his age, kissing her, holding her body when they sleep. This is what bothers me most—not so much the sex, but the sleeping. That warmth.