“She’s sick,” I said, pulling the covers up around her so Ruby couldn’t get a good look at her. “But she’ll be okay.”
“What’s she sick with?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s just sick.” Mom’s eyelids were jumping just a little bit, and I wondered if she was dreaming. “We need to let her rest.” When I raised my eyebrows Ruby got the hint and walked back toward the living room. I bent down and whispered into Mom’s ear in case Ruby was out in the hallway trying to listen. “You’re going to be all right, Mom,” I said. “You just rest now and get a little sleep. We’ll be okay for dinner.”
I thought about walking down to Fayles’ on the corner and calling 911 and getting ahold of an ambulance, but after seeing those pills I knew what it meant to find her asleep like this. Anybody who came and found her like that would put her in the hospital and probably arrest her too. I knew for sure they’d take me and Ruby away. I figured if Mom was breathing and her heart was beating, it was good enough to leave her alone and let her sleep. I’d found her like this before, and she’d always woke up a couple of hours later and come walking into the living room like a zombie from a scary movie. Me and Ruby would be watching television or working on our homework or maybe doing both at the same time. “When’d y’all get home?” she’d ask. It would be almost dark outside, and sometimes it would’ve been dark for hours.
“We’ve been home for a while,” I’d say.
“Okay,” she’d say. “Y’all want something to eat?”
I told myself this time wasn’t any different from any of those other times, and I tucked the sheet around her even though it was warm in her room, and I closed her door as quietly as I could and walked into the living room and found Ruby sitting on the floor in front of the television.
That night I heated up a can of SpaghettiOs in a saucepan on the stove. Me and Ruby ate in front of the television and watched Entertainment Tonight. I hated Mary Hart’s big cheesy smile, but I loved her hair: how huge it was and how it didn’t move when she turned her head. I wanted hair like that. I liked her name too. It reminded me of Boston Terrier-one of those names you wouldn’t think was real until you met somebody who answered to it.
While Ruby brushed her teeth and got ready for bed, I went back into Mom’s room to check on her. It was pitch black and hot as it could be, but I could see by the light coming in from the hallway. I walked around to the side of the bed where Mom had been lying that afternoon. She was still in the same spot, and I sat down beside her. I was afraid that she’d gotten too hot with the door being closed and the sheet being pulled up around her tight, but she wasn’t sweating and didn’t feel warm when I touched her. She breathed softly, so I knew she was just fine, and I knew she’d wake us up for school in the morning like nothing had happened. I leaned over and whispered in her ear.
“Good night, Mom,” I said. “Me and Ruby already ate something and did our homework, and I’m getting her ready for bed.” She didn’t say nothing or give any sign that she’d heard me, but I didn’t expect her to. I stood up and started to walk out into the hall, but then I heard her whisper my name. She’d raised her left arm up from the bed and was holding it out toward me like she wanted me to hold her hand. I walked back to the bed and held her hand in mine, and I just stood there holding it and waiting to see if she’d say something else, but she didn’t. “All right, Mom,” I said, letting her hand rest on the bed right beside her. “You get some sleep.”
I went to bed too, but all night long I kept waking up and wondering if I’d heard her moving around the house: the sound of her feet dragging across the floor, doors opening and closing, water running in the sink.
I woke up in the morning just as it was getting to be daylight outside. The house was silent, just like it was supposed to be at that time of the morning, but something about that quiet told me it was wrong. So I wasn’t too surprised at how I found her when I opened her bedroom door.
She was lying sideways on top of the bed like maybe she’d stood up sometime during the night and had fallen back across the bed and just stayed that way. I knew she was dead right when I opened the door. She was on her side with her knees bent up close to her and her hands under her chin. Her dark hair was covering her face, so I couldn’t tell whether her eyes were open or not, but I didn’t move it out of her face to check because I knew I didn’t want to see. I didn’t even touch her, which seems strange to think about now because I’d give anything in this world to curl up in bed beside her, be able to smell her hair on the pillowcase, feel her scratch my back through my nightgown. But instead I just stood there looking down at her and went ahead and decided that I wasn’t going to cry, not then anyway. I knew it was more important to decide what me and Ruby were going to do next.
Ruby must’ve felt something in the house too because when I went back into our bedroom I found her sitting up in the bed like she’d been waiting on me.
“How’s Mom?” she asked. I just stood there looking at her, trying to figure out how I was going to explain what had happened. “Is she better?”
“No, Ruby,” I said, “she’s not.” I sat down on her bed and told her. I told her about how Mom was tired all the time and that was why she was always sleeping. And I told her that Mom’s body just couldn’t take that tiredness and that she’d finally had enough. Ruby just sat there and looked at me while I found my way through whatever it was I was saying. I can’t promise that I quite remember it myself, but I do remember telling her that now wasn’t no time to be sad. I remember telling her that there’d be plenty of time for that later, that right now we had to be tough and figure out what we were going to do next to make sure we stayed together now that we didn’t have a mama or a daddy like most kids our age.
I asked her if she wanted to go into Mom’s bedroom to see her one more time, and I could tell she thought about it awfully hard, but in the end she decided that she didn’t want to, and I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t go back into that room again either.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. She shook her head. “We probably should eat something anyway.” I turned to walk toward the kitchen.
“Where you going?” Ruby asked.
“I’m going to the kitchen,” I said. “We need to eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Okay,” I said, “you don’t have to eat nothing if you don’t want to.” I walked into the hallway.
“Hold on,” Ruby said. I stopped walking and waited until she was right behind me, and then we went into the kitchen and opened the cabinets and looked for something to eat, but there wasn’t nothing there for breakfast. There wasn’t hardly no food at all. I looked around and realized that we didn’t have anything, and I saw what our house really looked like, and I knew how people would think of us when they came inside in a few hours to get Mom and take us away to wherever we’d be going. They’d see that we didn’t have any furniture except for a plastic deck chair and two folding chairs that you might take to the beach. And they’d see that me and Ruby didn’t have beds but just slept on mattresses on the floor that had mismatched sheets on them. They’d know that I’d called them from the corner store because we didn’t have a phone, and they’d see that even if we’d had food we didn’t have no clean plates to eat from. I stood there looking all around that kitchen with a knot in my throat and an empty stomach, and I swear I could hear flies buzzing in just about every windowpane in that house. I just wanted to leave it all behind.