I’d started. Three hours hadn’t helped at all. How much would I be able to do in two days?
I took a deep breath and forced myself to think about the house the way it could be.
I could feel my heart stop racing and my breathing slow. Thinking about the life I was going to have after was better than Valium for calming me down. Giving up wasn’t an option. Repeating that to myself was the only way I was going to get through this. Giving up was not an option.
Opening my eyes, I realized I’d been going about this completely the wrong way. Nobody cleaned a mess this big by picking up one little piece at a time and separating it into this pile or that bag. Aunt Jean hadn’t worried about recycling. She’d even resorted to a shovel at one point as we filled up the Dumpster. I had to stop seeing each little thing individually and start seeing it as one giant thing that stood between me and the rest of my life.
Aunt Jean was right—a shovel was the only tool for this job. Thanks to Mom’s “collecting,” we happened to have several out by the shed in the back. I dragged the green trash can into the house and set it up with a bag in a small, clear spot on the living room floor.
Even though I knew Mom was gone, it was hard to really believe she wasn’t going to burst through the front door and start screaming at me for touching her stuff. She wasn’t going to tell me that I never helped her and that she worked too hard to have time for stupid things like cleaning the house. I jammed the stuff as far down into the plastic bags as I could, poking and punching at the clothes, papers, and scraps of fabric she valued more than she valued any of us.
Before I realized it, I had four bags full of junk that needed to go outside. Four was about the upper limit for the number of bags I could stack around the recliner before they took up all available space. When I checked out the peephole in the front door, there was an old couple slowly shuffling down the street. I tried to think about how many trips I’d taken to the backyard today. It had to be at least eight or nine. In an hour or two, people were going to start coming home from work, and the street was going to get a lot busier.
I stepped away from the door and tried to figure out another way to get this done. The hallway was still too cluttered to drag bags or boxes through, but if I continued to cart things out the front door and around the side of the house, people might get suspicious. It was getting colder in the living room, so I grabbed my jacket off the door and put it back on while I thought. Leaving the windows open in the back of the house was going to be good for keeping Mom… cold, but I was going to freeze in here tonight.
The windows. That was it. I grabbed one of the bags and dragged it through the living room and into the dining room. The window in that room was blocked by a small pile of boxes and bags that reached just past the windowsill. I didn’t bother clearing any of it away, but just stood on top of the pile and undid the latch. Like the rest of the house, the windows were old, and this one probably hadn’t been opened in years. Part of it was held shut with paint, but I banged on the top of the frame until it began to inch up little by little.
When I finally had the window opened wide enough, I stuck my head out to see what was down below. There were a few old plastic milk crates stacked against the house, but other than that it was clear. I balanced the full garbage bag on the ledge and, with a shove, sent it flying out the window where it bounced off a crate and settled onto the ground. This was the perfect solution. Not only would it save me from having to haul all this stuff out the front door for the world to see, but I could keep everything right here on the side of the house until they took Mom away.
Now it was like my body was on autopilot. All my energy was concentrated into grabbing whatever was on top of the closest stack and shoving it as far down into the trash bag as it would go. Grab a handful, shove it in the bag. Grab another handful, shove it in the bag. Bag after bag, pile after pile. I felt like I was finally making progress.
Halfway down one pile, I found what at first looked to be a large box covered with a hot pink towel. When I hit it with the back of my hand, it sounded like metal clanging together, and I realized it wasn’t a box. I could see ridges under the towel that made it lie in waves along the top. Even before I pulled the towel off, the faint smell of cedar chips told me what it was and made me a little sad all over again.
I hadn’t seen the hamster cage since ninth grade.
“Make sure you feed him this week,” I said to Mom as I set Petey’s cage down in a cleared spot on the kitchen counter. “He likes sunflower seeds and these green pellets. Also, little bits of apple and peanuts at night.” Petey was curled up in a ball on his mound of cedar shavings. Every morning, he’d spend hours getting the mound just right so he could turn around three times and snuggle into it with just one ear showing.
“He eats better than I do,” Mom said, peering over the top of the cage. She poked a finger in through the bars and wiggled it around. “Here, Petey Petey.”
“He doesn’t like it when you do that,” I said to her. I was already annoyed. She never made anything easy.
“How do you know what he likes?” she asked. She waggled her finger at him one more time. “Since when did you start speaking hamster?”
“It scares him,” I said. “Look, he’s curling up tighter and digging in the shavings. That means he’s scared.”
“Maybe you don’t handle him enough,” she said. “Otherwise he wouldn’t be such a scaredy-hamster.” She pulled her finger out of the cage and stood up straight to look at me.
“Don’t pick him up while I’m gone, okay? It’s only two weeks—he’ll be fine. Just feed him twice a day and make sure he has enough water in the bottle. I’ll clean the cage when I get back.” I wished I could take him with me to camp, but it would be hard to explain to the other junior counselors why I couldn’t leave him at home. All Mom had to do was shove some food in his cage, and with it sitting in the middle of the kitchen, there was no way she could forget. I just kept telling myself he’d be fine.
“Don’t worry about your precious rodent,” she said. “I’ll feed him every day. He’ll be fat and happy when you get home, you’ll see.”
It didn’t work out
“Where’s Petey?” I said as I dropped my suitcase on the kitchen floor, a pile of junk mail filling the space on the counter where the cage had been.
“Oh,” Mom said, looking down at the newspaper she was holding. “I was going to call you, but I didn’t want to ruin your trip. He got out the other day when I was feeding him. I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find him.”
“What do you mean he got out?” My eyes searched what I could see of the floor. A tiny hamster could be hiding anywhere in this house. “All you had to do was feed him. You said he’d be okay.”
She put her arm around my shoulders and gave a quick squeeze. “I’m really sorry,” she said. She was looking everywhere except right at me. “I only left the door open for a second so I could cut some more apple, and when I looked back he was gone.”
“He really ran away?”
She nodded. “I’m sure he’s around here somewhere. Probably found a nice, soft corner to curl up in.”
“But he was counting on me…” Petey was the first thing I’d ever been in charge of, and I’d let him down. He must have missed being held and stroked on the very top of his head. He must have thought I was never coming back, and he made his escape when he saw an opportunity. A sick, heavy feeling settled in my stomach and made the back of my eyelids prickle.
I got down on all fours and looked under the table and along the wall. “Here, Petey Petey.” I made little kissy noises as I was calling him. “Here, Petey. I’m back. Here, Petey.” Mom got down on the floor too and together we searched everywhere we could, spending the next hour at hamster level trying to find him. But we never did.
Sometimes I would see hamster droppings on the counter or the table, and I took it as his way of telling me
