Dirty Little Secrets

out lightbulb.

At the bend in the hallway, a tall pile of National Geographics had fallen over and blocked the narrow pathway that led to her room. That’s really going to make her mad, I thought as I turned and walked toward my room. Mom didn’t go into her room much anymore, but I wondered why she hadn’t straightened up the pile right away. Even with all this stuff crammed into the house, having things out of place made her even crazier. Especially if she thought I’d had something to do with it.

That’s what last night’s argument had been about. As usual.

I’d been throwing clothes in my backpack to go to Kaylie’s when I heard her shouting from the living room, “Lucy!”

I pretended not to hear her until she called for a third time, then I pushed my door open and yelled down the hall, “What?”

She squeezed past the piles of newspapers and overflowing plastic bags in the hallway until she could see me. Her red hair showed an inch of gray at the roots, and wiry strands of it were hanging in front of her face. She put her hands on her hips, and I watched her ropy veins wiggle and move underneath her chapped, red skin. “What did you do with them?”

I shut my eyes and slowly opened them again. Here we go. “With what?” I asked, keeping my voice as even as possible. Any hint of sarcasm would send her over the edge, and I really, really wanted to go out tonight.

“You know what. My good scissors. The ones with the black handles.”

“I haven’t seen your scissors, Mom,” I said, allowing just a hint of a sigh to creep into my voice as I tried to duck back into my room.

“Lucy Tompkins! You never put anything back where you found it. I need those scissors and I can’t find them anywhere.” She leaned forward and tried to peer over my shoulder and into my room. I quickly stepped into the hallway and tried to block her view, although I knew she’d be in there looking through my stuff within seconds of my leaving.

Her eyes began to fill with tears. “I need them right now. There’s an article on dog training I wanted to clip for your sister, and I always keep my good scissors on the table right next to the chair. Now they’re missing and I know you took them.”

In a voice you’d usually use on a three-year-old I said, “Honestly, I didn’t do anything with them.” For once, this was the truth. I hadn’t touched her stupid scissors. “Kaylie’s coming to pick me up in a couple of minutes, so I have to finish here.”

The tears were starting to spill over her eyelids and run unchecked down her cheeks. “After sixteen years, this is what I get? No help at all? You’re just going to run off with your friends and leave me here alone? Can’t you spare two minutes to help me look?”

I backed into my room and left her standing in the hallway looking old and defeated. God, I couldn’t wait to get out of here and get my own place. I’d live all by myself and not answer to anybody. Less than two years—I just had to keep telling myself, less than two years and I could leave this all behind like Phil and Sara had.

I finished packing, but a lump of guilt settled into my chest. I listened to her shuffling around in the living room until I couldn’t stand it anymore. In a few minutes, I’d be out of here, hanging out with Kaylie at the movies, but I knew she’d spend the next twelve hours sitting on the recliner watching TV by herself, which despite everything made me feel kind of bad.

Lifting my backpack onto my shoulders, I checked the time. Kaylie wouldn’t be here for a few more minutes, and it would make Mom happy if I at least made an effort. It’s not like I had a prayer of finding her stupid scissors in the avalanche of garbage, but I could fake it. At some point, I’d just started to go along with her and pretended everything was normal and this was the way everyone lived. It was easier that way.

I squeezed through the hallway and spotted Mom sorting through a stack of pictures in the living room. “Did you find them?” I asked hopefully.

She looked up from the pictures like she’d forgotten I was in the house. A frown settled on her face as she refocused her anger on me. “How could I find them when I have no idea what you did with them?”

I looked around the room, trying to concentrate on all the horizontal surfaces where a pair of scissors could be set down and never seen again, like some crazy picture from one of those I Spy books. I inched my way over to the recliner. “I think I might have put them back over here,” I said, as cheerfully as I could manage. I picked up a plastic bag from the drugstore and looked inside.

Mom leaned over and snatched the bag from my hands. “Don’t touch that,” she said. “I need those things for work.”

It always came down to trying to find the right answer in a game where I didn’t know any of the rules. If I didn’t help look for the thing I supposedly lost, she’d be mad. If I touched any of her stuff, she’d be mad. It was just a question of what was going to make her less mad at any given moment. The exhaustion I always felt in these situations began creeping into my bones. “Okay,” I said in my most patient voice. “I’m going to retrace my steps back to the dining room.”

As I tried to turn in the narrow pathway, my backpack clipped the corner of a box that was stacked on top of some newspapers. It wobbled and started to fall, but I caught it in time and eased it back.

“Watch out!” Mom yelled. “I swear, you are such a klutz! Can’t you even walk through a room without sending half the contents to the floor?”

No matter how many times she said stuff like that, it still settled heavily onto my chest. I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands, hoping the pain would distract me from crying. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

Mom shook her head and sighed, as if the world’s problems had been placed on her shoulders. “That’s the best you can do? Always knocking everything over, losing my things. You never lift a finger—”

She was just warming up when Kaylie’s signature two short beeps followed by one long beep sounded out front. It was like the cavalry had come to rescue me from hell.

“I have to go,” I said. I pulled my backpack tight against my shoulders and inched carefully along the path toward the front door. The relief I always felt when I stepped out of the house was like plunging into a cold pool on a hundred-degree day.

“I hope you have a lovely time,” Mom said, turning back to the pile of photos, the saga of the lost scissors temporarily forgotten. I said nothing, but shut the door just a little more forcefully than was necessary as I left, hopefully dislodging a pile or two to give her something to do for the night.

Now, as I stood in front of my bedroom door the next morning, I wondered if she’d ever found those stupid scissors. I pushed it open and stepped inside, leaving the rest of the house behind me. Compared to everywhere else in this place, my room was like paradise, with surfaces that weren’t covered with bags of useless garbage, and with a bed you could actually sleep in.

The first time I’d really cleaned my room a couple of years ago, she’d totally freaked. I’d been babysitting at the Callans’ when I got the idea to clean my room. I wanted my bedroom to look the same as the ones their kids had—carpet on the floor you could see and a desk you could reach without having to wade through drifts of crap. A room that could be dusted on occasion because there wasn’t so much clutter, with a bed that didn’t have to be cleared to be slept in. It’s not like anyone else would see it, but still it would be nice. I’d started one morning when Mom was at work, and by the time she got home you could really see the difference. Despite my better judgment, I thought she might be happy about it, might be glad that for once I’d done some work around here. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The whole neighborhood could hear her ranting out by the garbage cans as she dug through them for the dirty stuffed animals, clothes that were too small, games with missing pieces, and everything else I had thrown out. I got the usual lecture about starving people in Africa who didn’t have anything nice at all as she marched the garbage bags back into my room. Not that I could ever figure out what a starving African child would do with a one-eyed Care Bear. After she’d fallen asleep in the recliner, I’d taken the bags back out of my room and shoved them deep into the dining room where they quickly got absorbed into the mess and disappeared. From then on, I cleaned my room by relocating the junk to other parts of the house.

Soon after that first time, she made Phil take my door off the hinges and put it in the garage so she could keep an eye on me. At least that’s what she said. Phil never said anything, but I could tell he felt bad about it. He was a senior in high school by then and did whatever it took to get by—just marking time until he could move out and be on his own like Sara had done years before.