Standing in the hallway, I stopped to listen. I wasn’t sure what I was listening for, but the whole house was silent. Dead silent. I knew Mom was lying in the back hallway, but just for one moment, I wanted to pretend I was coming through the door for the first time today. Mom was at work, I was coming home from Kaylie’s with the warmth of Josh’s arm still on my shoulders, and none of this was my problem. Yet.
Our entry hall was wide, with the living room on the right and the dining room on the left. Piles of belongings, newspapers, and green plastic bins draped with clothing started at the edges of each room and marched toward the center until the only way to maneuver through the stuff was to turn sideways and pray you would reach your destination unscathed.
On the other side of the living room was the fireplace mantle, which held a brown, spindly potted plant that had been dead for years and a couple of framed pictures. I stood on my tiptoes so I could see them better. The picture on the right was my school picture from fourth grade. I was wearing my sweatshirt jacket, and Mom had gotten mad at me because I forgot to take it off for picture day so my new shirt would show. I remember when Aunt Jean put the picture in the big gold frame and set it on the mantle. It was the last time she was in our house, before Mom banished her forever.
The house wasn’t nearly as crowded back then—the kitchen still worked, mostly, and both bathrooms were usable. The piles were just starting to accumulate, and most weren’t any taller than my head.
Even though I was only nine when it happened, I’d been able to figure out that the car accident was bad. Mom didn’t come home after work that first night, so Sara had come back to stay with us for a few days, not letting us forget she was doing us a favor. Phil was five years older than me, but Sara was almost ten years older— somewhere between a sister and something else, and she was always looking for an excuse to boss us around. She had already graduated from high school and had moved to San Francisco, so she couldn’t stay with Phil and me for very long without missing work. She left after a few days, and Aunt Jean came to stay with us until Mom got better.
I was helping Aunt Jean with her suitcase when she got her first look at the inside of our house.
“Oh my God,” she said. Her hand flew to her mouth as she surveyed the clutter that covered most horizontal surfaces and lined the edges of every room.
I put her suitcase down on the tile floor, thinking she’d seen a mouse or something. “What?” I looked around frantically.
Aunt Jean turned to look into the dining room. “This… this place,” she said. “Look at all this junk. My God, there’s crap everywhere.” She turned to me. “How long has it been like this?”
I looked around the living room and shrugged. There were some piles of clothes that had never been folded and put away, and Mom did like to save newspapers in case she missed an important article. The sink was clogged, so the dishes hadn’t been done for a while, but I really didn’t see the problem.
Aunt Jean ran her fingers through her hair as she rushed from room to room, looking at the piles of clothes on every bed, and the mildew that was starting to become a permanent fixture in the bathrooms. I finally caught up with her in Mom’s room as she sat in the one tiny clear spot on the bed with her head in her hands.
“Auntie Jean?” I said quietly.
She looked up at me, tears running down her face, and shook her head. “I had no idea… I should have known because of Mama that Joanna could get this bad. But I really had no idea.”
I stood there quietly waiting for her to say something else. Mom cried a lot like this after Dad left us, but other than that, I hadn’t seen many grown-ups freaking out before. Aunt Jean reached out and pulled me to her, grabbing me around the waist and holding me tight.
“I’m so sorry,” she said over and over. “I had no idea.”
As I stood there, wrapped in her arms, I decided maybe I’d gotten it wrong. Maybe Mom was hurt worse than I’d thought, or maybe she was already dead. We were supposed to go and see her that afternoon, but now it was too late. I turned this thought over and over in my head until I believed it was true with all the conviction a nine-year-old can gather, and tears started spilling out of my eyes and down my face. Mom was gone. Mom was gone, and I was going to have to go live with someone else, away from my school and everything I knew. I didn’t want to go and live with Dad—Mom said that Daddy was the devil and that he never really loved any of us. If he did, he’d never have abandoned us like he did. Even worse, maybe he’d only let one of us live there, and I wouldn’t have anybody at all who cared about me. My tears turned from silent tracks into loud sobs that made my whole body shake.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Aunt Jean said. She held me away from her so she could see my face. She rubbed my tears away with the palm of her hand and smoothed my hair back from my forehead. “It’s going to be okay.”
I tried to swallow the hiccups that had started in my chest so I could speak. “Are we going to have to live somewhere else?” I finally squeaked out between sobs.
Aunt Jean looked around the room. “No. No, honey. We’ll get this straightened out in no time. Your mom is going to have to stay in the hospital for a couple of weeks—that should give us just enough time to have this place spic and span.”
I blinked back a fresh set of tears in disbelief. “She’s coming home?” I said. “I thought she was dead.”
Aunt Jean laughed and gave me another hug. “No, honey, she’s not dead.” She took another look around the room. “Your mom is one hell of a slob, but she’s definitely not dead.”
As we drove to pick up mom from the hospital on the last day, Aunt Jean turned to us. “Now remember, we want this to be a surprise, so don’t say anything until we get home.” She sounded cheerful and confident, but she looked nervous as she said it, her hands gripping the steering wheel so tight her knuckles were white.
I looked down at my own hands. Aunt Jean had told us to wear gloves as we cleaned and scoured every surface in the house, but I could never get any gloves that fit right, so I’d just gone without. Now my hands were an angry red, and all of my nails were broken down to the bare edges.
But it had been worth it. For two weeks, Aunt Jean and Phil and I had dragged bags of trash out to the Dumpster she had rented that stood sentry in front of the house. The plumber had been called, and every dish shone from its place in the cupboard. Once the floors and tables were clear, we had sorted through the closets and drawers. Finally, every surface was scrubbed and bleached until there wasn’t a speck of mold left in the whole house. Aunt Jean had done most of the work; I could see the light from the hallway streaming under my door late into the night. It was like she couldn’t sleep until the house was spotless.
Phil was chewing on his fingernail and staring out the window as the streets rushed by. “Auntie Jean,” he said quietly.
I could see her glance at him in the rearview mirror. “What’s on your mind, babe?”
“Do you… do you think she’s going to like it?” he asked.
Aunt Jean glanced at the road, and then back to him. “We did it out of love,” she said. “How can your mom not like something we did out of love?”
“Then why couldn’t we tell her?” I said. “Or Sara?” Sara hadn’t bothered to come back once Aunt Jean showed up, spending all her time either at the hospital or at her apartment.
“Well,” she said. “Your sister is busy with her own life, and your mom might have felt bad because she couldn’t help. You know that even though she’s getting out of the hospital today, she’s going to need lots and lots of rest. Isn’t it better that she recuperates in a nice, clean house with all of us there to take care of her?”
“I guess,” Phil said, not looking convinced. I didn’t know what he was so worried about—it’s not like we did anything bad. He shot a glance at me and I shrugged.
“Watch your step, Joanna,” Aunt Jean said as she guided Mom’s walker up to the house. “Put your wheels on the stoop and then take the step up slowly.”
“I’ve got it,” Mom said, clearly frustrated at having to rely on someone else for help.
“I just don’t want you to fall,” Aunt Jean said.
Mom stopped her slow progress up the walk and leaned on the handles, her breathing coming hard, like she’d just run a marathon. “I know. I’m sorry. I really appreciate everything you’ve done for the kids the past few weeks. You must be anxious to get home.”
Aunt Jean leaned over and kissed her sister on the cheek. “It was nothing. I know you’d do the same for me. The only thing that matters now is that you get better.”
Phil and I walked behind the two of them, me carrying several bunches of flowers from her hospital room and Phil carrying Mom’s small suitcase.
I was so excited I felt like I was going to explode. We’d worked so hard to get everything finished—even the
