15
BLYTHE
Morning. I look around the kitchen. My mom in her robe. Shuffling around in slippers. Dinner from last night still on the table. Cartons of takeout Mexican food.
“Where is Dad?”
“He left super early this morning.”
“Is Rosita coming?”
“No, Rosita is not coming— Do you understand what a spoiled brat you sound like?”
“I’m not asking if Rosita is coming because I want her to clean up.”
I want to know if Rosita is coming because I want to leave the house, and I can’t leave my mother unless someone else is here. I promised my father. She got kicked out of group therapy the other day. She doesn’t like her meds. They’re making her paranoid. She accused someone of stealing her phone, when really, she just left it at home. She got in the woman’s face. Threatened her. I prefer her when she’s drugged on Klonopin.
Her eyes travel off, looking at the mess around the kitchen, maybe, or just looking at the mess of her life.
“Rosita will be here soon. In twenty minutes. She’s running late.”
I can leave her for twenty minutes. What damage can she do in twenty minutes? I know. I’ll clean until Donnie gets here. I toss the plates into the sink. There’s an empty popcorn bag. There are tissues near the garbage that haven’t been thrown out. I’ll just get things started, that’s all. All my nervous energy around my mother, festering inside me. My therapist would say, Give yourself healthy advice. Channel that discomfort. So I’ll channel it into the dishes. Here I am, a good daughter, washing the dishes.
“Blythe, don’t start throwing dishes around.”
“I’m just clearing the countertops—”
“I’ll do all this. Stop—” she says, and reaches for the dish in my hand. Neither of us holds on to it. The plate breaks in pieces. White porcelain shards scatter across the wood floor.
It all gets so harried and crazy with her so fast. I only want it to slow down. So I stop. I breathe like my therapist told me to. I step over the shards.
“Mom, I have to go to school.”
“It’s fine. Go. I’ll clean this up.”
I grab my backpack and don’t look at her, even though I’m on the verge of punching something or throwing a chair.
“I know you want to blame everything on me, Blythe. But I want someone to blame too. You don’t understand that though, do you?”
I want to say things to her about her taking away my childhood and how since I was six I realized there was “something wrong with Mommy” and sometimes “Mommy isn’t rational,” and how it’s “not my fault that Mommy is sick.”
But I say nothing. My mother scares me in a way. I don’t want to be too vulnerable in front of her because I don’t think she can handle it. And if I break down and cry, tell her how I really feel, let it all pour out, she’ll fall apart. She’ll beg me to understand her side. To talk to me endlessly about her mother and her father. About her sister who died ten years ago. I don’t always want to understand her side. I just want to be a person who doesn’t have to take care of, or worry about, her mother—but I don’t get that option.
I want to call Ali. Isn’t that strange? That pull I have toward her? Suddenly, there’s some connection between us. Because this is something Ali would understand—especially about mothers—that no one else would. Even Donnie, who I turn to for everything. Her mother and father, they’re still together. Her mother is a scientist! Dr. Alperstein, the famous scientist.
And just like that, Donnie, Cate, and Suki are at my house. I lock the door behind me and text Rosita: Let me know when you get to the house.
I’m outside so fast. There’s Donnie with a cigarette, her hand hanging out the car window, her silver cuff around her wrist sparkling in the sun. I cram in the back seat next to Suki. Cate’s got shotgun, and usually I’d fight her for it, make her get in the back. Today I don’t care. Can’t get out of here, away from my mother, fast enough.
Donnie hands me the cigarette. Deep inhale. Smoke in my lungs. Exhale smoke rings. “Where’s your little friend?” Donnie says. “I thought you’d be walking to school with her. Maybe holding her backpack.”
“You sound jealous.”
“I, for one, don’t care who you’re friends with, but I also am kind of curious,” Suki says. “Is this an actual friendship? I thought this had something to do with Sean.”
“It does have to do with Sean. At least it started that way. But I like Ali.”
Cate turns around from the front seat, shoots a look at Suki, and they laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
They laugh more. There’s nothing funny. It’s a game they want to play. They’re scared that they’re going to slip from my fingers and they’ll have nothing for me to hold on to. Maybe that I’ll trade them in for Ali.
“Playing with fire, gonna get burned,” Suki sings, making up her own song.
“Ali? She’s innocent. What could she do to me?”
“Not her,” Suki says. “Sean.”
“He’s a baby,” I say. “You didn’t see him crying that night. You guys don’t understand how I pick up the pieces for him. How that’s part of our friendship now. He doesn’t come to you like he comes to me.”
Especially lately. That was a job Dev and I both handled. But now, it seems to be just me. The other day in the hallway. I need someone to set me straight. And then, Sometimes when I’m with you. I haven’t told anyone about that. Kept it hidden, all the way down.
“Crying about what, B? That he broke some other girl’s heart? That’s his MO,” Cate says.
“Oh, and what guy’s not a player?” I say.
“Dev’s
