Cistaro - Pieces of my mother: a memoir

Bun-Bun notices my mom outside before I do. He tells me about it. We watch her walk toward her car. Shes wearing her summer dress that is the color of ripe avocados. Her brown purse, slung over her shoulder, is as fat as the raccoon that crawls into our garbage cans late at night, and she has an armful of clothes hooked into her elbow. Her favorite coat drops onto the pavement. It doesnt look like a coat the way it crumples up on the ground.

I know that coat so well, every bit of tan, brown, yellow, and redevery small wooden button. So many times I have traced the curling patterns and small rows of dots with my fingertip, and my mom always reminds me that the pattern is called paisley. She turns around, picks up her favorite paisley coat, and tosses it on top of the pile of clothes shes already put in the backseat of her blue car, then slams the car door shut.

As she turns around to look back at the house, I have Bun-Bun do a little wave and a dance as I duck below the window in my room. Shell think Bun-Bun has really come to life. His tan head and floppy ears are made of real rabbit fur that only recently began to shed around his green eyes and on the tips of his ears. I know how to make him look like hes hopping through a field. I lift my eyes just above the ledge. My mom is standing next to the car looking down at her feet.

I am supposed to be taking a nap, but its too hot and I dont like to sleep. During nap time my whole room comes to life and anything can happen. Stuffed animals talk to each other, fairies fly out of the wall sockets, and plastic horses gallop across the hardwood floor. My brother told me that when Im five like him, I wont have to stay in my room during nap time.

For days now the air has been like fire, so hot that it ripples above the concrete and makes things outside look like they are underwater. It is the kind of heat that has made our next-door neighbors dogs hide underneath our house where its cool and dusty. Mr. Bird, who owns the dogs, came over and told us this just yesterday.

Dogs know what to do with themselves when California heats up like this, but not people, he said. Its the kind of heat that could cause some folks to snap. And when he said that word, snap, he took the toothpick out of his teeth and broke it in two. Then he laughed like he thought he was clever. Later, I saw his broken toothpick on our porch and kicked it into the dead grass where it got lost in all the yellow.

I open my bedroom door and peer into the living room. My brother Eden is asleep on the couch with a box of Lucky Charms wedged underneath his arm. The TV is on and I watch for a moment as Underdog flies across the gray screen, and I remember that my brother Jamie isnt here. Hes almost six and the oldest. He left the house earlier to go swimming in his friend Bobby Winstons pool. My mom was mad when Mrs. Winston showed up early to grab Jamie for swimming. She told Mrs. Winston that she only had two cigarettes left and didnt want to go out to the store in the heat.

When Mom is out of cigarettes, she counts on Jamie to be here with Eden and me so she can run down to the corner market. If she has to wait too long to get them, the house begins to swell with noisethe clap of cupboards opening and closing, the crack of the ice-cube tray slamming against the counter, and her voice rising over ours like a mockingbird.

I wish that Mrs. Winston had offered to lend her some cigarettes or get her some, but she didnt. She just pointed to her hairdo, which she called a beehive, and said, This darn heat is just killing me and my hair too.

After Mrs. Winston left, my mom said she thought that hairstyle looked goddamn ridiculous. I picked up the box of cigarettes lying on the table and carried it to my mom. She tapped the last two out of the package. Then we sat side by side on the plaid couch as she smoked each of them. Out of her red shiny lips came rings of smoke like little white doughnuts floating through the air. I reached up and stuck my finger through the center of one. She pulled my arm away and whispered, No, just watch.

She said she liked it when the rings began to lose their shape and stretch out. She said they were beautiful the way they disappeared. I didnt like it when they went away. I preferred it when they first came out of her red lips and looked like powdered doughnuts.

Make more, I said. And she did, like magic, over and over.

With my brother Eden asleep and Underdog ducking back into a telephone booth, I sneak past them and into the kitchen where our old fan is clunking around in circles, but no cool air is coming out. On the counter there is a pitcher of sticky orange Kool-Aid with three black flies floating on the surface. The sight of the soggy flies makes me uneasy, and in an instant, the heat feels like it will swallow me. I want my dad to come home from work.

I race back to the window in my room to see if my mom is coming back in. She is standing in the same place. I want to tell her that it is too hot out there for her, that she could melt. But shes stuck out there, it seems, and Im stuck in here.

I need her to come back in the house. I need her to tell me that nap time is over and that tonight we will go to Fosters Freeze where the ice cream races out of a noisy machine and into perfect swirls of vanilla and chocolate.