Dirty Little Secrets

by C. J. Omololu

  I was heating up some water in my microwave to wash my face when the doorbell rang. I froze like we always did, hoping whoever was out there wouldn’t hear anyone moving around inside. The doorbell rang again a few seconds later, and I could hear distant knocking. Unless she knew who it was, Mom wouldn’t get it, either, so we’d both just wait until they got tired and went away. Except whoever it was wasn’t going away. After it rang insistently a third time, I quietly opened my door and tiptoed down the hall.

  There was a spot in the dining room where you could look out the window without anyone seeing. Just as I reached it, I heard a car pull away from the front of the house and exhaled the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Having someone at the front door always tied my stomach up in knots.

  As I walked back to my room, I wondered why Mom didn’t open her door even a crack. Usually she at least listened to see if she could figure out who it was. She must be sick or something if she didn’t bother to come out at all. Her room was so full of stuff that she hardly ever slept in there anymore, but she occasionally shoved everything off the bed if she really needed to use it.

  Feeling like I should at least make sure she was okay, I headed toward her room. The National Geographics blocked a good six feet of the hallway, and I’d slowly started to pick my way over the mountain of fallen magazines when I saw it. One of Mom’s slippers sticking out from under the pile.

  “Mom?” I bent down and threw some of the magazines off until I had uncovered her leg. I shook it. “Mom?” It didn’t jiggle like it normally would; it just felt solid and heavy. “Mom!”

  Because the paths we’d carved through all the garbage over the years were only wide enough to accommodate one relatively skinny person, I had to kneel down by her foot and stretch out on my hands so I could reach her face. I frantically tossed magazines to the side until her head was completely uncovered. Her eyes were closed and her mouth had a purplish tinge around the edges. I followed her outstretched arm and saw her inhaler just out of reach on the ground. She must have been having an asthma attack when she fell, pulling a decade’s worth of magazines with her as she went.

  “Mom!” I reached up to shake her shoulder, but only felt the heaviness of her body as it refused to move. “Mom!” I yelled a little louder. “Come on!” This was not happening. This was not happening right now. My heart was pounding so loud it sounded like the ocean in my ears.

  I reached up and with a quick motion put my index finger out to feel her face. Her cheek was mottled and cold. Even though she was pale, my finger made a faint mark on her skin where I’d touched her. I scrambled backward, slipping on the magazines, and slammed into a pile of newspapers, sending them cascading down on us both. My breath was quick and short as I tossed them off me, throwing them as far as I could down the hallway until I could struggle to my feet.

  Standing alone in the cold, dark hallway, I felt my teeth start to chatter, and I couldn’t keep my hands from shaking. “This can’t be real. This can’t be real,” I repeated over and over as I crouched down, pulling the newspapers off her, revealing her face one more time.

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she was just out cold. I grabbed her shoulders and shook them so hard her head flopped from side to side. “Get up! Come on, Mom, please, this is not funny. Get up!” If wishing really worked, she would have jumped up and scared the crap out of me right then—that would teach me to leave her and try to get on with my own life. It would have been the best trick ever, except practical jokes weren’t her style.

  I dropped her shoulders back to the floor and crumpled down beside her as I realized nothing I could do was going to make any difference. This was not the way things were supposed to go. I sat, leaning carefully on the stack of newspapers behind me, trying to pull rational ideas through the swarm of thoughts running through my head.

  What if the stack of magazines had fallen when I’d slammed the door last night? She was in the living room when I left, but what if they’d moved just enough to send them crashing down as she walked by? All she had to do was clip the corner of one, and the whole thing could have come down right on top of her. I wondered how long she had been lying there, her inhaler just out of reach, her breathing getting shallow and more ragged. Did she know what was happening? A chill went through me as I pictured her trapped and weak, calling my name as her voice got quieter and quieter. I could almost hear the echo of her cries in the hallway.

  I stood up to try to shake off the heavy feelings that were settling inside. As I looked at her unmoving body, I knew deep down Mom wasn’t sick and she wasn’t messing around. She was really and truly dead.

  chapter 3

  10:00 a.m.

  I pulled the phone from my pocket, my throat feeling so thick I wasn’t sure I’d be able to speak. This was not happening. I should have stayed home last night. Mom’s asthma was getting bad, and she always needed her inhaler when she got upset. Those stupid scissors. If I’d only taken two minutes to help her find them, everything would be okay right now.

  The phone’s display shone brightly as I opened it to dial 911, the numbers blurring through the tears that had started to form in my eyes. I blinked hard. My fingers hovered over the first number as I looked down the hall at the piles of magazines, newspapers, clothes, plastic bags, and boxes of her stuff that choked all but a few narrow, winding paths through the house. I knew it smelled like rotting garbage in here, remembered it in one of the recesses of my brain. It was the same smell of decay I always worried would follow me out of the house, clinging to my clothes like a sock to Velcro. I’d lived with it for so long, I didn’t even notice the smell anymore.

  But the paramedics would.

  They’d definitely notice the stink, the decay, and the sea of garbage that cascaded from the center of every room and built up along the walls like rolling waves. I looked back along the path that snaked through the hall and then took a sharp turn into the dining room. The only way through the house was along these ant tracks, and they were much too narrow for any type of stretcher to get through. It would probably take the paramedics hours just to clear out a path wide enough to get her out of here. And what if it wasn’t just them?

  My mind started racing and my heart beat faster as I realized what could happen. As soon as the paramedics showed up, the news cameras would probably follow—big cameras with bright lights on top so they could illuminate the dark pathways. Newspeople had radios and sat listening to the paramedic and police reports just waiting for a story like this. I could see the teasers now—“Local Woman Dies Surrounded by Filth and Squalor—tune in at eleven.” Our house would be the spotlight report on all the networks, maybe even on some of those morning shows. I’d seen a story on the news one time about this lady who died in a trailer full of garbage. They videotaped the mess, and the perfectly overhairsprayed news anchors shook their heads at how anyone could live like that. They didn’t come out and say it, but I knew what they were all thinking: she was a freak. Who else would possibly live their entire lives surrounded by garbage? Freaks.

  They’d probably want to interview me, and find out how we lived like this for so long—and because the evidence was right there in front of their faces, I’d have to tell them. About all of it. Kaylie would see it, and that would be the last time I’d stay over at her house. She’d be so disgusted by how we lived for all these years, she’d wonder how we could have ever been friends. That’s what had happened the last time a friend had come over, and the house hadn’t been nearly this bad then. I thought of the look in Josh’s eyes when he asked me to the party, and knew I’d never see that look again. I wouldn’t be able to stay here after that. I’d have to move away and change schools one more time, starting all over when I just had a lousy year and a half until graduation. Where would I even go?

  I braced myself against a pile of newspapers and slid to the floor. My chest was hollow, and I’d never felt so lonely in my life. None of this was normal. If Kaylie had found her mom lying dead on the floor, she�
��d be bawling her eyes out. Somewhere deep down, I was pretty sure I loved Mom—the mom who used to push all the kids on the swings at school when it was her turn to do yard duty. The mom who actually hugged me as I left in the morning and stopped by my room to say good night. I could cry for that mom. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this mom.

  At that moment the kitchen phone rang, the sound ricocheting around the still house, and I jumped, my heart beating almost visibly in my chest. Before I could think about what to say, I ran to get it just to make the noise stop.

  “Hello?” It came out as more of a croak, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hello?”

  “Joanna?” I wasn’t sure if I was relieved it was only Nadine, Mom’s supervisor at work.

  “Oh, hi. No, it’s Lucy.”

  “Are you okay, dear? You sound like you’re breathing hard.”

  As much as I knew that I should, I couldn’t tell her what had happened. For now, that fact had to be another part of our secret. Once I told someone, I wouldn’t be able to take it back. “I, um . . . yeah, I’m fine. I was just racing for the phone. From the backyard.”

  “Sorry about that, darlin’,” she said. “I’m looking for your mama. Her shift started at seven, but she hasn’t been in or called or anything, and that is just not like her. I came by the house a little bit ago on my break, but nobody answered the door.”

  I glanced down the hallway toward the fallen pile of cheerful yellow magazines.

  “Right,” I said. “I’ve been outside doing some stuff in the backyard, and I must have missed you. Mom asked me to call you, but I forgot. She’s, uh, got some sort of flu and probably won’t be in for a few days.” Mom was an oncology nurse, and the last thing they wanted was sick people down at the hospital.

  “Oh dear,” she said. “Is there anything I can do?”

  I thought about Mom where I’d left her lying all alone. “No,” I said. “Not really.”

  “Chicken soup? Advil? I can stop by on my way home,” she said.

  “Really,” I said, “we’re fine. I’ve got it under control.”

  “Your mom is blessed to have you,” she said. “I don’t know what she’s going to do without you when you go off to college, especially now that everyone else is gone. It’s always hardest when the baby leaves.”

  “I’m sure she’ll manage,” I said, wondering how blessed she’d think Mom was if she could see us now. I tried to tune into the conversation, but my eyes were scanning the tops of the debris piles that clogged the kitchen and the dining room. The smell was so bad in the kitchen I stretched the cord as far as I could into the dining room so I wouldn’t have to breathe it in. Even in here, the visual noise from the garbage made it difficult to see the individual pieces that made up the mountain. A plastic bag from the grocery store full of God knows what. A stack of old margarine tubs. A box full of empty egg cartons and toilet-paper tubes. A pile of clothes still on their wire hangers from some adventure to the dry cleaners years ago. And green plastic storage bins stacked so high they brushed the ceiling in every room. Green plastic bins were like crack for Mom—she couldn’t get enough of them.

  “Lucy, honey?”

  “I’m sorry.” I shook my head trying to pick up the last threads of the conversation. “You cut out on me there for a second.”

  “I was asking you if you’d picked a college yet. Don’t you have to start applying soon?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Well, really, we have a whole year before things are due. They don’t make you decide until senior year.”

  “Well, you be sure to come down here soon for a visit. You haven’t been in here to see us for such a long time.”

  “I will,” I said. “Soon. Oh, listen, I hear her calling me. I really have to go.”

  “Okay, doll,” Nadine said. “You tell your mama just to take it easy and not worry about us. She works so hard, I’m sure she needs the rest. You holler if you need anything.”

  “Thanks. I will.”

  I leaned into the kitchen to put the handset back and wiped it with the sleeve of my jacket. We still had one of those big, square, wall-mounted phones everyone else got rid of years ago. A while back, Mom had bought one of those fancy digital systems with four portable handsets and an answering machine. It was good in theory, but it took less than a week for every last handset to be lost in the piles, and eventually I dug out this old mustard yellow phone and put it back on the wall. Ugly, but at least we always knew where it was.

  Just talking to someone on the outside had calmed me down a little. My breathing got back to normal, and I felt like I could think straight again. Nadine thought we were fine. People all over town were doing regular things at work, spending winter break at the mall, going to the grocery store. Nobody knew. I had time.

  Everybody still thought we were exactly like them—I just had to keep it that way.

  I took a couple of deep breaths and looked down at the cell phone that was still in my left hand. Once I dialed those three numbers, there would be no turning back. Slowly, I closed it. There really wasn’t much reason to hurry, if you thought about it. Why call 911 when someone was so obviously dead? The paramedics couldn’t help someone who’d had their head cut off or had been shot straight through the heart—or had died under a six-foot-tall stack of National Geographics.

  I walked back toward Mom’s room, forcing my eyes to travel past the magazines and focus on Mom’s face. She looked peaceful—relaxed, even. If you didn’t know she was dead, she actually looked pretty good. Most of the time lately her face had rippled with frown lines. At least when I was around.

  I couldn’t even remember the last thing I said to her. Last words were supposed to be meaningful, about how much you loved the person and how much you were going to miss them, and the last thing she’d said to me was something about scissors. Or was it about going to Kaylie’s? Of course, she probably had other last words that nobody was around to hear. Did those count? My mind started reeling again, and I shook my arms to try to release some of the energy.

  I took a couple of steps backward toward my room so I could think a little better. Here, the path was wider and you could see patches of the dirty brown carpet that covered all the floors, but only appeared here and there through the drifts of garbage, like jagged cracks in the earth. My chest felt heavy, and my breathing was fast and shallow as the panic started to wash over me again. I couldn’t possibly deal with all of this by myself.

  I clicked my phone open again. This was crazy. I hit the numbers and held it to my ear, my left hand shaking so violently I had to reach over with my right hand to try to steady it. It rang twice. Three times. Come on, answer, I thought, all of a sudden feeling like I had to hurry. I switched the phone to my other ear just in time to hear the voice mail click on.

  Hey, this is Phil. I’m probably on the phone, so leave a message and I’ll call you back. I waited for the beep, and then snapped the phone shut. What kind of message could I possibly leave him?

  Hey, Phil, it’s Lucy. Mom’s dead, and if you don’t get over here and help me quick, everyone’s gonna know our secret, and life as you know it will be over. Phil had just as much to lose as any of us—a serious girlfriend, fraternity brothers, a fancy job as soon as he graduated. I tapped the phone against my forehead, trying to think. What did I want him to do, anyway? He couldn’t make her less dead. At least he could be here to help me decide. I only knew calling 911 was as good as ruining all of our lives.

  From where I was standing in the hallway, I couldn’t see Mom’s head anymore, only her legs and feet. It looked like she was still wearing her robe, and she had on those nasty slippers like she always did when she was home. Mom had worn the same brown suede slippers as long as I could remember—repairing rips with silver duct tape until that wore through as well and left dirty, sticky marks from the adhesive.

  I closed my eyes and tried to think of nothing. Just for a few minutes, if I could get my mind clear, my thoughts could sort themselves ou
t, and I would know what to do and how to feel. It was just the shock of it all that had me confused.

  Past the kitchen, I squeezed myself into the living room and turned off the TV so I could think without it squawking around inside my head. We only had one trash can in the whole house so Mom could monitor what went in it. If something couldn’t be recycled, it could be reused. If it couldn’t be reused, it could be composted. If it couldn’t be recycled, reused, or composted, it could be put in a pile somewhere in this house where it would never again see the light of day.

  I could put a few bags out in the trash bin, but then what? A few bags in the garbage wouldn’t begin to make a dent in the accumulation of almost an entire lifetime of “treasures.” Which was mostly what other people called trash.

  I walked back into the kitchen and took a look around. I hadn’t looked in here for a long time—with good reason. The microwave and minifridge in my room were all I ever needed, so I avoided this part of the house at all costs. The counters were stacked with dirty dishes, petrified pizza boxes, and takeout containers full of food that had sat long enough to congeal into one black, furry mass. I knew the stove was to the left of the sink, but I couldn’t see it beyond the one clear spot right in the middle of the room. The cupboard under the sink was open, and the big pipe underneath drained into an old green bucket that sat on the floor half full of moldy water. Back when we still used the sink, I had rigged this so the waste emptied into the bucket, and we could take the bucket and dump it outside. The system was so primitive it almost made me smile—I could do a lot better now.

  The sink itself was full of a uniform dark brown mass that could have been anything once. It looked like chocolate pudding, but I could guarantee it wasn’t.