Dirty Little Secrets

by C. J. Omololu

  chapter 14

  7:00 p.m.

  I twisted the dead bolt into place and leaned against the secure door. Between TJ, Mrs. Raj, and now Sara, this place hadn’t seen so much action in years.

  The smell of Chinese food still lingered in the hallway, and I realized how hungry I was. It was almost seven thirty, and all I’d had was a blueberry scone and a couple of eggrolls. Tomorrow for Sara probably meant somewhere around eleven at the earliest, which meant I had about sixteen hours to put things right in this house. My stomach would have to wait.

  The house was quiet even though I could hear the stereo still playing faintly in the kitchen. Mom’s TV sat almost buried in papers and clothes near her chair, but of course the remote was nowhere to be found. It could be buried just about anywhere, so I stood still and tried to think like Mom. If I needed the remote, where would I put it so it wouldn’t get lost?

  I couldn’t see it anywhere around the chair or on the boxes that were next to it. Maybe underneath? If I wanted to be sure that I’d know where something was, I’d probably shove it underneath the one thing I knew wouldn’t move.

  I sat in the green chair and pushed it into a reclining position with my hands on the armrests, and then reached between the footrest and the chair. Touching something hard, I took a deep breath and stuck my hand as far under the chair as it would go. By flicking whatever it was to the side, I worked a corner of it out until I could grab it with one hand and drag it into the open.

  Before I even pulled it out all the way, I realized it wasn’t the remote. It was just a thick spiral notebook with a black cover. I could see from the bulge in the front there was something in it, but there wasn’t anything written on the front. Her diary, maybe? I’d never seen Mom writing in anything, let alone a fairly large spiral notebook, but I had to admit that in the past few years we hadn’t really paid that much attention to each other.

  The book was pretty heavy, and it must be important if she kept it separate from all the other piles of junk in this place. If it was her diary, it would be wrong to open it. More wrong than leaving her dead in the hallway for the better part of a day? I shrugged my shoulders as I opened the black cardboard cover. It was all relative.

  It wasn’t a diary—not really. Carefully pasted onto the pages of notebook paper were magazine pictures of different houses. There was a picture of a wide, green lawn with a house perched way off in the distance and a family having a picnic on a postage-stamp-sized blanket. There were dining rooms with long tables where people could linger after a meal and talk about politics or sports. A bedroom with a white canopy bed big enough for a mom and kids to curl up on a Sunday morning and read the newspaper. Every now and then on the page would be something written very carefully in her sprawling handwriting. She’d written “cabinets” next to the page with the rustic kitchen and “knobs” next to a picture of some latches.

  I flipped quickly through the rest of the book. Every picture showed a house in pristine photographic condition, the people who lived there smiling at their good luck. There were no clogged sinks, no green bins, and no giant stacks of newspapers.

  The notebook wasn’t her diary—it was more intimate than that. They must have been pictures of the house she wanted to have someday. Except that someday never showed up. I ran my fingers over a picture of a wide porch with a swing that was perfect for sitting with an iced tea on a hot summer night. She must have been doing this for years—cutting out pictures of what might have been. This book of possibilities completely ignored the reality of what our lives had become. I knew how she felt because I felt the same way when I thought about my after. Hopeful—which was an emotion our house didn’t see a lot of.

  I closed the cover and stared at it. How dare she have dreams while making all of us live like this? She was the parent—she could have done something about it. She was the one with the power to make our lives like the people in the notebook, but instead she buried us all under tons of filth and shame.

  I crossed the room, the notebook heavy in my hands. It made me angry and sad at the same time to picture her sitting in her chair late at night carefully pasting other people’s rooms into her dream book. It was a small satisfaction when I tossed the notebook unceremoniously into the trash bin. That’s how much her dreams were worth in the face of my reality.

  As I walked back toward the living room, my phone rang. “I’ve been trying to call you,” I said as I flipped the phone open.

  “What in the world did you do to Sara?” Phil asked without even bothering to say hello.

  “Hey, Lucy,” I imitated, ignoring his question. I was so angry at Mom right now that I needed to take it out on someone. “How are you doing? Was the rest of Christmas okay? Sorry I couldn’t stay longer, but I have my own life now and can’t be bothered with you people anymore.”

  “Ha, ha,” he said flatly. “Point taken.” I could hear him draw in a heavy breath, and the sound of some music in the background. “Okay, so how are you? And what in the hell did you do to Sara? I’ve spent the last half hour with her on the phone screaming in my ear about how ungrateful you are, and how I must have put you up to it.”

  I should have known Sara would call him. There was a green bin over near the wall, so I went to sit down on it. “I didn’t do anything to her,” I said. “She just came busting in here and started freaking out. You know how she always acts like she owns the place.”

  “So you’re not doing what she said?” he asked. I could tell somebody was nearby because he was practically talking in code.

  I looked around at the half-full garbage bags. “No.” I hesitated for a second. “Maybe.”

  His voice cut out, and I could picture him switching the phone to his other ear. “What do you mean ‘maybe’? Have you been . . . messing with her stuff? You know better than that.”

  I could hear another voice in the background. “Where are you, anyway?” I asked. “It sounds like you’re at a party or something.”

  “I’m with Jen in the car,” he said. “We’re going up to Tahoe for a couple of days. And you didn’t answer my question.”

  “I was just straightening up a few things around Mom’s chair when Sara came in and did her usual favorite-daughter routine. It’s no big deal.”

  “From the way she was talking, it sounded like you were dragging Dumpsters up to the front door and loading everything into them,” he said. “Have you learned nothing? Leave it alone.”

  “I can’t leave it alone.” I said. “Not anymore.”

  “Less than two years, Lucy,” he said quietly. “All you have to do is sit tight and wait until you graduate. Then you can do anything you want.”

  “I’m tired of waiting,” I said, knowing everything had already been set in motion. As I looked around the room, I wished so badly that he would turn the car around and come help me. He was free to go to Tahoe for the weekend with his girlfriend, but I couldn’t even go meet Josh at a party. I was tired of having it be my turn all the time. My turn to take care of Mom, my turn to worry about the house. When was it going to be my turn to get a life?

  The resolve that I felt about being able to do this by myself was beginning to crack. I was sure that if I just told him the truth, he’d feel exactly like I did. If anyone in the world would understand how important this was, Phil would.

  “How far away are you, exactly?” I asked.

  “Placerville,” he answered. “Why? Is something wrong? Sara said Mom was sick.”

  “Why haven’t you ever brought Jen over to the house?” I’d met her a few times, and they’d come over to Bernie and Jack’s house on Christmas, but she’d never been closer to the inside of our house than the driveway.

  Phil’s voice got lower. “Why are you asking that now?”

  “It’s important,” I said. “I want to know why.”

  I could barely hear him over the car stereo as he answered. “You know why.”

  “Because of the mess? Because of the way we live?”


  “Look, I don’t want to get into this right now,” Phil said. “I’ll come over after I get back, and we can talk about it.”

  “I want to talk about it now,” I said quietly. Why was I doing this all alone? Phil had just as much to lose—he should be here helping. I needed to tell someone. The pressure of keeping everything in was building, and I wouldn’t be able to contain it much longer. Phil was the only solution. “Phil, there’s something I have to tell you.” I took a deep breath and just plunged in. “Mom . . .” I stopped, swallowed, and then tried again. “This morning I . . .”

  My voice cracked as I surveyed the expanse of wall space that was smothered by stacks of newspapers and magazines that were as tall as I was. “I don’t think I can handle this,” I whispered.

  Phil laughed a little. I think it was his attempt to sound soothing. “You can totally handle it,” he said. “You’re doing a great job. Just hold on a little longer, and you’ll be living in the dorms at some swanky college somewhere. Have you thought about any applications yet?” He sounded a lot more confident as he tried to move the conversation into less touchy territory.

  “Phil, I need your help. Right now. I need you to come home.”

  “Did . . . apply . . . summer . . .” His phone started to cut out.

  “Phil?” I said loudly into the phone, but he was gone. I felt my entire body deflate. For the first time since he moved out, I felt like he was really and truly gone. He had successfully navigated Mom’s house for his full sentence of eighteen years, and now that he was free, he didn’t want to get dragged back into it. Not that I really blamed him. I’d probably do the same thing. Probably.

  I sat staring at the phone until the light went out on the screen and the call ended. A year and a half. It wasn’t that long if you were just trying to get through high school like a normal person. It would be a hell of a long time for someone called Garbage Girl who had no friends at all. The thought of Josh laughing at me along with everyone else was worst of all. I’d gotten so close to actually having what I wanted, but now all the good stuff was fading away.

  I spent the next hour shoving trash into black plastic bags, but all of the optimism I’d felt earlier was gone. Who was I kidding? Sara was coming back in just a few short hours, and there was no way she was going to leave here without talking to Mom. The threat of puke had put her off this time, but it wasn’t going to work forever. Everyone in town would know our secret by this time tomorrow.

  My mind raced, picking up different scenarios for how my life was going to go. Maybe when Sara called the police, they wouldn’t think the place was any big deal. Maybe nobody at school would even find out about the way we live and stare at me in the halls like the smell of rotting garbage billowed out behind me when I walked. Maybe Josh and Kaylie wouldn’t care, and I’d get to have a best friend and a boyfriend at the same time. Maybe I was completely delusional.

  I opened the dining room window and added several more bags to the growing pile. Mrs. Raj had her antennae up about the trash and would definitely come over to investigate. I wasn’t sure if it was good or bad that she was the least of my problems at this point.

  As I piled stuff into the big trash bags, I started to think about right after. After everyone knew Mom was gone, there would probably be a funeral. All the old ladies at church loved her for holding the rummage sale every year and organizing their senior meals. They would want to come. And the people at work would be there, Nadine for sure. Maybe even some of the families of “her people.” But would they come once they’d found out the truth? Would the little old ladies and the friends from work be too horrified to show their faces at a memorial for Mom once she stopped being Joanna Tompkins and became that freaky garbage lady? I wondered if Dad would come, or if there were too many bad years between them for him to really care. I tried to picture the funeral with the casket and flowers, and me and Sara and Phil sitting in the front row all dressed up and looking sad.

  The thing was, I didn’t feel sad like I was supposed to. As I shoveled bags of clothes, work memos, and food wrappers into heavy-duty garbage bags, I felt a lot of things, but sad wasn’t one of them. Angry, irritated, annoyed, lonely, and maybe even a little guilty. But not sad. Maybe after, I could be sad. But not now.

  I might be able to survive senior year alone, but it would be so hard to watch Kaylie and Josh live their lives without me. I could just see myself in art class, sitting alone because nobody would want to come close enough to be my partner. Maybe I could graduate early, or do a home study until graduation. I could get a part-time job and live here with Phil until I could go away to college.

  My phone was in my pocket, so I reached in to check the time. Seven fifteen. Depending on how late Sara stayed out tonight and how annoyed she actually was, I might have only twelve hours left. Sort of like Cinderella at the ball, only with garbage.

  I made my way over to the front door and tried to imagine how the scenario would play out in the morning. I’d probably have to call 911 sometime before Sara actually showed up, and say that I found Mom lying in the hallway. Otherwise, it would look all wrong. Maybe the cops would put up that yellow tape, so Sara couldn’t go sniffing around in here until everyone was gone.

  As accomplished as I felt looking to the left of the front hallway, I felt completely deflated looking to the right. I must have spent at least three or four hours in there, and it was almost impossible to tell. Sure, I could see that there was more room around the old, soggy green chair, but nobody besides Sara was ever going to see the difference.

  Straight ahead, the hallway narrowed into a two-and-a-half-foot space you could just squeeze through if you turned sideways, put your arms stiffly to your sides, and sucked in your breath. If you’d had a super burrito at El Gordito anytime in the past twenty-four hours, you didn’t have a prayer of making it. I think that’s one reason why Mom stayed so skinny all these years—navigating the house required a BMI of less than twenty.

  The hallway took a sharp left at the end, and Mom was lying about four feet from the corner. Why couldn’t she have died on her way out to get the paper? Or better yet, why not on the chair where she spent most of her time when she was home? Then it would be so much easier to get her out. But no. She had to die in the very back part of the very narrowest hallway, where it would be almost impossible for the paramedics to get her out on a gurney without lights flashing and hordes of neighbors straining to see what was going on behind the police barricades. Maybe they would just abandon the gurney idea altogether and just carry her body through to the front? Was there some sort of paramedic code that said that once a body was dead it had to be put in a body bag and strapped to a gurney, or did they have a little more leeway than that? Every dead body I’d ever seen on television had been sealed into black plastic and wheeled out on a bright yellow stretcher, but that didn’t mean it was the rule.

  I’d begun pacing in the free space in the front hallway. The constant movement actually helped me feel better—calmed my stomach and gave the butterflies something to do besides slam at my insides. I didn’t know if it was all the coffee I’d had in the past twenty-four hours or just the fact that I could feel Sara getting closer by the minute, but I was starting to feel jumpy. If I could just figure out a way for the paramedics to get her out through the hallway, then maybe they’d be in and out fast enough for the house not to be such an issue. All they needed to do was check her over, make sure she was beyond CPR, get her out, and leave the condition of the house to me. If I could just make her more accessible, then her death would be normal. A woman dying under her own homemade avalanche made news. Somebody dying of lung problems or a heart attack happened every day.

  I just had to make her more accessible. Accessible. The word bounced around in my head like a Ping-Pong ball. Accessible didn’t have to mean they could get to her where she was—it just meant that they could get to her, period. Oh my God, what an idiot! I’d been working on this completely backward this whole time. Instead of bri
nging them through the front door to Mom, I needed to bring Mom to the front door!

  I scooted sideways through the maze of trash until I reached the part of the hallway that took a sharp left toward her room. I stood at her feet and took a deep breath, staring at the tiny pink roses on the sheet that covered her. Each one looked like a painting that someone had spent hours and days to get just right—the shades of light and dark pink giving each flower a greater depth and dimension. Someone had to have bought it new at some point—probably not Mom, but someone. I’d bet they never would have guessed where the sheet with the cheerful pink roses was going to end up.

  Reaching down to touch her, I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. The only way to get this done was to not think of this as Mom anymore. This wasn’t the person who’d given birth to me and packed my lunches (well, for a few years, at least)—it was just a collection of bones and cells and duct-taped slippers that had to be temporarily relocated for the greater good. Greater good. I liked that. Made it sound almost biblical or something. I wasn’t doing this for me so much as I was doing it for the greater good of Mom, Phil, and even Sara, although she didn’t deserve it.

  Blowing on my hands to warm them, I stood at Mom’s feet and tried to find the best way to maneuver her through the narrow hallway. I was a lot taller than she was, but it would probably be too hard to stand her up, even though that would be the simplest way.

  I squatted down and wrapped the end of the sheet a couple of times around her ankles so I’d have something to hold on to. Grabbing the sheet, I leaned back and pulled as hard as I could, grunting like a pro tennis player, until I lost my grip and tumbled backward on my butt, slamming into a stack of newspapers on the other wall and scrambling out of the way when they started to wobble.

  There was no way she was that immovable. I gathered myself up and pulled again, but as I looked up toward her head, I could see that her shoulders were caught by the corner of one of the still-standing magazine piles. The pile shifted dangerously as I pulled one more time. Dropping her ankles, I picked my way over to the spot where she was stuck, held the top of the pile with my hand, and kicked at the bottom until the stack turned just enough to allow her shoulder to get by.