by Eric Smith
Mama’s Eyes
by Libby Cudmore
I have intense but scattered memories of riding the bus with my birth mother.
In them, she has a high ponytail and crooked teeth. She’s laughing as she passes me around to cooing strangers. Clarice was my favorite; she had a glittering broach on her coat that sparkled like a beacon, and she would hold out her arms to me. I was usually barefoot on that bus floor, the aisle rocking as I stumbled toward that glass jewel. Clarice never let me fall, always caught me and set me in her lap, holding out her purse for me to dig through until my mother gathered me up, screamed at me to stop crying, and smacked me hard on the bottom before stuffing me into my stroller.
Clarice and Roger adopted me when I was two.
The story goes that my mother came up to Clarice at the bus stop, dropped a duffle bag at her feet, shoved me into her arms, and said, “You can have her.” She got into a waiting car and took off, never to be found. My mom didn’t even know her name. And although it was a long, slow process to adopt me, Clarice always said it was worth every second of it. “I like to think you picked me,” she used to say.
But I remember my mother’s eyes most of all—not really her eyes, but a tattoo at the base of her neck, a flaming monster face that watched me whenever her back was turned, which it usually was. Reading a tabloid, yelling at her boyfriend on the phone, watching TV. Clarice says I’m too young to remember any of this, that my images of her are pieces of stories stitched together to create something I didn’t live. But those eyes haunt my dreams, even thirteen years later.
Sometimes I still go into Clarice’s jewelry box and get out that broach. It probably saved my life. If my mother had been so willing to hand me off to a stranger, I just as easily could have ended up with a monster instead of a family who made me their own. I had warm clothes and food and birthday parties; Clarice and Roger never spanked me for spilling juice or leaving my toys out.
And I wore that broach for the first time on a cold November afternoon, on the lapel of Clarice’s black overcoat as I stood over her grave, tears leaving cold tracks down my cheeks as the minister read his sermon. Even Roger’s arm around my shoulders couldn’t warm me. His brother held the umbrella over both of us; Roger’s other arm was in a cast, the only visible injury he’d suffered in the crash that killed Clarice. They’d gone to dinner while I was sleeping over at my friend Starr’s house; around midnight the police knocked on her door and took me to the hospital in my pajamas. Roger was heavily sedated, but Clarice was already gone. Brake failure, the cop told me. Lucky they weren’t both killed, he said, as though that would somehow make everything better.
Almost every night since Clarice’s death, I dreamed of those monster eyes. Some nights it was enough to wake me screaming, Roger running into my room in his robe as he did when I was a child. He would hold and rock me while I sobbed; sometimes we’d cry together. “I miss her so goddamn much,” he would say, holding me so tight that sometimes I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t mind. I didn’t need to breathe as much as I needed to believe that I had one person in this world to cling to.
There was a nurse’s aide at the hospital where Roger and I went for our grief counseling sessions, a skinny woman with crooked teeth and black streaks underneath her blonde ponytail. Her name tag read Amanda, and she lit up whenever we came in, asked me how school was going, touched Roger’s arm. I wanted to hiss at her like a startled cat. No one was allowed that close to Roger except me. I was his protector, his knight, like in the color plates of the big storybooks he used to read me in bed. My grief was our shield; his was as though his skin had been turned inside out, leaving all of him exposed.
One afternoon, Amanda caught up with us in the parking lot. “The doctor forgot to give you this,” she said, handing Roger a bottle of pills. Turning to me, she reached into the pocket of her scrubs and pulled out a handful of mini Snickers. “I grabbed these from the nurse’s lounge,” she said. “Anything you want when you come in, you just ask and I’ll get it for you.”
“Dr. Hodgeson didn’t say anything about a prescription,” Roger said.
She shrugged. “He told me to get you before you left,” she said. “You can go back in and ask him, if you want.”
Roger put the pill bottle in his pocket. “That’s all right,” he said. “Lord knows I could use it.”
I was starving, but I didn’t open the candy she gave me. Usually after talking with Dr. Hodgeson, I felt all right, that we really could make it through this. I talked to him about my nightmares, about feeling abandoned by my birth mother; we even spent one session talking about a boy I liked but was too afraid to ask out. But today my stomach had a hard knot, like the day before a test I didn’t study for.
We had a tradition, Roger and I. After counseling, we went to Pizza Hut. He used to take my softball team there when we won a game; at the time, the domed red glass chandeliers and the leatherette booths seemed so fancy, not like pizza on a paper plate at a birthday party.
He got a beer and I got a Mountain Dew. These were the nights that he didn’t protest my caffeine consumption before bed. I still had homework to do; counseling took up my whole afternoon, and I would be up until midnight doing math problems at the kitchen table. I needed the artificial energy if I was going to solve quadratic equations.
Our pizza arrived and he ordered another beer. He ate a slice, took a pill, and washed it down with a sip of my soda. After a few minutes, he was smiling for what seemed like the first time since the accident. “Despite the circumstances, I like that we have this time together, kiddo,” he said. “It’s easy to get caught up in school and work and checking email, but these last few months have shown me what really matters.” He reached across the table and took my hand, our fingers greasy. “I’m so glad you came into our lives. God, I remember the moment I first saw you. Clarice had taken a cab to the school, and I was just about to go lecture my freshman year bio class on photosynthesis. She came into my office with you in her arms and I couldn’t believe a kid could smile that big. When she told me what happened . . .” He paused to take another sip of his beer. “I put a sign on the door of the lecture hall and we went right to the social workers. We didn’t want to wait an extra minute to make you ours. It took forever, and there were times I was sure they were going to take you from us, put you in a foster family, but somehow, we prevailed. You made us both so happy.”
There was a word stuck in my throat. Until now, I’d always called him Roger; I’d never learned to say “Mama” or “Dada” as a baby—to try and say them later in life was like trying to learn a foreign language. Tears welled up in my eyes. “Thanks,” I said. “Dad.”
Outside the Pizza Hut, Roger pinched his temples, squinting his eyes closed. He exhaled a long, slow breath and sank down on a bench. “I don’t feel so hot, kiddo,” he said, his words thick and measured. “Maybe . . . you should call your mom to come get us. We can get my car tomorrow.” Mom? The car? Clarice was dead, her car totaled in the wreck. I didn’t know whether to call a cab or an ambulance. I sat down next to him, fishing through his pockets for the pills. There were no warning labels, just a jumble of letters and Dr. Hodgeson’s name, take one with food three times a day. I rubbed his back. “You’ll be all right,” I said. “I’m gonna take care of you. Just hang in there.”
I started to go back inside to get the manager, but headlights blinded me. A door slammed, and I saw Amanda, now in a striped hoodie and jeans, rushing toward Roger. “Are you all right?” she asked.
I balled my fists. “What did you give him?” I demanded. Had she followed us?
“I don’t know,” she said. “They were from Dr. Hodgeson . . .”
She was lying. Dr. Hodgeson never said anything about pills, and for whatever reason, she was screwing with us. “Just call us a cab,” I said.
Roger moaned and she touched his face. “You’ll be okay,” she said. “Come
on, I’ll get you two home.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you!” I screamed. “Call us a cab, you bitch!”
Another family approached the restaurant and side-eyed our scene. Normally I would be mortified that anyone was looking at me, but not tonight. Tonight, I wanted to make as big a scene as possible to drive this woman away. She would only hurt us more. She put her hands on my arms, gripping me tight. She looked at me with an expression I’m sure she thought conveyed kindness, but all I saw was malice. “I know you’re scared, Zoe,” she said. “But he’ll be fine. We just need to get him home and into bed. Trust me, I’m a nurse. I know how to take care of a patient. I’ll stay with you, don’t worry.”
How did she know my name? We gave our names to the receptionist, but never to anyone else. Had she overheard? Checked my file? My heart was pounding in my throat, but I knew I had to take care of Roger. I couldn’t get him home by myself, and the manager was sure to come out any minute and start screaming at us to leave.
“He needs to go to the hospital,” I insisted.
“I can drive you,” she said.
I pulled out my cell phone. I called 911. People gawked out the restaurant window as the ambulance pulled up. I was angry and embarrassed for him, scared of her, and scared I might lose the one person left in my life in front of a stupid Pizza Hut.
The ambulance pulled up. The EMTs got him inside. Amanda put her hand on my arm, smiling like Medusa. “I’ll go with you.”
I shook her off. “Not on your life,” I snapped.
Dr. Hodgeson seemed confused by the pills Roger had taken. He couldn’t find a record of prescribing them. “That nurse is trying to kill us,” I said to Roger. “I’ve seen cases like that on TV. She poisons her patients so she can be the hero and save them at the last minute. How else can you explain her being at the restaurant right when you were sick?”
He chalked it up to my imagination, stress from losing Clarice, and too much TV. “Dr. Hodgeson sees a lot of patients,” said Roger. “I’m sure it was an honest mistake.”
Out in the lobby, Amanda was waiting for us. “Thanks for getting us home the other night,” said Roger. “I’m sorry for the trouble.”
“I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said. “The warning stickers came off in my pocket. I’m just glad I ran into you—poor Zoe was so scared.”
“I’m really embarrassed,” he said. “I should have known better, even without the warning labels.”
“How did you know where we’d be?” I demanded. “Did you follow us?”
“Zoe, please,” Roger said, holding up his hand. To the nurse, he said, “Why don’t you join us for dinner tomorrow night? It’s the least I can do. You’ve been really great to us.”
“No!” I grabbed his coat sleeve. “No, Roger—Dad—she’s—she’s trying to kill us!”
“Zoe!” He shook me off. “I’m sorry. She’s still upset about the other night . . .”
“It’s understandable,” said Amanda. “Zoe, I’d really like to share a meal with you so we could get to know each other better. I think we’d have a lot in common.”
She was talking to me as if I was five. I wanted to punch her in her pink mouth. But before I could say anything, Roger jumped in. “How does 6:30 sound?”
Amanda brought a bottle of wine for dinner. I ate silently, answering her questions with as few words as I could. She touched Roger’s arm; the wine—and the pill he took before she got there—made him silly and easily amused. I caught them kissing in the kitchen. I said goodnight early and made an excuse to go do homework.
I had that dream again. Those eyes, my mother’s evil eyes, were watching Clarice, following her everywhere. I woke up screaming, but Roger didn’t come for me. The pills. The goddamn pills. I needed him, and all he cared about was his own numbness. That, and Amanda.
I got up and got a drink of water. I heard moaning from Roger’s room and panicked. Was he sick again, crying out for me? I threw open the door.
Amanda, straddling him, broke from her kiss to stare at me. The streetlights from the windows hit her back, illuminating a tattoo of two flaming monster eyes.
My mother’s tattoo.
I turned and ran. I heard Roger call out to me, but I was already out the door. I didn’t care that I was barefoot. I just had to get away. I heard him yelling up the street. I stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk near the Wasserman’s house and fell on all fours onto the leaf-covered sidewalk. Roger gathered me up and I fought like a cat being dragged to the vet. He shouted my name, and lights came on in the neighbors’ houses. “Zoe, Zoe, it’s all right,” he said, rocking me back and forth. I could smell wine on his breath. “It’s all right, I’m here.”
I tried to push him away, but he was bigger than me. Amanda came running up the walk, hoodie unzipped, shirt on inside out, shoes untied. “Zoe, are you all right?”
“Get away from me!” I screeched. “Leave me alone!”
“I’m sorry, Amanda,” he said. “She’s had these nightmares ever since she was a child. Her mother abandoned her on a bus, and now with Clarice gone, she’s really struggling with those abandonment issues.”
He was parroting Dr. Hodgeson. I waited for her to confess, but instead she crouched down. “I know how that must have hurt you,” she said. “But I know your mother loved you very, very much.”
I broke one arm free of Roger’s hold and punched her. Not hard, but it startled her, leaving a small trickle of blood down her mouth. Roger grabbed me and shook me so hard I thought my neck would snap. He had a wild look in his eyes that I’d never seen before, and for the first time in my life, I was scared of him.
“Roger, be careful with her!” Amanda begged, gripping his arm. “She’s just a child.”
For a moment, I was glad she was there. He softened. “Zoe . . .” he breathed, his grip slackening. “Zoe, I’m so sorry . . .”
Amanda hugged me. I was so dazed I let her. “I’ll go,” she offered, as though she was doing us a favor.
We walked back to the house in silence. I watched Amanda drive until her lights vanished around the corner. I double-checked that the back door was locked, and Roger poured the rest of the wine into a juice glass. I just stared at him. “I think,” he said, setting the glass down, “that you could use an extra session a week with Dr. Hodgeson.”
“I think,” I said, folding my arms across my chest, “that you should stay away from Amanda.”
“You were very rude tonight,” he said, taking another drink. “Now I’m sorry I got angry, but your behavior these last few weeks has been unacceptable. What is going on with you?”
I took a deep breath. “That woman,” I said. “Amanda. I think she’s my real mother.”
“That’s nonsense,” he said. “Why would you think that?”
“Her tattoo,” I said. “It’s just like the one I keep dreaming about.”
“It’s a flash tattoo,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many of my students over the years have had ones just like it.”
“I’m scared of her,” I insisted. “I’m scared that she’s coming to take me away from you.”
He got that mean look on his face again. “Even if she was, she wouldn’t want you now,” he spat.
I felt as if he had stabbed me through the gut. I waited a beat for him to realize what he’d said, but he didn’t apologize. Instead, he drank the rest of his wine, glowering at me over the rim of his glass. I mumbled a good-night and went upstairs.
Lying in bed, I reached for Clarice’s broach in the darkness. Tears trickled down my cheeks, wetting my pillow. I didn’t want Roger to hear me crying.
I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up to Roger’s weight on the end of my bed. “Remember when you were little, and on Saturday mornings, you would get in bed with us?” he asked. “I would hug Clarice, and she would hug you, and you would hug tha
t little stuffed bunny we got you for your first Christmas with us.” He sniffled, his voice cracking. “That was the highlight of my week. No matter what else happened, no matter what else was going on, I knew I had those few minutes to look forward to.”
“I am so, so sorry I hurt you,” he continued. “I’m sorry for grabbing you and for shaking you, but what I’m really kicking myself for is what I said. Any parent would be lucky to have you. I know I am, and I know Clarice was too. You’re what made us a family.” He was sobbing now. “I just miss her so goddamn much, I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
I sat up and hugged him. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “I miss her, too.”
“I won’t see Amanda again, if you don’t want me to,” he said. “You don’t have to give a reason. We’ll switch doctors if you want.”
“Please,” I said. “I’m scared of her. I really think she’s after me.”
“You don’t have to be scared,” he said. “I’ll protect you. I promise you. I know I haven’t done a very good job in the last few weeks, but I’m going off the pills. No more booze, either, not even a beer with pizza. I want to be alert and ready so you feel safe. No more numbing the pain.”
He put his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. “One day, I might be ready to date again, and I need you to promise me that you will be welcoming to her,” he said. “But I won’t bring anyone home who doesn’t love you as much as I do.”
“She’s going to be tough to find,” I said.
“Then she’ll be worth the wait,” he said.
Roger let me sleep in. He made pancakes and we had breakfast together. He dropped me off at school before his 11:00 lecture. I was taking a history test when my teacher answered the classroom phone, hung up, and tapped me on the shoulder. “You need to go to the office,” she said. “There’s someone here to pick you up.”
My heart jumped. Roger had only one class on Friday; maybe he was taking me on a trip for the weekend. I wasn’t doing great on the test anyway, and being called out would give me a chance to make it up. I’d lost a lot of time after Clarice’s death, and although teachers gave me a wide berth, my grades were starting to show signs of strain.
