In Concert

by Melanie Tem

  That was another reason for being mad at Mama, she guessed. Everybody said she was just like her Mama. She had her Mama’s face, her Mama’s temper. Dad said he couldn’t tell how she was going to feel about anything from one minute to the next. Dad said she was “moody” like Mama, too. That meant she got depressed like Mama.

  Sometimes she wondered if maybe it had really been Mama’s depression that had given her the cancer. Mama had been depressed as long as Elizabeth could remember. Sometimes she’d stayed in bed for days, just lying there like a dead person, with no interest in anything. The only reason Elizabeth knew she wasn’t dead was because Dad took Mama trays sometimes, and sometimes there’d be a little bit of food missing. But lots of times that was the only way to tell, and that had scared Elizabeth bad. What if Mama had been dead for days and Dad just hadn’t been brave enough to tell them yet? They’d never know. Parents never let kids know anything, even kids as old as fourteen.

  When Mama got depressed, it was like she wanted to be dead. She was just waiting for somebody to notice and bury her. It was scary because Elizabeth knew exactly what that felt like.

  It was all so dramatic. Like a soap opera. All that gave Mama lots of power. Before anybody in the family did anything they first had to figure out how it might affect Mama. There was no telling what might make her mad, or make her depressed. Everybody got exhausted trying to figure out what Mama wanted, until finally they didn’t have any life left for themselves.

  Some days Elizabeth wanted to be like that. To lie down, to give up. To be dead and still have everybody focusing on you. To use up their life because you didn’t have any of your own left to use. Mama had been selfish. She’d deserved to die.

  Which was a terrible thing to be thinking. It made Elizabeth feel awful, which made her even more furious with her mother.

  Not that she hadn’t thought that same thing lots of times before. She’d even said it in a couple of their fights when she’d said everything else she could think of. “I hate you! You’re the worst mother in the whole world! I wish I didn’t even have a mother! I wish you were dead!”

  That wasn’t why Mama had died. Elizabeth was fourteen, and she knew better than that. Everybody she knew hated their parents, and their parents didn’t die. Leave it to Mama to do something that would embarrass her and make her feel bad all at the same time. Mama was always on her case. Nothing she ever did was good enough.

  One time Mama’d started crying and said she felt the same way, like nothing she ever did was good enough for Elizabeth. It had made Elizabeth feel so guilty to see her mother cry, like she was supposed to do something and she didn’t know what. So she just walked out of the room and then out of the house. She wasn’t running away or anything. She just needed to get away from her mother.

  I’m sorry, Mama. You were good enough. Please come back. Please don’t be dead.

  Elizabeth was also old enough to know that just because she’d wished so hard and so often that she had a mother again, just because she kept having those dumb dreams that Mama came back to life, that didn’t mean that Mama would come back to life. Stuff like that didn’t happen except in the movies. Once your mother died and left you, she was gone forever.

  But now all of a sudden Mama wasn’t dead anymore. Just like all those times she’d been too depressed to get out of bed. And Dad had kept her back in the bedroom, and hid her, and fed her like he was in her power and had no other choice. Now here she was, yelling at Elizabeth for coming home late last night, and Elizabeth was really pissed, just like always, and her mother was dead. Dead six months.

  Mama had had her way again. She’d turned everything upside down.

  “You’re grounded!” Mama yelled.

  “You’re dead!” Elizabeth yelled back, and the power of saying that took her breath away. She wanted to tell Mama she was sorry but she was too scared. She’d gone to a memorial service but she actually hadn’t seen Mama’s body. Had Dad been keeping her in the bedroom all that time? What was Mama trying to pull now? Just because she was her mother didn’t mean that she could do anything she damn well wanted. It made Elizabeth hate her dad, just for a minute—it was too scary to hate him any longer than that—but he should have told them. They had a right to know, even if they were only kids. He was just so weak where Mama was concerned. Sometimes her dad was so weak she thought she would die.

  She stormed out of the room and on out of the house, making a show of ignoring her mother calling her name behind her. She was just going for a walk, for God’s sake. She wasn’t some little kid.

  She went over to Stacey’s house. Stacey used to be her best friend before that boyfriend of hers came along. Stacey didn’t have much time for her after that.

  “So do you like it better this way …” Stacey pushed up the back of her hair making it flop down in front. “Or this way?” She pulled down hard on the ends, straightening the curl out.

  “Stacey, did you hear me? I said my mother’s not dead anymore. She came back today.”

  Stacey looked at her out of one eye, the other one hiding behind a big fall of hair. “That’s a sick joke, Liz. She was your mother, after all.”

  “Stacey, you gotta let me stay here. I’m scared.”

  “I can’t.” Stacey turned back to the mirror behind them, playing with her hair. “See, I got a date tonight … and Mom says I can’t have girlfriends over if I’m just gonna leave …”

  “Stacey!”

  “I’m sorry, okay? My mom’s a bitch sometimes—I can’t help it.”

  “You’re supposed to be my friend.”

  Stacey looked at her then, trying to look serious, and that just made Elizabeth even angrier. “Liz, really, this isn’t real. Your mom’s dead. I went to the funeral, remember? You oughta see somebody. I mean, your mom, she’s been screwin’ with your head for years, makin’ you feel guilty about everything. I mean, you always said you couldn’t please her. Now she’s dead, and she’s still doing it to you. Your mom, I know you loved her and everything, but she could be a real bitch sometimes …”

  “My mama wasn’t a bitch!” Elizabeth didn’t mean to, but she slapped Stacey as hard as she could. Stacey fell back against the mirror with her hair flying everywhere, and she just started bawling, just like a baby. But it wasn’t funny—Elizabeth felt like she’d just done the worst thing. She was so scared she jumped up and ran out of Stacey’s house, and Stacey’s mom was screaming behind her and cursing, and Elizabeth couldn’t help it, but she kept wondering if her mama would still stand up for her the same way.

  It was on the way home that she finally started figuring things out. Her dad and Mama had done something weird. They’d wanted people to think Mama was dead for some stupid reason, and because she and Mark were just kids they hadn’t told them anything. Typical. It made her really angry. Like they didn’t care how she felt. Sure—Mama stayed inside the house. In the shadows. So now Mama was some dirty little secret in the family. Something perverted. Elizabeth was already feeling dirty because she’d tried to tell Stacey about Mama. She wasn’t going to try that again. She’d just pretend like Dad and Mama were pretending. Maybe she’d talk to Mark about it. They’d have some kind of a plan together. That would show them.

  When she got back Mama screamed at her for being late, like she’d had permission to go in the first place. What a laugh. Elizabeth didn’t even argue. That way Mama would know how really mad she was at her.

  Dad used to really hate it when Elizabeth and her mother fought. Sometimes he’d go back and forth between them, trying to explain to each of them what the other one had meant or what the other one was feeling. Once in a while that worked, but usually they both just ended up mad at him, too, and Elizabeth would feel a little sorry for him. “You’re so much alike,” he’d say, kind of helplessly.

  Everybody always said that. That was not what Elizabeth wanted to hear, although secretly it made her kind of proud. She knew it wasn’t what Mama wanted to hear, either, and that hurt her feeli
ngs.

  Dad would tell Elizabeth, “You know, a lot of girls your age have trouble with their mothers, especially when they’ve been close like you and your Mama have been. You guys love each other. You’ll get through it.” Now, of course, they never would. Even if Mama wasn’t really dead after all, things couldn’t be fixed. Not after they’d lied to her and her brother. Not after they’d made their family weird.

  Tears burned her eyes, and she rubbed them away hard with her knuckles. She was not going to cry any more about her mother. She was not. She’d been crying practically nonstop for six months.

  But she was crying when Mark came rattling up behind her on his roller blades, grabbed her around the waist and spun her halfway around so that she practically fell down, and whooped, “Yo, Lizzie!”

  She loathed it when he called her Lizzie, which, naturally, was why he did it. At least he made her stop crying. “You little turd!”

  “You big butthead!” he yelled, and then he giggled this silly little giggle like he always did, like everything was just one big joke to him, and the joke was always on her. He took off past her. For a twelve-year-old creep, he was pretty good on those roller blades. But she wouldn’t tell him that in a million years.

  She watched him speed around the corner and made herself not hurry up to see where he went from there. She was not going to worry about him. She was not going to take care of him. She was not going to be his mother. She’d figure out some way to tell him about what Dad and Mama had done, the right way so that he wouldn’t freak out or anything.

  Since Mama’d died, Elizabeth had felt so sorry for Dad that she couldn’t stand to be around him. He went to work every day and he came home every night, and he tried really hard to take care of Mark and Elizabeth even though Elizabeth tried to show him she didn’t need anybody to take care of her. The clothes got washed and the meals got cooked and as far as she knew the bills got paid, and he showed up at their school stuff and he helped Mark with his homework, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it.But now that she knew the truth about Mama, she didn’t know what to feel about Dad. He’d lied to her, lied to her for months. It was just so sick, the kind of sick only adults could do. It was scary.

  Once, maybe a week after Mama’d died—after Dad said she’d died—when Elizabeth was just starting to realize what it meant, she’d asked him, “Are you ever going to be happy again?”

  She’d expected him to say something like, “Sure, honey. Of course I’ll be happy again.” Even though she wouldn’t have believed it, even though she’d have been furious to think he could ever be happy without Mama, it still would have been a relief. But he didn’t. He’d looked at her with a sad face like she didn’t know a human being could have and he’d said, “I don’t know, honey. I don’t know anything about what happens next.”

  But knowing now that Mama had been alive all along, she didn’t know what to think about what Dad had said that day. She knew he’d been terribly, terribly sad—Dad had never been able to hide his true feelings about anything—but now she had no idea what he’d been sad about. Maybe the whole sick thing had been Mama’s idea. Mama had done something to him, to make him like that. She’d been doing something to him for years. That was the only explanation. He had no back bone: he was like some kind of slimy jellyfish. He had no life of his own—he’d given it all to Mama. And he was so pale, depressed, and he moved so slowly anymore—now Elizabeth was afraid of losing him. Mama had come up with something terrible, and made Dad go along with it. And now it was killing him. She had to do something.

  She went for a long walk. She thought about school. She thought about how all her friends were getting their ears double-pierced and some triple. She thought about how she was never going to get a boyfriend because she was dumb and ugly. She thought about how Stacey would never be her friend anymore. She thought about everything she could think of that wasn’t Mama.

  But Mama got in there anyway. Everything she thought about came back to Mama. Mama saying maybe they ought to get her a tutor for algebra—which was just what she needed, to have to think about stupid algebra even more, like she was ever going to need x(x-y) in real life. Mama laughing and saying she didn’t care how many holes Elizabeth got in her ears if Elizabeth paid for it with her own money, and not to worry about Dad, he’d get used to it. Mama telling her she was beautiful and smart and a nice person and interesting, and just wait, pretty soon she’d have to beat ’em off with a stick.

  Missing her mother made Elizabeth’s stomach hurt. She missed her mother. She wanted her mother to come back. That ought to count for something, how much she wanted Mama.

  It didn’t, though. Once somebody was dead, they were dead.

  But Mama was back. It had all been a trick. She was in the house like always, making breakfast. And it was Dad who was looking pale, sick, and depressed, like he wanted to die. Like Mama had taken everything away from him. Like Mama had gotten her way again and he had taken Mama’s place. But Elizabeth hadn’t gotten Mama back either, because of the trick, and Mama had changed, and nothing would ever be right again.

  Elizabeth kept walking and walking. Tears kept trickling down her cheeks, but she was determined not to cry any more.

  “Elizabeth! Breakfast!”

  She was right back by her own house, and that was Mama calling her. Elizabeth didn’t know what was going on, but her mind refused to think about it anymore, so she just gave up and went inside.

  Mark was already there, sitting at the kitchen table reading the comics. He stuck his tongue out at her. She grabbed the paper out of his hands and it tore some, but she got it. Brat.

  Mark whined, “Mama, she stole the comics!” and Mama, standing at the stove just like she always did, said over her shoulder, “Now, children, let’s have some peace while we eat,” just like she always did, and Elizabeth thought, as hard as she could, Mama’s dead.

  Mark was so dumb, just like a little kid. If he knew something was wrong with Mama being back and everything he sure didn’t act like it. He acted like everything was normal. But then a little kid wouldn’t know something was perverted even if he saw it. It was scary. Now she was afraid something was wrong with Mark, too.

  She pulled a handful of sticky, linty gumdrops out of her sweatshirt pocket and stuffed them into her mouth. Mama crossed to the sink and opened up the window, just like she always did. Elizabeth hated that. Mark hated that, Dad hated that—the whole family complained about Mama’s thing for fresh air. Dead of winter, middle of the night, first thing in the morning, it didn’t matter. They could all freeze to death just so Mama could get her fresh air.

  Elizabeth pushed the gumdrops out of her mouth with her tongue, the gross chewed-up mess into her hand. Mama would give her hell for eating sugar before breakfast.

  Mama didn’t notice, though. She was busy scraping the eggs out of the cast iron skillet. No aluminum for her. Good old-fashioned cast iron, which Elizabeth thought was disgusting because it had little grooves in it where bits of food could hide and black stuff came off on the dish towels.

  Just like in her dreams. Mama cooking breakfast in the big cast-iron skillets. Mama raking the yard, ironing Dad’s shirts, loading the dishwasher. Letting everybody else know what to think, how to feel, just by the way she looked at you. Doing all the stuff she always did that kept the house going and you didn’t even notice until she wasn’t around anymore to do it.

  Except Mama was supposed to be dead. They’d lied.

  Then Mama turned and looked at Elizabeth. Her eyes were as black as the skillet bottoms, and way too big. “Don’t you feel good, Elizabeth? You look a little peaked. Maybe you should stay home from school today and rest? I’ll take care of you, sweetheart,” she said, and grinned.

  Mama doesn’t grin like that. Mama never calls me sweetheart.

  “Hey,” complained Mark. “No fair.”

  “Don’t worry about it, baby,” she said to him, not daring to say anything to her mother. She felt herself backing away,
scared that her mother might touch her. “I’m going to school. I’ve got an algebra test.”

  Mama set a plate full of fried eggs in front of each of them. Elizabeth went to the bathroom to get rid of the gooey gumdrops in her hand. She heard Mark say, “Yuck! There’s yolk in mine!” and it kind of gave her the creeps because he’d never, in his whole life, liked yolks and their mother knew that. If she was their real mother. Which she shouldn’t be, because their mother was dead.

  When she came back into the kitchen, Mama was standing behind Mark with her hands on his shoulders. Mama’s face was tight and stiff like when she was really mad, and she was pinching Mark’s shoulders hard. Then she grinned, and wrapped her arms around him. Tighter, tighter, so that Elizabeth saw his face go pale, as if Mama were squeezing the life and blood right out of him. He looked kind of sick, but he was still eating his eggs.

  She should have done something. Gotten Mark alone and talked to him. But she didn’t know what to say. He was just a little kid, really. She was alone in this. It was all up to her.

  Elizabeth didn’t even look at her eggs. She just grabbed her books off the counter and practically ran out of the house, mumbling that she’d get breakfast at school, she had to study algebra. Mama was paying too much attention to Mark to even try to stop her.

  The algebra test wasn’t that bad, and she thought she passed it. Not that she much cared. She thought about not going home from school, and she walked around for awhile, but Stacey wasn’t her friend anymore—she didn’t say anything or even look at her all day—and Elizabeth couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. She wanted so badly to tell somebody what her parents had done—whatever they had done—but she knew it must be too dirty a secret to tell.