by Meg Elison
Two weeks later I got sent home. Again. For lice. Again. Pediculus humanus capitis. They’re real survivors.
I don’t think we really got rid of the lice until we left that hotel. Mom just dyed her hair, over and over, saying it would kill the bugs. The edges of her ears and forehead were purplish red for days, but she never seemed to itch. The day we left, the cops had taped off most of the parking lot.
I don’t know how my mom got the job here as an apartment manager. The last job she had was at a burger place. I remember hiding in the back office of the restaurant with Andy, on days when she couldn’t pay a babysitter. I remember being home alone after she got told she couldn’t do that anymore. But being home alone was better, even if it meant no hot little boxes of fries. Because we finally had our own place again, once she started as a manager here.
In the beginning, there was new furniture (well, new to us) and a few new clothes. There were hot baths, and Mom cooked dinner in the kitchen and slept in her own room.
And then she did the worst thing I can remember.
She sat us down at the little breakfast nook in the kitchen and made us some pancakes. She was all cleaned up, with her hair brushed and her eyes bright. She could really look normal sometimes, I have to remind myself of that. She stood across from us on the other side of the bar. I remember the feeling of her looking at our faces.
“I know that in the past, our house has always gotten dirty. I will need your help with that, both of you, because I have to work a lot of hours. But if you’ll help me, I promise it won’t get that way again. Okay, guys? I promise that we can do this. We can make this place our real home, just like I always wanted it to be. Okay?”
“Okay, Mommy.” Andy was shoveling pancakes into his face. He believed anything she said. He believed her when she said she wouldn’t leave us alone again for three days and go to Vegas. He believed her when she said we’d never see that boyfriend again. He believed her last time when she said this house would be different.
I hadn’t believed her when she’d said that the Valencia was only temporary, though. And it was. So maybe. Maybe I could choose to believe again.
“Okay, Mom.”
She smiled then, showing her broken and rotted-out teeth on top and bottom. And I knew I chose wrong.
It didn’t happen all at once. It didn’t go from sitcom mom and pancakes to the way it is now. Little by little, things fell apart. The door broke, and Mom said we couldn’t let maintenance in until the kitchen was cleaned up. But then the fridge went bad and the kitchen went with it. Then the bathroom sink, which meant the carpet got flooded, which meant the newspapers and the mold and the stink. Little things caused big things, and picking up the living room just didn’t matter to anyone.
And Mom would be fine one week, bringing home takeout and chain-smoking on the couch, laughing at the TV, but then she’d disappear. Or stop speaking or moving for a few days. Or flip out at us about the house.
A house like this doesn’t happen by accident, but as a series of contributing events. Like the forming of an ecosystem. And that’s how I start the narration for my video.
Filming is hard. I have to hold a flashlight in one hand and the camera with the other. Even with a window open and candles lit, it isn’t enough. The flashlight beam crawls up the mushrooms in Andy’s dresser, making their shadows long like giants behind them.
“Here we see a member of the fungus kingdom, genus and species unknown. Here’s the cap, the stalk, the gills that hold the reproductive spores, and the volva here at the bottom.” I remember the parts from a diagram we filled out in class.
I pan the camera over the big blooms of black mold.
“Here we see a good example of Stachybotrys, or black mold. It’s associated with sometimes-toxic poor indoor air quality. Like most molds, this needs a lot of moisture and can’t survive in direct sunlight.”
I looked up the name on Wikipedia, but I might be saying it wrong. Still, I love knowing the Latin or Greek names of a thing. It makes me feel like an actual scientist. I say them in my head, all the time. Feels like I understand something, like I have power during just the length of those syllables.
I follow scuttling roaches and find a spider and a few beetles by the back windows. “Periplaneta Americana, the common American cockroach, and Rosalia funebris, a borer beetle that I can identify by the banding on its thorax. Both from class Insecta. And here, luckily, we have Parasteatoda tepidariorum, a common house spider, who feeds on these insects and helps keep them from taking over everything.”
I hold my breath a few minutes and throw open the fridge, focusing in tight on a writhing mass of maggots and the cloud of gnats. No narration there. Too bad.
“The only primate in this biome right now is me. Homo sapiens, the smartest thing on two legs.” I film my feet, sinking into the gray swamp of newspaper, with the black water rising around my toes. I set the camera down on the sink and film myself siphoning the bucket water into the tub and then set it down again in the kitchen to show how I forage for food. Opportunistic feeder. Omnivorous primate. Delicious long words that mean we eat whatever we can find.
The whole thing is five minutes long, and I bet with editing it could be even shorter. I can’t possibly turn this in. But it is my ecosystem. And it feels good to make a record of it. It feels like the day I took the knife to my hair. It feels like science. I was actually proving something, actually making a change. I have something unique here, and I have the unique ability to describe it.
I climb into my hiding place and rewatch the footage until the battery starts to die. That brings me to the next project of the day.
With the power out, there is nothing to do in this house. I send Andy to the pool, knowing that on a Saturday there will be other families there and it won’t be obvious that he’s alone. Once he’s gone, I go downstairs to the laundry room and wait for the old woman in there to pull her clothes out of the dryer.
Behind the bank of dryers, deep in the lint fluff and dust, is an extension cord. I cram my arm back there and pull it out. Quick as I can, I tie a loop in the end and throw it up and over the railing of the balcony where my hiding place is. I only miss once. I go back upstairs and through the window, back to my spot. I plug the camera into the other end of the extension and let it charge. Once it’s green again, I can watch a movie for a while.
I need to pick another ecosystem to film. I need to delete this one. But I can’t. Not yet. Right? Right.
1:30 p.m.
I wish when my phone buzzed that it would be someone cool. It could be Emerson Berkeley, wanting to talk books again, like we did that one time on the field-trip bus. It could even be Kristi, I wouldn’t care. I kind of miss her.
But no. It’s Kristi’s mom, Bette.
Hey, I’m going to go get coffee. Do you want to go?
Yes, but I’d rather you were somebody else. That’s a mean answer to someone who is offering to buy me expensive coffee.
Sure. Kristi coming, too?
No, she’s not talking to me. Like 15 mins?
Yes. I’ll be outside.
I hide the camera behind my TV and leave it plugged in. I’m wearing mostly the clothes Bette bought me, so no problem there. I find my shoes and head on down.
The pretty white car pulls up in no time, and we’re rolling toward coffee.
“How are you doing?” She’s giving me concern-face.
“I’m fine. Having a lazy Saturday, since all my schoolwork is done. Reading some books. Cleaning up my room.”
I am a champion of acting normal.
When I’ve got a huge whipped-cream-covered coffee drink in my hands, Bette actually starts to talk.
“So, Kristi and I had a fight last night.”
“I’m sorry,” I say between slurps.
“Yeah, well, it was kind of about you.” She pushes her perfect highlights behind her ear and shrugs at me.
“About me?”
“Yeah. So Kristi was telling me about s
ome trouble she’s been having lately, with some of the mean girls at your school.”
“Oh yeah, I know the ones.” Big sweet swallow.
“She told me they were pretty brutal to her, but that she tried to get them off her back by making fun of you,” she says softly.
I don’t say anything. She’s watching me closely.
“But in the end they got way too mean about it and were planning some kind of prank to humiliate you. She . . . she’s not always very considerate, my Kris. But she did stand up for you, when the chips were down.” Bette’s looking at me like she needs something. Her eyes are sad but still kind of eager. Like I should forgive her, maybe. I don’t have any idea why that would matter.
Kris should have sold me out. It would make her life easier, to have some cooler friends. And it wouldn’t have mattered to me. What could they possibly do to me? I’m already nothing.
“That was nice of her.” What’s more worthless than nice?
That’s what Bette wanted, though. She smiles a little and drinks her black coffee from her fancy reusable cup. She must come here all the time.
“I told her that was the right thing to do, and that those girls should feel terrible, making fun of you for being homeless.”
My ears are ringing. “What?”
“Honey, it’s okay. You don’t have to try to hide it.” She reaches across the table and takes my hand. Her skin is soft, and her nails are perfect. Her perfume seems to rise out of the folds of her jacket when she moves. I am not even human. Sudden downgrade from H. sapiens.
How can I get out of here without screaming? The door is crowded with people lined up to get coffee. She’s holding my hand.
“I’m not . . . why would you think that . . . ?”
“It’s fairly obvious. You work very hard to keep it from people. You’re such a fighter. Kris told me about sample day.”
Samples came on the first day of junior high. We got a lecture from our gym teacher about showers and how we’d start to stink. We got a bag of freebies from some company: a short and stubby deodorant, a free toothbrush, and a pamphlet about our changing bodies and what we can buy to fix them.
I was glad to have a new toothbrush—the one I had at home was way old. But I had never used deodorant before. I had seen it on TV, but I’d never had one. I didn’t know when I was supposed to start using it; I thought it was maybe just for adults. I made the mistake of saying that to Kris out loud.
The look on her face was something I never want to see again.
After the sample was gone, I started buying it at the dollar store.
“She told me that she’s never been to your house, and how you sometimes look like you haven’t slept at all. She says you have to take care of your baby brother all the time.”
I can’t drink any more of this. My stomach is full of snakes. Python regius. Dendroaspis polylepis. Agkistrodon piscivorus.
“So when I finally put it all together, I realized this must be the answer.”
“I’m not homeless,” I say, trying to make the idea sound ridiculous.
She sighs a little. “Just because you have a little space in an abandoned building, or a shed or something—”
“No. We live in an apartment. My mom is an apartment manager.”
Her perfect eyebrows twitch up a little bit. “You don’t have to lie to me, sweetie. I know it’s embarrassing. But you guys need help.”
I stare past her, out to the line of people blocking the door.
“Kristi is mad at me because I told her we have to do something. She doesn’t want me to embarrass you or get you in trouble. But, Layla, sweetie, I have to tell somebody. You have to let me get you some help.”
“We have an apartment. It has two bedrooms. We’ve lived there for more than a year.”
She looks me dead in the eye. “Then take me to it. I’d like to speak to your mother, anyway.”
“I’ll take you to my mother.” This is the worst idea I have ever had.
“Great.” She’s already up, swinging her big beige purse over her shoulder. “Let’s do that.”
I dump my mostly full coffee in the trash. My mouth tastes like caramel bile. How hard is it to jump out of a moving car?
I tell her to park in the spot marked “Future Tenants” right beside the office. Through the big sliding glass door, I can see Mom with her feet up on the desk, reading a paperback and smoking. Bette opens the door.
“You smoke in your office? Is that legal?”
Great opener.
Mom looks up without putting the book down. “Are you a cop?”
Bette stands up a little straighter and walks toward the desk with her hand out.
“My name is Elizabeth Sanderson. Our daughters go to school together. I was hoping we could talk about Layla.”
Mom does not even look at me.
“Okay.” She pulls her legs off the desk and puts down what she’s reading. “What would you like to talk about?” She folds her hands together and leans forward a little.
Oh god. Here we go.
Bette is scared. I can read that like I can read Andy’s books. It’s so simple and so clear it doesn’t even need words.
“Well, I . . . I hardly know where to begin. Layla is a bright girl. In all the gifted classes. She won the spelling bee two years ago, I remember that.”
“I know that. I was there,” Mom says.
No she wasn’t.
“Well, I mean, look at the way she comes to school. Her hair is an awful rat’s nest, and her clothes are filthy. Did you know she bathes at my house? I thought . . . I thought maybe she was living on the street.” Bette looks over her shoulder like she’s guilty, like she wants to know whether I heard that or not. When she sees my face, she gets an inch shorter.
Every word is like a needle in me. I know what I look like. I don’t want to stand here, but I can’t walk away. I have to know what Mom will say.
“She’s not living on the street. She’s just a lazy, dirty little teenage brat. I can’t give her a bath like she’s a baby.”
Oh, okay. That makes this all my fault.
Bette takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry to be so blunt, I’m just upset. I wanted to help her—to help you, really. If you don’t have anywhere to go, there are shelters here in town that prioritize women with children.”
Mom sits silent for a moment. Her eyes are like a shark’s. “You realize that you’re in a rental office right now, right? You think I run this place and don’t even have an apartment for my children to live in?”
Bette stutters a little. “I don’t know what to think.”
Shark eyes never waver. “I think you need to mind your own business, Mrs. Sanderson.”
I’m hot all over, but I shake like I’m cold. I want to get in Bette’s car and never go home. I’ll live in her laundry room and not say a word.
“Mrs. Bailey—”
“That’s not my name. That’s Layla’s name. Not mine.”
I have heard that speech so many times. It’s really important to her that Andy and I are Baileys and she’s not.
“Darlene, then. Isn’t that right?”
Mom doesn’t say anything.
“Mona Monroe is a friend of mine. She’s the on-call nurse over at Maxfield Elementary? She told me that your little boy, Andrew, has all the same problems. He’s little enough that you can give him a bath, so why don’t you? Why does he show up to school dirty and exhausted? Why is he so hungry that they catch him eating out of the garbage cans once a week?”
Oh shit. I never told him not to do that. It never even occurred to me. Kids have no pride.
“I’m pretty sure I can get her fired for even discussing that with you.” The shark never stops swimming, even when it sleeps. Carcharodon carcharias.
Bette tries one last time. “Please, Darlene. I didn’t come here to fight with you, and I’m not trying to make you out to be a bad mother. You obviously just need some help.”
“I don’t need s
hit from you. Or from Mona Monroe. You can get out of my office now.”
Bette stiffens, and her face is blotchy red under her makeup.
She walks right past me. Mom picks up her phone and asks for Nurse Monroe’s immediate supervisor. She does not look my way.
I walk a little behind Bette. She turns around to face me after a minute. “Why don’t you come stay at my house tonight?”
And then what? I can’t stay forever. And I’m too big to fit in a basket and leave myself on someone’s doorstep. Even someone as nice as Bette can’t adopt me like a kitten she found in a box. And even if she said she could, there wouldn’t be room for two.
“I have to stay home, Bette. I have to take care of Andy.”
She looks like she might cry. “Show me where you live.”
Still hot, still cold. I don’t care anymore. At least I can prove I’m not homeless. “Fine.”
We walk across the complex, past #80, with the door busted in by the cops more than a week ago. Past #121, where I found my TV/VCR in the closet. Past #60, the one that’s mostly burned on the inside.
But #61, second floor above the laundry room, stands alone. “It’s that one, up there.”
“Show me,” she says.
She follows me up the stairs, her heels clicking against the stones embedded in the concrete.
“This is it.” I gesture over my shoulder at the closed door.
“Can I come in?”
“Not really,” I tell her.
Just take me away. I’ll change my name.
“Why not?”
“The door is broken,” I explain.
I turn and boost myself over the busted AC unit and work my fingers into the gap in the window. I shove it open and pull myself through. I stand up and part the blinds with my hands, looking out at her.
I can see it when the smell hits her. She puts a hand up to her mouth and looks a little more scared than before.
“Oh, Layla. I had no idea. Why’s it so dark in there?”
“Light’s broken, too.” I can’t look at her anymore. “I have to go.”
She reaches out and tries to take my hand again. I step back a little.
