1
Some people get louder the quieter they try to be.
One of the many things I’ve learned after spending the past couple of months living in a hotel room with my mom and baby sister. Well, not a room. I think they call it a junior suite. There’s a living room area with a TV and a separate bedroom with two queen-sized beds.
Like so many other mornings, Mom stumbled in a few minutes before dawn and tried like hell to be quiet so she wouldn’t wake Lucy or me. The woman left us alone for two and a half days this time, but at least she tried to be quiet when she finally came back. I guess she figures that makes her a good mother or something.
Unfortunately, the quieter she tries to be, the louder she is. A herd of elephants might as well be marching through the room. I roll onto my side and find Lucy starting to stir. She’s four now and should be in pre-K, but that’s not my call. Next year, though, there won’t be any excuses. She has to go to school, which means our mother will have to do something she’s supposed to by registering the poor kid and making sure she gets to and from there every day. I hate to think it, but something tells me she’s got a lot of sitting and waiting ahead of her. Mom was flaky when I was Lucy’s age. Now, thirteen years later, she might as well live in a different state.
“Shh, it’s okay. You can go back to sleep.” I’m gentle as I draw the blankets up over Lucy’s shoulders.
The door between the living room and bedroom swings open a moment later. I know better than to hold a finger to my lips. I did that once when Lucy had a rough night with an upset stomach. I had just gotten her to sleep by the time our mother returned from another weekend with her latest boyfriend, so I touched a finger to my lips to signal for quiet.
I had a swollen lip for three days after that. I won’t make that mistake again.
She heads straight for the bathroom, and I exhale. How much longer are we going to have to do this? It was one thing when she did it when we lived in the apartment and there was room for all of us to move around without getting in each other’s way too much. I didn’t get my own bedroom then, either, but at least Mom didn’t come barging in to wake us up when she had a room of her own.
“Morgan?” Lucy rubs her fists over her sleepy eyes.
“It’s okay, honey. You go back to sleep. It’s still super early.”
“Is Mommy back?”
“Yeah, she came back. She always comes back.” Though there have been times when I’ve wondered whether she will. Wondered if the latest loser she’s dating will turn out to be a murderer or if—and I don’t know whether this would be better—she’ll decide to run off with him and pretend we don’t exist. “We’ll go out in the living room and turn on the TV.”
I get up, then walk around to her side of the bed to pick her up and carry her out to the sofa. She brings a pillow, and I tuck her in with a blanket before turning on the TV. She’ll fall back to sleep for a while.
Once she’s settled in, I go back to the bedroom and change from pajamas to a T-shirt and shorts. It’s supposed to be warm today. Spending so much time in the hotel, it’s easy to lose touch with the real world. I try to get outside whenever possible to breathe fresh air instead of the stale, recycled crap blasting through the vents. Later, I might take Lucy down to the pool. It’s important to me that she has a little fun.
She’s lucky. At her age, this kind of thing is an adventure. She doesn’t see how incredibly fucked up it is that our mother hasn’t yet found actual housing for us since our eviction.
Mom finally finishes in the bathroom, and while she stumbles her way through, changing out of her fancy dress, I wash up and brush out my long, blond hair. That’s one thing all three of us share, one of the few traits I’m glad Mom passed down. My blue eyes have circles under them, thanks to another night spent lying awake and thinking. I’ll be starting a new school in a couple of weeks now that we don’t officially live in our old district. I won’t know anybody. If we don’t have a permanent residence, how am I supposed to believe they’ll let me go to school anywhere?
When I asked Mom about it, she waved me off. “We’ll be moving soon. You’ll see. I have something in the works.” In other words, she’s trying to con her latest victim into paying for a place. Not that I think she actually goes out and chooses victims to con, but that’s generally how it ends up. She uses them until they catch on to her or she gets bored. One or the other.