Memories In Reverse

Don’t hit your brother

Leave that alone

Listen to your mother

Watch that tone

Sit on my lap

Kiss and hug

Before you nap

Tucked in snug

Help with homework

Mother and math

Dad gets off work

Time for a bath

Advice from each parent

Dad, hit them back

Mom, have sentiment

A ruffian with tact

Play in the mud

Make that dirt pie

Mommy will eat it

Cross her heart

And hope to die

Chapter One

Mom runs off to puke again. I have never felt this out of place in my own home until these past few months. Mom is getting worse, and I can do nothing. I’m sitting here in our living room, listening to the sound of my mother heave her guts out into a toilet bowl because that is all that’s left, guts. She didn’t eat enough to be in there this long…for the third time today. Sitting quietly is the hard part. I should do something. I should feel some emotion, some sadness, but I just feel strange. How am I supposed to take care of someone who has always been my caretaker?

This is daily life now; my mind is adjusting to its routine. This is what I told myself a year ago when the tears stopped flowing so that I don’t feel like a soulless monster as I watch her change with dry eyes.

I look at the window patch of sunlight on the faded, blue carpet and the gold painted lamps in our small sitting area in the entrance way as if they are my friend’s carpet and lamps, examining, wondering what purpose it serves there. I need to find something for my brain to focus on instead of the retching noise upstairs. So I sit and pretend what it would be like if my friend Emily lived here instead. Would her memories be the same as mine? Is a childhood created by the house or the family? Blanket forts in the same place with the same worn-out, yellow blanket because we weren’t allowed to use the good ones? How about where that tall lamp is? Would that corner of the room be her favorite homework spot, as well? Would she be imagining me if it were her mother with stage four colon cancer right now, or would she be brave and loving enough to know exactly how to act to help her mother make it through this?

I hear Mom shuffling back down the stairs. My eyes snap out of their gaze at the furniture and watch her make her slow descent, holding onto the wooden banister for support. “Zoe, I think I’m just going to go to bed. I need to lay down,” Mom’s face is green and her voice a soft whisper.

“Ok, Mom,” I say as I stand. We can always talk tomorrow, I tell myself. I move toward her with a small, plastered on, smile and give her a hug. I feel her small frame beneath her baggy blue t-shirt. She hugs me back, but there is no strength behind it. She looks me in the eyes, and I see that her mouth is contorted into a slight frown, either from the acrid taste of vomit or of pain, or some nasty combination of the two, exemplifying the newest wrinkles that she has gained in the last few months. Her short, gray hair is coarse as it brushes my right cheek, quite the contrast from her soft waves before treatment a few years ago. At least the new radiation therapy lets her keep some form of hair this time. Her wigs from the last treatment never looked quite right. She drops her arms unceremoniously. She turns and I watch her hunched over back move slowly up the stairs to her room, using the dark wooden railing to haul herself up the worn blue carpeted steps one at a time.

Watching her shamble up the stairs, I think a person on the street today might mistake my mom for someone in her late 60s, but she is only 44. Before she began the treatments that tore up her body people used to ask her if she was turning 5 years younger than she was. I’ve always prided myself on the few physical features we share. I mostly take after my grandmother with my blonde hair and bright green eyes, but I got my wavy hair from my mom, along with my high, prominent cheekbones. I even modeled my eyebrows after her slender arch that always makes you think she knows everything already. Her cheeks are always rosy, while mine tend to stay pale. Her eyes are hazel, and usually have circles underneath from being up with us kids to get us off to school every morning for the past 13 years. Her hands are long and slender, yet rough and often caked with dirt in the spring and summer.

Her lips are not too large or thin, and her teeth are as naturally straight as can be, just like mine. She has an obsession with brushing them morning and night to the point where her gum line has started to recede, but they are pearly white and dazzling when she smiles. Her nose is rounder than mine, but it gives her face a softness that mine can never have. Before the chemotherapy turned it gray her wavy brown hair framed her face and ran long past her shoulders. She has always had olive toned skin, which Carl, my brother, inherited. They always get a deep tan in the Michigan summers. Whereas my dad and I always burn and then return to being pale as a ghost a week later.

My whole family is tall, my mother and I are no exception, and until about two years ago my mother was a healthy weight, albeit gaining a few pounds with age, but she was gorgeous and curvy. Whether others saw this beauty or just me it doesn’t matter, I have always thought my own mother prettier than many of my friends’ parents. Of course today as I think about it, that schema could very well have changed in the past year or so to help my mind defend my mother’s fading image.

I wait until I hear her bedroom door shut. Then I go up the stairs myself, my bare feet enjoying the soft carpet on the steps. I walk to the second door on the right, past my brother’s room, across from my parents’, and push on the dark wood door. I pause in the doorframe to listen for any noise coming from my parents’ room: silence. She must be passed out already, true to her word of being exhausted from just trying to get through the day. I turn to my dresser and grab a small black case. I flip it open and count three small throwing knives. My single Cold Steel large thrower sits next to them. The throwers are always in the middle of my arrangement of sharp things. Back down the stairs I go, grabbing the dark stained oak railing. I take a sharp right at the bottom of the steps to head down the narrow hallway that runs parallel to the stairs. I pass the first floor half bath and smell the apple cinnamon air freshener in there that my mom has used for as long as I can remember. The scent is mixed with laundry softener in the utility room right next to it. This room is startlingly white with the setting sun coming in the backdoor next to the dryer. The only color comes from the pile of dirty towels on the white tile floor in front of the washer and the dirty shoe prints in front of the door to the garage next to the washing machine. I open the white painted metal screen door with a creak and step out into the late afternoon May sun with my feet crossing the small, hot brick patio quickly.

It’s sunny outside, like the world doesn’t care. Lately I feel the weather should always be raining. I think it’s just been in my head since we learned about pathetic fallacies in my literature class. God, I hate when something stupid stays in your head when it should pass right through. I feel like my brain is a broken sand sifter.

I hear the wind rustle the new spring leaves on the trees. I feel the grass under my bare feet, soft and freshly cut to stain my toes. Through the backyard, past Mom’s extensive, multi-color, rock garden that surrounds a new maple tree planted last year, I go.

I head over to the back right corner of the yard where the old oak tree is. I only throw at this tree. Mom only allows me to mar up one, and only after I begged for months that I needed somewhere to practice my new hobby. So naturally I chose the tree with the biggest circumference. I wasn’t very good then and needed the bigger target area. Some days I still do. It never fails that as soon as I feel I am getting the hang of it, I go on a failure streak.

I take my big thrower out of its sheath by its dark green, Paracord handle and wipe the old dirt off of her by running my thumb along the flat edge towards the point. I can’t believe I let her stay that dirty. Then I remember, I had forgotten to write a senior memoir that was due the next morning, and I had packed everything up in a hurry the last time I threw almost a week ago.

I take my clean knife, and I square myself up to the tree and step forward with my arm remaining straight through the throw and ending level with my shoulder blade. Clunk. I walk forward and pick her up off of the ground.

“At least you stuck in the dirt,” I say. I go back to the same spot and throw again. Shilck. I hear the satisfying sticking noise. This knife is different to throw than my smaller ones, heavy and perfectly straight. The blade only runs on one side instead of both, and when she sticks she always goes in straight and right side up, perfectly balanced where the Paracord starts wrapping around the base. I move to my other smaller knives. For them I have to flick my wrist at the end, almost like a yoyo. If a yoyo was sharp and illegal to bring on school grounds.

“How’s that practicing?” asks a familiar voice out of sight.

I turn to my right and see my next-door neighbor’s grandson, Tom. Tom is in my graduating class at school and a childhood playmate. A big grin is splayed across his face. His round cheeks blushing as they always do when he smiles, which is pretty much all the time.

“It’s good, care to join?” I say. I wave my knife in the air in front of my face.

“Not today. I came over here because Grams needs me to rake her garden out for summer. She’ll probably take away my cookies and milk if she sees me slacking,” Tom smiles a big, white, toothy grin at his small joke. I can almost see his gums, his lips are stretched so thin. Then his grandmother slides open her glass back door.

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She is shuffling her weird green 70s shaded curtains out of the way. Tom hears the door and gives me a watch this look with his eyebrows raised mischievously and a small smirk.

“Hi Zoe,” Mrs. Shoe gives a small wave at me now that she is out of her curtains. She is wearing a yellow and pink floral print dress down to her ankles, and her short, gray hair is in pink curlers. She has a tanned, sweet face, but the wrinkles are so deep she could be a topographical map of the Grand Canyon.

She turns to her grandson. “Thomas! The rake is in the shed, not by the back fence.” Tom squishes his face together so it has plenty of creases and his light blue eyes are slits peeking through. He begins to mimic his grandmother. I cover my mouth with my free hand to stop my smile. This must goad him on because he covers his teeth with his lips and continues on, acting as if he needs dentures.

“Thomas! Thomas, are you listening to me?” He turns around when there is a long pause, and she is clearly waiting for an answer.

“Just wanted to say hi to Zoe, Grams. I’m still going to rake it all out before dark, promise.” She slides the door shut, and I watch her walk away back into her kitchen letting the curtains sway behind her. “Well, that’s my cue to start working,” he smiles and gives a single wave as he walks to the little dilapidated red shed behind his grandmother’s one story, yellow home. I watch him walk away for a second. He has a bigger stocky build, but he’s tall, clearly cut out for yard work and the like. It’s a wonder he never did sports in high school. His hair used to be a dark blonde when we were kids, and shaggy, but now it’s become a medium brown, and he keeps it pretty trim, never below his ears.

I go back to throwing after Tom steps out of sight and into the shed. Shilck. I make the first one with my smaller knife. Then I make the second one. I smile; I know Tom is watching me now from the shed door. I feel a pang of guilt as I smile. How dare I want to show off when my mother is so ill? The thought that the two are unrelated creeps into my mind, but it still doesn’t sit well with me as I throw my large knife again and miss with a disheartening clang on the wood. Guilt for being healthy is what my dad called it when I tried to explain to him a few months ago about how I felt wrong for every smile or laugh.

I don’t care if they are unrelated. It’s not right, I tell myself. I throw a little one and it falls to the ground to lie beside the big one. I throw the next one hard, out of frustration. It bounces off the tree and comes sailing, point forward, back at my legs. I jump back just in time as the knife sticks in the dirt two inches from my bare bright, purple painted toes.

I collect my knives from the grass, searching for the little black handles and continue to practice, but at this point I just keep failing. I see Tom look back at me once or twice when he hears a loud clang. I give up and head inside before I continue to embarrass myself. I leave new footprints on the white floor as I head back down the hall and take a right into the kitchen.

I look out the window above the kitchen sink as I rinse the dirt off my knives. The sun is setting now and casting the almost summer twilight glow, streaming in the sliding glass doors and playing games with the chair shadows in the dining room. I pat my blades dry with a hand towel that has a pleasant, little farmhouse on it and look across the fence from the sink window. Tom must have gone inside, the yard looks great. The leaves are gone, bushes trimmed into little squares, and the narrow walkway to her porch swept. He never half-asses a job, except when it comes to math.

I remember one of the few times I tried to tutor him before finally giving up last year. We were sitting in his room at his parents’ house across town. I had gone through the notes and homework for the week and made a practice worksheet and had even used my best handwriting to make an orderly version of our notes from class that day. The first five minutes started out great. I had both our textbooks open in front of us on his matted green bedroom carpet in the only clean spot in the room. The topic turned to hunting when I noticed a new photo on his wall of him and his buck last year among the plethora of band posters. That led to how my dad had just got Carl and me new shotguns for deer season, and that led Tom to tell me about a new venison recipe he wanted to try, and that led us to us being hungry. So instead of geometry we ended up eating cereal and flicking Lucky Charms at each other from across his living room before his mom got on our tails to pick it up.

I look back down at the knives in my hand, they look good and clean. I turn around and take in our kitchen. Dad is home now, must have come in while I was outside practicing. His coffee thermos is on the counter and his work shoes are placed neatly in by the door frame.

I walk upstairs in the growing twilight. Carl and my school pictures line the way up dating back to my freshman year, the year Mom was diagnosed. I touch each one in turn, dragging my fingers over the glass and wondering what life would be like now if Mom had never had cancer or worse if she never went to the doctors and found it at this late stage. She would have been gone before I ended my freshman year. I pass my parents' room. I hear crying instead of silence now. Dad’s crying mixed with even louder sobs from Mom. I stop for a second outside of their door and sigh. I can do nothing; I am powerless.

I continue to my room and place my knives back on my dresser. I check my phone, nothing, not even a text from my best friend, Emily or my boyfriend, Brian. Everyone must be outside enjoying the last light of this beautiful day. I suppose I should do my homework. I only have A.P. English to worry about tonight; all of my other classes are blow-offs. I signed up that way on purpose for my last semester of high school. That way I wouldn’t have to really worry about Senioritis. “Take blow off classes, maintain my hard earned GPA,” I told my friends the day we turned in our schedule requests junior year. First hour is AP English, then Intro to Statistics, P.E., Radio, Parenting, Home Maintenance, and Cooking and Nutrition.

I finish my homework, which consists of reading two AP exam essays for examples and writing a practice essay. The topic for this one is global warming. I really just want to write that I have enough shit to deal with without worrying about the polar bears. These should be becoming easier since we have been doing them all year, but I still can’t get higher than a 7 out of 9 when Mr. Fox times and grades us. I do my best though, and finish what I’m sure is a nine; schoolwork is the same as my face, slap on a smile, or an A in this case. If I slip from an A student to a C student, that would throw up a flag. I would have to explain my feelings to whatever counselor deals with the M section of the alphabet, and I just don’t have that type of energy or desire to stand out. I’ll let the counselor’s deal with the drama queens of the school who are worried they are stressing so much they might prematurely get wrinkles before they graduate college.

I probably shouldn’t feel so harshly about those people who go to get help. Perhaps the reason they go is more than an excuse to get out of class. I mean of all people I should know that sometimes issues are not so easily seen. I am not even sure if my teachers know about Mom.

“Zoe! Carl! Dinner!” I hear my Dad’s voice boom through my deep purple carpet.

“‘Kay!” I shout back. I shuffle everything back into my bag for the morning. I always pack at night so I can sleep in as long as possible. It can’t have been more than a minute since our dinner conversation through the floorboards when I hear my door creak open. I look up and see Mom already ready for bed in sweatpants and a blue matching sweatshirt.

“Did you hear your father?”

“Yeah.” I throw my neon green backpack aside. Mom gives me a look that says don’t throw things, and I ignore it. “I’ll be down in a sec.” She turns around and leaves my door wide open. I let out an irritated sigh.

I pass Mom down the stairs. I stop at the bottom to watch to be sure she gets all the way down, but I don’t say anything. I just watch and wait to see if I am needed. She makes it to the last step, and I am through the doorway to the kitchen before she can look up and see that I was waiting for her. I can’t let her know I was. That would be admitting something was wrong.

I smell the food before I see it. Dad has made grilled chicken strips marinated in Italian dressing. I walk to the table and sit down in my normal spot next to Carl closest to the living room. There are real mashed potatoes and fried green beans to go with the chicken. Carl already has his plate filled up and is about to take a bite of his chicken when Mom sits down.

“Wait for Grace, Carl,” Mom says. She sounds as patient as a Saint and for some reason unbeknownst to me that infuriates me. Dad brings the salt and pepper to the table and sits down. I grab ahold of Mom’s hand and wait for Carl’s callused hand, but as the normal routine goes I have to nudge him and Dad has to give him a glare before he gives in and holds hands. I still can’t figure out why it’s a big deal to him. We only take the time to say Grace on Sundays.

“Bless us Oh Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

“Amen,” Dad and I say. Carl eats. His long brown hair hiding his face as he chews.

Carl is done before the rest of us, but he sits a while longer. The conversation is good.

Dad is telling us the story of his first girlfriend, “When I was, oh I don’t know, 17 maybe, I rode my bike ten miles to this girl I was going with’s house.” There is a dirty look from Mom. “I kid you not, there was cat shit all over that house. Nastiest house I had ever been in. The girl was showin’ me around, and we were going downstairs to the basement where her room was. There were wooden steps and she slipped in cat piss and fell all the way down to the bottom. I spent the rest of the night in the ER with her and her Mom.”

Carl and I laugh. “Did you go out with her again, Dad?” I ask jokingly.

“Hell no, I didn’t!”

“Your turn, Mom. Funny dating story from your glory days,” I say.

She purses her lips with thought. “There was this guy when I was in college. Name started with a B or something. He was really sweet. I went with him for a while, and he would always take me to the nicest places: best restaurants, concerts, you name it.” Dad’s turn for a dirty look. “I always wondered how he did this as a college student. All he did was work part time in the bookstore. So I started listening in on his phone calls when he would make reservations. He lied. Straight up would either act like a lunatic until people would give him a discount to just get off the phone with him, or he would come up with some sob story about his sick mother. So I asked him about it, and he would lie to my face. I think he believed himself. Then he would start doing it in person at events instead of just on the phone. Oh, God he would carry on. Telling people he was homeless on and on. So eventually I broke up with him. He followed me around campus for the rest of the year, always hiding around corners or leaving me flowers. Thankfully, I transferred the next year.”

There is silence, “Dad’s was funnier,” Carl says. I snicker.

“Well, okay, but mine was scarier. The guy was nuts!” Mom says as she gets up to take her plate to the dishwasher. We all follow suit.

“Thanks for dinner, Dad,” I say as I leave to head back upstairs.

“Thanks,” says Carl.

Carl and I get to the stairs at the same time and without warning it is a race to the shower. We shove and push each other all the way up. I get to the bathroom first with one final shove and slam the door shut, “Ha!” I shout. Carl bangs on the door once and walks away in defeat.

I like the shower. It’s calming, washing out all the bad. The image of Mom hobbling up the stairs after vomiting gets stuck in my head. I can’t wash it down the drain. I try to cry. I need the release to be able to calm down. I can’t though. I’m not sure why I can’t. I keep telling myself that I need to cry, but I can’t. Images from these past few months are always floating in my head, but I can’t cry them out, can’t wash them away. “It’s because she’s going to live, that’s why,” I say aloud to the silver showerhead. “Why cry if she will see your graduation, wedding, and kids? It’s stupid.” Yes, this is why I can’t cry. Why I couldn’t cry today, yesterday, or the day before, but I’ll try again tomorrow.

I get out of the shower and run down the hall in a white towel to my room. I change into the pajamas Mom got me last Christmas, purple plaid, my request for our Christmas Eve family tradition.

I wander into my brother’s room. His door is always open, the opposite of mine. He’s playing Assassin’s Creed II on his Xbox. “Hey, Carl.”

He looks up and whips his head to the left. His hair is in a permanent swept look from this after years. “What’s up?” He asks and goes back to his game. His hazel eyes, that look like Mom’s, focusing on the screen instead of my face.

“Did you hear Dad crying earlier?” I sit down on the edge of his bed, looking at the screen, as well. He seems to be the only person I can talk to about these things anymore without it getting weird.

“Not today. I heard him last night though.” He looks down and pauses his game. There is a short silence as we both think separately about the same worry.

“You think she’ll live?”

“Yeah, Mom’s tough,” his voice is confident, but his eyes remain downcast, staring at his black controller as if it will agree with him.

“So how’s school?” I prompt to change the subject. These conversations always try to end on either a positive note or a completely different one. It’s our way of keeping the tragedy out of the tragedy.

“Good, shop class is going alright and the rest I’m not failing.” He goes back to his game. I sit on his bed and watch for a while. Assassins Creed is always a fun game to watch with the scaling walls and swan dives off of the Florence bell tower. When the red digital clock in his room reads ten, I get up and head to bed.

I can’t cry because my body knows she is going to live, I think to myself before I pull up my black and white striped comforter and pray.

“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take. God, please bless my family and friends, let them be okay and succeed in their endeavors. Please, let Mom’s pain be manageable, and allow me the courage to help her. Lord, please let my mother, one day, live a cancer free life. Amen.” I word the last line carefully just as I have for the past three years. I’ve heard God does unexpected things to answer prayers, and I don’t need another curve ball thrown my way.

The day she told us, I thought, if I ask God to have the cancer leave her he might kill her, and if I ask her to live it could be a horrible life. So that day I planned out my prayers, 11:11 wishes, shooting stars, and coin tosses. Never once daring to wish for myself.