Rhythmic thumping broke through the quiet of my house, getting closer and louder much faster than I would like.  I put the mocha mousse lip gloss I was applying down and started toward my front door.  By the time I got it open, my mom was getting out of her car, a process which would take longer than seemed possible and would have been made easier by leaving her dog at home rather than toting her along.  Anna Louise refused to get out of the car leaving Mom to yank on her leash until the obstinate dog gave in and jumped out. 

She turned and smiled at me.  Wide and innocent.  She was anything but innocent and the smile usually meant grief for me.   I didn’t have time for her brand of grief.

“What the hell, Mom?  I heard you coming from the railroad tracks,” I said.

“It wasn’t loud,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.  “It was Guns N’ Roses.”

She made her way to my side.  My mother didn’t walk, not ever.  Sometimes she sauntered, or moseyed, or even pranced, but today she swaggered and looked at me sideways.  Inside I braced myself for whatever trouble or antics she was bringing my way.

“Stay out here with me so I can smoke,” she said, lighting a cigarette and not really caring that I was only half dressed and it was hot out.   She looked around, shaking her long feather earrings from side to side.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She sat contemplating for a few moments.  Deep thought always looked like bad shellfish on her.  “Do you know what bachelor buttons are?”

“Uh…yeah.  The flowers that grew in Granny’s yard, tall stems and weird, jagged petals?”  I answered.   She was always so damn cryptic, and I didn’t have time to unlock this code.  

“Well, they are all over my yard.  Yellow ones.  But not just any yellow, bright yellow.  Yellow bachelor buttons.”

“I didn’t realize they came in yellow.  I thought they were blue and purple, or pink.”  I sighed as I squinted into the sunlight.

“Me either.  I think they put them there,” she said, blowing smoke in my direction even though she tried not to.

I didn’t want to ask the next question.  I just wanted her to tell me what she wanted, then go home, get out of my space and out of my life for one day.  Just one day, that’s all I wanted.  But I knew I had to ask.  If I didn’t, she would sit in my lawn chair, on my porch, until I did.  Her dog would bark and crap in my yard (as she was currently doing on my neighbor’s lawn) and my mother would look at me with an eyebrow raised and her chin reaching high into the air like she knew a secret I would never find out. 

I closed my eyes.  “Who?  Who put them there?”

Opening my eyes, I saw her pointing up at the sky with the two fingers which held her cigarette and a shit-eating grin spreading across her face.  “I think they see me at night when I go outside.  I watch them and they watch me back.  Then, in the morning, there are more bachelor buttons.”

It took me a moment to decide whether she was serious or just being crazy.  Sometimes she liked to tell me absurd stories about how wonderful my childhood was or how great our relationship is, but no matter how often she said it, or how much her brown eyes said she wanted it to be true, I knew better.  So, I thought the aliens may be her attempt at refining her talent for lying.

   “Yellow ones,” she said.

She was serious.  Nervous, but serious.

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“Yeah,” I said.  “I know.”

“Do you think they can see me?  I do.  Every night when I take Precious out, there they are—“  

She continued talking, but I didn’t really hear it.  I was busy wondering how many Xanax I had left and if I could mix it with a Valium and shot of tequila and still get through the rest of the day.  Then I thought it was probably the only way I could.

“Are you listening to me, Gracie?”  she asked, pulling me back into her reality.  “Go put some clothes on.  You look like a fat whore, for Christ’s sake; you’ve got boobs everywhere.”  

She whispered the words whore and boobs.  Obviously words too offensive to be said loud enough for God or anyone else to hear, which made me laugh.

“I have a lunch date.”  Looking at my watch, I knew he had most likely left the restaurant assuming I wasn’t going to show.  “Well, I had a lunch date.”

She looked me over from head to toe and back up again.  “A date, huh?  It’s about time.  You haven’t had a date in forever. That explains the trashy look you have going.”

“Right, Mom,” I said, walking back inside.

I heard her call behind me. “I’ll call you next time I see them.  You can come over and tell me what you think.”

I closed the door and waited until I heard the thump and scratch of bass in bad car speakers before going to the medicine cabinet.

***

That night I was yanked from sleep by Lady Gaga singing “Telephone”.  I groaned as I reached to answer my cell phone and shut Gaga up.  

“Hello?”  I said.

“They’re here,” the voice on the other line whispered.

“Mom?  Who’s there?” I opened my eyes wide until the numbers on the clock formed a recognizable shape. 2:14 am.

“Just get over here,” she said before the phone clicked and the call ended.

“Fuck!”  I ran my hand through my hair.  

At least she lives close, I thought as I pulled on a pair of shorts and slipped my feet into flip flops.  There was no traffic, probably because no one else in town had a crazy mother who summoned them in the middle of the night, so I made it to her house in a matter of minutes.

Nearing her driveway, I saw her yard was indeed covered with bachelor buttons.  Even in the dark I could see they were yellow.  Very yellow.  I parked my car behind my mom’s car and saw she was sitting on her porch swing pushing herself back and forth looking into the sky.  Trying not to make any noise, I walked toward her.

“Shh,” she said.  She held an unlit cigarette in her right hand just in front of her lips.  “Do you remember that movie where the aliens invade and the dad and uncle have to save the kids?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“I made one of those hats.”

I stood behind her and followed her gaze into the stars.  “Huh?”

“The hats that kept the aliens from reading their minds, you know.  I made one,” she said lowering the still unlit Marlboro to point at something on the seat next to her.

As I walked around to sit beside her, I saw she was pointing at a large lump of tin foil shaped like a giant Hershey’s Kiss.  

“But I decided not to wear it because I don’t care if they read my mind.  I think they like me, Gracie.”  Then my mother smiled at me. Not the kind of smile that usually means she wants something or is up to something, but genuine.  The kind of smile happy people have.  

Picking up the hat, I sat down next to her.  “That’s really cool, Mom.  I’m sure they do.”

“Do you see them?”

 I wanted to see what she saw, something fantastic which looked down on her and thought she was beautiful, but all I saw was stars and the occasional blinking satellite.  

“Yep,” I said.

A while later, she stood and brushed her hands across the seat of her pants, yawning.  “I told you they were here,” she said, and went inside her small, run-down house.

I stayed where I was on the porch swing with the crazy foil hat in my lap, looking at the flowers that were taking over my mother’s yard.  To me they were wildflowers growing out of control, but to my mother they were a gift from extraterrestrial beings that traveled across space to watch her watch them.

I went to my car and fumbled around in the floorboard searching for a pair of shoes left there.  Finally finding them, I pulled the shoelace from the holes and threw the shoe back into the messy backseat.  I didn’t want to disturb my mother’s bachelor buttons, so I picked a bundle of them from where they grew in the ditch across the street then tied the shoelace around them.  After scribbling “I love you” onto the back of a Walmart receipt found crumpled up in the bottom of my purse and tucked it behind the shoelace.  

Trying not to make enough noise to wake her or Anna Louise, I lay the flowers on her porch, got in my car, and drove home.