Burning Tulips

Chapter Forty-Two: A New Home

137 Chapter Forty-two A New Home “Well, we signed our house off today. We have a month and a half to find a new home,” Mom tells me when I get home from work. “You must be kidding.” After eighteen years of living at what we named the Seventeenth Street ghetto, complaining about the noise and neighbors’ stench, we’re actually going to move. Joe has been working at the factory with Dad the last two years, I just graduated from high school and work as a teacher’s aide in a special education classroom, and Sue is a junior in high school. I never thought I’d be living with my family at eighteen, but I can’t leave Mom now because she’s about to die. “Where we moving to, Ma?” “I don’t know. I didn’t think our house would sell. We never paid it off. We won’t find another house for eight thousand dollars, that’s for sure.” “That means we have to be out by Christmas.” “There won’t be another Christmas at this house.” I don’t want my mother to see me cry, so I take Chum, our beagle, for a walk. The doctors have told us they are surprised Mom has lived this long and doubt she will last much longer, but it seems as if everyone in the family, except for Mom, thinks she’ll go on forever. I walk past my grandparents’ home wondering what Mom’s mornings will be like without Grandpa walking over for his morning coffee and cookies. Mom doesn’t want to leave us in a house full of sad memories.This new house will never feel like home to any of us. In two weeks, we find a new house. One evening, Sue, Mom, and I go look at it with hopes of becoming more excited about moving. “You girls will finally have your own bedrooms,” she says. After years of complaining about sharing a room, neither of us are excited about sleeping in separate rooms. It isn’t until the room is dark and everyone’s asleep that we finally start talking about important things. 138 Burning Tulips Still, we smile and tell Mom it is going to be much better having our own rooms, already sensing the distance it will put between us. “And look at my large room,” Mom says. “Look at this big closet. We won’t hear any neighbors out here. It’s like living in the country being surrounded by a cornfield. We’ll really like it in the summer, won’t we?” “Yeah, Ma,” we agree. “And a bedroom in the basement for Joe. It’ll feel like his own apartment that way. I’m going to check out the basement.” Sue and I look out the kitchen sliding door, seeing nothing but snow-covered cornfields, noticing the absence of a shared driveway and neighbor kids waving as we look out the window. Then we hear our mother fall and run to the stairs. I see the blood seeping beneath her bra, hear her moan, and have an awful feeling that this will be her last time in the basement. The blood oozes through her shirt and she seems to be fading away. Once again, there’s nothing I can do but hope she’ll live. There’s so many unasked questions, unknown answers. I always act as if everything is fine, careful not to hurt her, afraid to reveal myself, afraid to know her. ...