Hungry Hill: A Memoir

Chapter 12 - My Mother’s Closet

72 H u n g ry H i l l ing bell in my head clanging, Don’t go in the park. Richie puts his arm around Kathy’s shoulder and they snuggle against each other. I imagine us as the cover of a romance comic, the one with the red heart in the corner and the blonde crying six-inch tears, Have I lost him forever? Kathy is looking at me and blinking her eyes the way cheerleaders are trained to do. She wants me to say yes—I will ruin it for everyone if I say no. Then a voice inside my head says, “You don’t have a mother anymore to take care of you, Carole. You have to take care of yourself.” “I told my father I’d be home early tonight. I can’t go,” I lie, and Gordie drops my hand. On the way home, Kathy and I are quiet. Finally, she asks me, “Your father’s not even home tonight, is he?” Then she sighs and says, “You act like you’re thirteen.” After that night, we go to Dave’s one more time and Gordie and Richie are not there. A few nights later, Richie calls Kathy and tells her Gordie’s going out with someone seventeen, a bleached blonde. I feel relieved, as if I’ve stepped out of a spotlight. The next day, Kathy goes to Lake Wickabogue with her aunt for a week, and she never calls me again. = 12. My Mother’s Closet “Ouch!” I yell, as the backs of my legs touch the sun-scorched stone wall in front of Cal’s Variety Store. Watching me from his carriage, Tommy’s eyes fill with fear, then tears. Quickly, I hand him pieces from my Mounds to distract him. When he crams the dark chocolate in his baby mouth, his tears miraculously stop. The candy, dribbling down his chin, works its tranquilizing sugar magic, lulling Tommy into staying in his carriage instead of trying to climb over the side on this endless afternoon. I am on a mission to Cal’s and have bought Hostess cupcakes for Michael, Superman comic books for Gerry, and red licorice for Danny with money they scraped together or borrowed from one another. Now, to pass the time, I’m flipping through Gerry’s Superman comic book when the sky suddenly changes from gray to charcoal and the temperature drops. “Tommy,” I say, bending down, “I’m playing a new game, it’s called run as fast you can, and all you have to do is to hold on to this bar. If you keep A Memoir 73 your hands right here all the way home, you win. Ready set, and what is it you say?” “Go, Cawol, go.” He’s a little shaky on his r sounds, so I chuckle when he says Cawol. Trying to beat the rain, we run down Liberty, swerving by the rocks and holes on the side of the road. “Go, go, go faster,” Tommy chants, thrilled with my beat-the-rain game. Mother Nature pelts us with gumdrop-sized raindrops that bounce back up off the corner mailbox. With no breath left and a pain throbbing in my side, I turn the corner onto Lynwood Terrace and see three cars parked in front of our house, my aunts’ cars. Odd, for a Tuesday afternoon in the middle of July. What’s going on now? I wonder, brushing the smeared chocolate off Tommy’s little face, a face so like a Gerber baby. What now? I hold my breath. “Your aunts want you in the bedroom,” Mrs. Meade says, as she sponges down the kitchen table. Her eyes, newly red from crying, alarm me. “Look at the chocolate all over that sweet baby face. I’m gonna get you, Tommy. I’m gonna get that baby boy,” she says when Tommy scurries away on his chubby legs from her aproned front. When he scoots away, I’m secretly pleased. Mrs. Meade is not our mother. She’s just not. In my parents’ bedroom, my mother’s clothes are spread out on the bed in orderly piles. Caught off guard by the neatly folded clothes and the half empty closet, I hide my surprise at seeing my aunt Lee sitting on the floor in front of the closet and handing my mother’s wedge-soled shoes, high heels, and slippers to my aunt Stella. With her free hand...