What Floats

"She's lying down."

That's what I told Miss Viola from down the block when she stopped by to see my mother. Miss Viola straightened the strap on her flowered sundress, peering through the half-opened screen door into our messy kitchen. She held a pack of Kools in one hand and looked like she expected coffee.

"Jonathan," asked Miss Viola, squinting her mascaraed eyes, "is your mother sick?"

"No. I mean, yes. A little."

"One of those headaches?" Miss Viola wrinkled her brow, waiting for a response. I said nothing. "Well, tell her to ring me when she feels better."

I closed and locked the door, and went back to washing dishes. This was the first Wednesday after it happened, and I'd never cooked for myself before. I didn't even know you have to defrost hamburgers in the freezer before you fry them. The charred lump of meat that I gobbled took an hour to cook. I put a lot of mustard on it. There was no bread.

I still had homework to do. I tiptoed into Mother's room and turned up the air conditioner. I don't know why I tiptoed, but it was awfully quiet in there. I flicked on the lamp next to the bed and tried to tug the covers out from under her, but they were tucked tight and wouldn't budge. So I ripped the pages out of my arithmetic workbook and spread them on top of her in case she was chilly. She looked so peaceful in the blue rayon dress she'd been wearing when she rushed home from work on Monday evening.

"Just need to lie down for a few minutes," she'd said, sweeping past me into her bedroom. Lately she'd had a lot of headaches, so I knew how to take care of myself while she rested. I peeked into her room every half hour. Usually she asked for a glass of water, but now she wasn't asking for any water. I brought her a glass anyway.

She was still lying down.

I shook her. She moaned.

Then I shook her again. She didn't moan.

Her eyes were wide open, staring straight at the ceiling.

I let the phone ring and ring, and latched the doors. She was so afraid of burglars and murderers in Gentilly, our neighborhood of raised wooden bungalows behind the race track in New Orleans. Mostly there were just kids like me with moms like her, except the other houses had daddies. We lived in my grandparents' house, where my mother had grown up. After my father left us, MawMaw and PawPaw moved to Jackson, Mississippi, and let us live there. But my grandparents thought I was a big mistake.

"Look how that boy is growing up." MawMaw would shake her head. "A nine year-old needs a father and brothers and sisters. He can't live alone with a woman who works in a drugstore all day. And kids shouldn't be raised around a man with a temper like that. Should have known that before you started."

Whenever I sassed or wouldn't go to bed on time, my mother would say she couldn't do a thing with me.

* * *

"I'll have to send you to live with your father. He could make you listen."

That was my worst fear, that I'd have to go live with my father in California. When he left, he busted up everything. It took us a week to pick the broken glass out of the carpet. He didn't remember my birthday and when he called he was gruff and grouchy and didn't ask to talk with me. "Put your mother on," he'd say when I answered. I was just a nuisance, in the way.

I climbed into bed and tried to read the chapter in Faraway Lands and Peoples about the Egyptian pyramids, but I couldn't keep my eyes on the page. So I slid under the bed where no bad thoughts or murderers could get me. Late at night I would often lie there...