CHAPTER 19

Mom

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LOS ANGELES IS MORE than a skyline of towers. As we approach the city, its sprawling borders remind me of an open hand trying to hold too much. It’s endless and overwhelming. I’m balancing all of my hope and dread in the palm of that hand. The expansive sea of people and buildings that stretch out around us have settled into the bowl of the valley. A dust cloud of brown smog hovers over everything. Glendale, California isn’t technically L.A., it’s a heaving suburb on the city’s outskirts, but to me it might as well be.

We’ve been in Massack, California for fifteen years. Less than 100 people live along that lonely stretch of highway. There are no streetlights or gas stations, nothing but a post office and a butcher shop, where I could pick up a pound of ground beef for dinner or a gallon of milk for double the price. We’ve spent fifteen years driving an hour for groceries, and tomorrow we’ll be living a block away from a Ralph’s. This isn’t just a vacation. We’ll be living here. Making a life beneath the stained dome of tainted air. It excites and terrifies me in the same breath.

“You know we can actually order pizza and get it delivered,” Lucy pipes up from the back seat. “Maybe Friday night can be pizza night.”

She pokes her blonde head through the center of the two front seats, propping her elbows on the center console. Her happiness is infectious and subdues most of my worry. “Okay,” I agree, smiling over my shoulder. We share a look, and I fall victim to her approval. Needing it like a dog looking for a pat on the head. I can’t help it.

As we enter the labyrinth of streets that pave grid-like blocks through the town of Glendale, I stop in front of a small apartment building dressed in dirty pink stucco.

“There are bars on the windows,” Ruth notices. “What do you think that means?”

“But it’s pink!” Lucy adds with a lift in her voice. “Come on. Look at how cute this street is?”

Despite the dated homes that line the cracked and mossy curb, it does have a charming feel to it. Mature Jacarandas shade the sidewalks, their limbs stretching wide as if they’re reaching for each other. Purple flowers litter the pavement with color and fragrance.

“Let’s give it a chance,” I whisper, mostly to myself.

An ancient Filipina lady wanders the courtyard of the complex aimlessly. She watches me as I yank on the pink, rod iron entry gate. I don’t have the code, and the door doesn’t budge.

“Excuse me.” I wave at her and she shuffles over, using a cane to do most of the work.

Her face is an old catcher’s mitt full of wrinkles, but her close-lipped smile is kind.

“We’re supposed to move in here. Apartment 4B.” I have no idea if the woman understands. She opens and closes her mouth as if to say something, but no words come out. Her dentures slip on and off with the smacking of her lips, and then she moves like a tortoise in the other direction.

“Shit.”

“Don’t you have the landlord’s phone number or something?” Ruth asks.

“Yeah...” I trail off without elaborating.

I got roped into a two-year contract at the cell phone store. It was supposed to be $20 a month, but I miscalculated minutes or some other fee they tacked on and now the bill is $100. I can’t pay it, so the phone is nothing but a brick in my purse. Of course they want $200 to cancel the contract, which I can’t afford either, so here I am.

I stare through the bars at the courtyard, imagining spending the night in our car. Who knows what kind of neighborhood this is. Surveying the street, I notice a man with dark eyebrows passing us on the sidewalk. He watches with curiosity, and I worry about his intentions. Though he’s probably just wondering why we’re waiting out here.

“Mom?” Ruth snaps me out of it.

“Huh? Yeah.” I dig through my purse, just in case they forgot to disconnect my service. “We need to find a phone.”

“Rachel?” A short Filipino man with a wide, perfect smile and a long stride is on the other side of the fence.

“Hi,” I sigh with relief.

“Sorry. My mother can’t speak English.” He clicks the lock open. “We’ve been waiting for you, though.”

He struggles with his jeans pocket to pull out a set of keys and leads us to the door closest to the front gate.

“This is it,” he says as he ushers us in. “Rent is due on the first of the month. No pets. No unusual guests. The entry code is 1234, and your parking spot in the basement garage matches your apartment number. I’m apartment 1A if you have any questions.” He talks fast and I can tell he’s rushing like he’s on his way somewhere. “Okay. Thanks girls. See you around.”

The three of us stand alone in the center of the vacant living room. A set of windows overlook the street, which is nice, because purple flowers continue to fall like snow from the trees.

“I’m going to check out the rest,” Lucy says, jetting down the hall. Ruth follows, walking slowly behind her.

I take stock of the galley kitchen. It’s tiny. The white and gold counters are sticky with grease. The cream-colored appliances are old and rusty. I open the fridge, which has been turned off, a breeding ground for mold and bacteria. The smell hits me in the face and I slam it shut. The cabinets are a dated walnut wood. I open one and catch an extended family of roaches in the midst of their business. They scurry into the cracks and vanish.

One by one, these deficits are tying themselves together into a tight little knot of panic in my chest.

“We get our own bathroom,” Lucy says, peeking around the corner.

Ruth emerges from one of the bedrooms looking unsure.

“What do you think, Ruth?” I ask, closing the cabinet to hide the roaches. I’ll call my mom as soon as we get a phone. She’ll know how to get rid of them.

“It’s weird.” Ruth stops in front of the window to check our view of the sidewalk. “I mean. It’s exciting and fun to have our own place, but it still kinda feels like someone else’s empty house, you know?”

“So let’s go get our stuff,” Lucy says, trying to coax some excitement into all of us.

She heads to the street on her own, and I watch through the window as she bounds toward our car.

Lucy does most of the heavy lifting. She’s like a bull that way, not only in her demeanor, but in muscle and strength of will. Ruth helps me unload the large black trash bags full of our things. I stack our clothes in neat piles along the bedroom wall. Ruth folds blankets into long rectangles and places pillows at one end to resemble beds. We line our shoes near the door.

There isn’t much else. The items that filled our small Toyota to the roof add up to nothing once they’re scattered and stacked in the corners of our little hovel.

I see the disappointment in Ruth’s face, though I don’t know what she was expecting. The sloping lines of her defeated posture are a reminder of my failures. Seventeen years of building a life, of working day and night to make what little we had into a home and this is what we’re left with.

“We’ll go to the thrift store tomorrow and get some furniture. Don’t worry.”

“No. It’s fine.” Ruth shoots me a quick smile. “It’s a blank canvas. It’s going to look awesome.”

“So, should we order pizza?” Lucy asks. “I’m starving.”

The question makes me laugh, maybe because my answer is so pathetic. “We don’t have a phone. It’s not working.”

“We can drive,” Ruth suggests. “It’s probably a block away.”

“Or we could go to the grocery store,” I muse, hoping they’ll take the bait. It’s cheaper to make food than waste $20 on one meal. “That’s a block away for sure. Should we make dinner? I bet we could buy a sauté pan there and some plastic cups and plates.”

And that’s what we do. I let the girls go a little crazy picking out food they like, because it’s actually something we can fill our home with. Something that makes it more ours. When the checker tells me the total, I balk. The nerves in my stomach surge into a swell of anxiety, but I hand over the chunk of money with a straight face.

My mind dwells on the student loan payment that should post to my account any day. I just need to hold us over until I get it. Class starts in two weeks, and I hope I have enough left over for books and things.

The second time we walk through our new front door it starts to feel more familiar.

“We should put a plant out here,” Ruth says with an armful of groceries.

I drop my haul on the counter, and realize I need to plug the fridge in. The girls notice the disgusting sink and stovetop. I don’t even need to ask them. All of us pick our own areas to focus on and power-clean the surfaces with the cheap rags and dish soap we bought at the grocery store.

“Mom, where is your cell phone?” Lucy asks, digging through my purse. She finds it, and gloms onto someone’s wi-fi so we can use Pandora. She’s always been tech-savvy like that, and I’m glad for her internet thieving skills, because the music brightens our moods.

The three of us sing as we clean. My girls are smiling and laughing together as they use cans of soup for microphones. I don’t care how much the food cost. I would have paid anything for this. It’s the first happy moment that’s truly ours.

“See, Mom,” Lucy says, stirring her bowl of spaghetti after we’ve settled in for the night. “We can do this.”

Our blanket-beds have been relocated to the middle of the living room, and the three of us are snuggled up in them as we eat our dinner.

“I guess she’s changed her tune from a few months ago when we left,” Ruth teases, though I pick up on the subtle jab.

“I was freaked out, okay?” Lucy slurps. “But I get it now. You deserve better, Mom.”

“So do you,” I say, feeling the guilt for Steve’s short-falls. “I wish I could have given you a better father.”

“I’m not,” Ruth says, defiant. “We wouldn’t be us, would we? Maybe I wouldn’t exist.”

“I guess,” I laugh.

“Seriously, that’s the one thing you shouldn’t regret. Yeah, you married the wrong man and spent seventeen years with him, but it was worth it. You got us.”

“Yeah,” Lucy pushes her bowl away and lays on her belly, bear hugging her pillow into a comfortable lump. “We have each other. We’re like built-in friends for life.”

“I am pretty lucky to have you girls. Not every mother gets to be this close with her daughters.”

“Well not every mother loves her kids the way you love us,” Ruth says, following Lucy’s lead and sliding deeper into her bed of blankets. “I know you think I’m just saying that, but it’s true. None of my friends back home felt like they could tell their moms anything. You’re my best friend. You’ve always made sure I knew that. I know you’ll always love me no matter what.”

“How could I not?” I ask, reaching out for my girls, as if touching them solidifies the promise of my love.

“It’s true,” Lucy says. “No matter how much I mess up, I know you’ll always forgive me. No matter how mean or mad I get. You always take me back.”

Without my children, the empty walls and bare carpet would be a stark reminder of what little we have, the absence of a blaring TV would be unsettling, but with them, it all feels like an adventure on our first quiet night together.

“Thanks girls.” I get up to shut the light off. “I love you so much,” I tell them, and they can’t see just how much in the dim light of that vacant room, but it’s eternal, my love for them.

“Nobody loves like you, Mom,” Lucy whispers as I lay down next to her in the dark. “Nobody in the world.”