Erin

 

“Mom!” I shout through the doorway, struggling to balance the large paper sacks of groceries in my arms and the house keys in the other. “Are you up? I brought some dinner!” There’s no answer, so I try again as I throw the sacks down at my feet. “Come on, Mom! You know what the doctor said about trying to stay awake. It’s hard, I know, but you have to at least try to—”

 

“I’m up. I’m up.” Mom walks through the hallway slowly, her hands grasping at the walls for support. She can barely lift her bald head up and the pink nightgown she’s wearing is the same one from yesterday, but I’ve never seen her look so beautiful.

 

I run to her side, grabbing her arm. “I didn’t mean to literally ‘get up’, Mom. You know what the doctors said about—”

 

“Yes, Erin. I’m in those meetings too. You don’t need to remind me of what the doctors have to say. I know my own body.”

 

“Then you should know it needs to be laying down somewhere comfortable and warm – not walking around barefoot in a nightgown that’s clearly seen better days.”

 

She eyes me knowingly. This was the nightgown my dad gave her about seventeen Christmases ago. It was the last gift he gave her before he disappeared on us. If I were her, I would have burned the damn thing the night he called to make it clear he wasn’t coming back to us. But she’s sentimental like that and a complete cheapskate.

 

The one time I asked why she keeps it, she barked out back, “Why would I want to waste a perfectly good nightgown on my anger towards that man?”

 

Now, she never takes it off. I’ve tried buying her new ones from Goodwill or offering up a pair of my comfy pajamas, but she scoffs at everything. She wants the one with the pink lace barely holding on at the seams – the one that perhaps still smells like him and his cologne and cigarettes when she closes her eyes tight enough.

 

And how could I say no to a dying woman? I wash the thing when she lets me, and then I carefully help her put it back on when it’s dried. ‘Careful’ is the keyword around the house these days. Everything bothers my mom’s condition. Too many lights on and she swears she hears the buzzing of the electricity. Close the door too loudly, and she complains about her eardrums bursting. Cry in front of her, and she’ll practically reach over to slap you silly.

 

I’ve seen her do it a few times before with the few friends that still stop in from time to time to visit her. It’s like watching a living funeral procession. They bring flowers that will bother her sinuses and food she can’t eat anymore, and they pat me gently on the head as they dot their eyes with tissues.

 

Just out of her earshot or when she’s fallen back asleep, they whisper to me, “Bless your heart, Erin. You’re an amazing daughter. Megan raised you right.”

 

My mom did. She taught me to love and be loved, and she taught me that family comes first – no matter how many times they break your heart. And now that she’s dying, a status I’ve come to accept, she’s taught me how to say goodbye – slowly and over and over again. There have been so many times when she’s been strapped to the machines that beep slower and slower. The numbers drop in a blink of an eye, and the doctors and nurses gather to tell me it’s time. I hold her hand tightly and pray to God that it’s painless for both of us. But each and every time, she’s rebounded.

 

The next morning, she will be sitting up, acting as if nothing has happened and that the cancer that started in her breasts and moved to her stomach and bones only existed in our imagination. I love that about her – she never stops trying to outlast and outlive other’s expectations. Even today, her walking is a surprise.

 

The doctors said she would be confined to her new hospital bed for the remainder of her short time. The nurses come every six hours to turn her to prevent bed sores and to stretch her wasting muscles. They shake their heads as they look at the veins and tell me that it won’t be long. But here she is today, walking.

 

“Come on and sit down, Mom. I can make you some tea.”

 

I move her slowly, taking the majority of her weight on my shoulder, towards the couch. She gingerly sits back on the brown pillows and then leans her head back against the wall.

 

“No, no, Erin. I’m okay. I’m not thirsty.”

 

“I know you’re not, but your body is. I’ll make it iced, so you don’t burn your tongue again.”

 

“I’m really fine, honey. I don’t need you to fuss over me like you do.” She looks towards the bags of groceries. “And those… who are those for?”

 

“It’s your drinks, Mom. The doctors said that you should try these nutrient shakes so that you can keep your energy up.”

 

“And what about you? What are you eating? I haven’t seen you eat a thing in a long while. You’re looking as skinny as I am.” She chuckles to herself. She has always loved a horrible, dark joke. She’s spent most of her cancer laughing at it when she can.

 

I smile awkwardly and say, “I eat at the bar. They feed me there. I know it’s not the healthy stuff you want me to be eating, but we’ve got to be careful with money. The hospice workers cost a lot, and if we can’t afford them, I need to bring you back to the state hospital.”

 

She groans audibly at the threat. Normally, she would never complain – it’s not in her nature – but the public hospital is not fit for anyone, even for my joking and sunny mom. The doctors don’t care, and the nurses are always in and out before we can learn one of their names. On our last extended stay, she shared a room with another woman who couldn’t handle her medication. The room smelled so badly from the sickness that it took all my powers to not run out of there screaming.

 

But what are my alternatives? The hospital with the private rooms with the big glass windows looking out over the waterfront comes at a price. My mom’s lucky to have disability insurance. It covers a ton, but it certainly wasn’t hacking at the bills from St. Martha’s like it should. After just a week there, the bill was over $20,000. I had no choice but to ship her off to Rodeo State Hospital and hope for the best.

 

She deteriorated there until they told me they were at the end of their ropes: bring her home to die in peace and pay for out-of-pocket hospice nurses to manage her pain or have her die in a place less peaceful than a prison. I chose home. My mom’s done so much for me that it only seems right.

 

I know she doesn’t have long – maybe a few more months to go. Every day she grows weaker, and her needs get bigger. There’s a nurse to give her the pain medications and check her vitals. There’s another to make sure she’s turned over and stretched. One comes at night while I’m working my shifts at the bar to make sure she’s looked after. There’s even another on call for days when I can’t handle the breaks between their work.

 

As my mom dozes off again on the couch, I take a deep breath and head for the kitchen. In an old cereal box tucked up on the fridge is where I’ve been storing the bills from those nurses and hospital stays. Two more came in this morning. The day nurse laid them out neatly on the table for me.

 

One of them is pink – third notice. Pay up or shutter up.

 

I quickly open the document and press the creases down till it lays flat out for me to study. $340 for an MRI that showed the same results as the previous ones. I rummage through the box till I’ve emptied every single letter. With a sharpie marker, I write the total on the side, crossing off the old amount until it’s just another black line: $34,593.

 

Damnit. Damnit. Damnit.

 

I know I could let the bills go. They are in my mom’s name, and when she goes, the hospital can’t legally go after me. The only things being charged to me are the private nurses. That’s nearly $14,000 right there (and climbing with every hour). But the thing is that my mom taught me to never leave this earth owing a debt to anyone. It’ll haunt you in the next life – or at least what remains of you. And I’m all that will remain of Megan Greer when she passes.

 

When we found out it was stage four breast cancer nearly a year and a half ago, she held my hand and promised me I would be cared for. “There’s money, Erin – money for you to go to college and to keep the house.”

 

I think she thought dying would be quick and cheap, but instead, it’s become long and expensive, like a horror movie you pay for by the minute. We ran through her retirement funds within six months, and then she took a lien on the home she’s owned for the majority of her life.

 

That day, at the bank, she promised, “I’m not going to let the bank take your home. We’ll figure this out.”

 

But we never did. I pay the bills around here. I keep the home running and comfortable. The heat’s turned on all year round. I replaced the old buzzing lights and fixed the small leaks in the roof when it flooded back in May. My money from running doubles and triples at the bar covers the utilities and the food she never eats. Even her medication is paid up by my tips from in-the-know regulars who tip me forty percent instead of twenty. It’s all peanuts when it comes to the cereal box of bills I’m storing away.

 

At the sound of the door, I glance over at the clock. Alyssa, as always, is on time for her shift as the night watch. I listen to her as she coaxes my mom awake and convinces her to carefully make her way into the wheelchair we store by the door.

 

“Do you need any help?” I ask as my mom sits.

 

Her eyes glaze over me, not recognizing or remembering. It’s more and more frequent that she gets this way.

 

“No, no, Ms. Erin,” Alyssa says in her thick Eastern European accent. “Ms. Megan and I are going to have a fine night. Since she’s awake, I think we’ll have a nice, relaxing bath, and I’ll see if I can get her to drink something. Her skin is drying out.”

 

“Yes. She refused earlier. I bought some protein drinks the doctor recommended. They’re in the bags by the door. I can put them away later after my—”

 

“Say no more. You go to work. I’ll call you if you’re needed.” She practically pushes me out the front door, but she’s right. I’ll be late for work if I sit around here feeling sorry for myself.

 

As my mom always said, “If there’s nothing else that can be done, you can always work.”

 

***

 

It won’t take much to make money on this shift. For a dreary Thursday evening, the bar’s hopping. I can barely hear the driving classic rock music over the sounds of the men shouting back and forth at one another.

 

“What the hell is going on here!” I yell over towards the other waitress, a new girl named Monica. She’s the spitting image of all the girls who work here as servers and tenders – long, curling hair, tits, tight ass. For a newbie, she’s more comfortable than most wearing the skimpy black biker shorts and cutoff tank top uniform Frank, the manager, insists on putting us in.

 

“It’s an MC meeting!” Monica screams back as she hoists a serving tray full of empty beer mugs above her head. “Isn’t this a regular thing here?”

 

“No. What’s an ‘MC?’”

 

Her eyes dart towards me and then over to a group of bearded men leaning closely into the server’s area. She places the tray back down and grabs me by the arm. We swing into the kitchen.

 

It’s not much quieter in here than out there, but still, she keeps her voice down as she explains, “An ‘MC’ is a motorcycle club.”

 

“Like a group of guys riding together or something? My grandpa used to do that when he was retired. Saw the Badlands with his friends…”

 

“No. Those guys are not some recreational drivers, Erin. They’re a club… like a gang. They’re not exactly on the up-and-up if you know what I mean. I recognize one of the guys. I used to date him years ago before he got locked up for robbing a bodega. His name is Marcelo. I think he’s in charge or is at the top. The club’s name is the Tattooed Angels.”

 

“Tattooed Angels? That’s a silly-ass name for a gang. They can’t be that tough if they—”

 

“Erin, you gotta shut your mouth. Believe me. Shit talking around those boys, especially about their club, isn’t cute. In fact, it could get you in a ton of trouble. You don’t want to mess around with a motorcycle club. They remember things like a mouthy girl.”

 

“Really? I still don’t see it. They look harmless.” Half the men in the bar can barely stand. No way those beefy, haggard guys are some street-smart criminal operation.

 

“They do a lot of underground things. They host fights, deal, run gambling rings, everything… Hell, I heard they were auctioning off their groupies’ virginities for cash.”

 

“What!” I laugh. “That’s ridiculous.”

 

“No, I’m serious. These girls would do anything to get scooped up and claimed by one of the men. It gives them protection and a place in the club hierarchy. And they get some money from it – a ton of it. A girl I know, Rachel, she auctioned off her virginity and made out like a bank.”

 

Before I can stop myself, I ask, “How much?”

 

“$15,000.”

 

My mind goes blank. All my thoughts rush out of my head, but one image remains: the pile of bills sitting in that cereal box. $15,000 wouldn’t cover it all, but it sure as hell would pay the nurses and get the house current again. It would mean I could stop pulling triple shifts here and actually spend some time with my mom before she passed.

 

The only problem is the whole losing my virginity thing. At twenty-two, I thought I would have given it away by now like all the rest of my friends. They’re off finishing college, getting married, and starting their lives. And I was there on that path too, but when my mom got sick, it all went on the back burner – including my love life.

 

The guy I was seeing didn’t want to wait for me to feel better after the diagnosis came, and the rest of the one-off dates found me and my sob story to be too much. No one could see me behind the whole, “my mom’s dying” story. After my third or fourth rejections, I was tempted to give it away for free just so I could be done with it.

 

My friends pushed me towards a guy or two. One even recommended someone would be, “super gentle and understanding”. But when it comes to having sex for the first time, I want to be in control of my body. I don’t want to do it with a man just because he’s there. I want to do it because I want to do it.

 

And now, I could have sex and make money without the guilt. I’d be doing it for my mom – not in spite of her.

 

An hour passes before the bar’s cleared out and I’ve got a second to ask Monica for the details. She doesn’t seem surprised when I ask her, “So the girls who do that virginity auction thing… they don’t have to commit? Like, what did you call it? ‘Claimed?’”

 

“No. It’s only a one-time deal unless they agree to it. That’s the okay thing about the club. They have rules about claiming a woman. It’s gotta be super serious. It’s basically like getting married, so most men don’t do it – ever. That’s why it would never work out between Marcello and me. I want commitment…”

 

I let her ramble on for a good five or ten minutes. It gives me time to think about the dangers, the consequences, the cash. I’ve never done anything like this in my entire life. I’ve never been one for risks, but if it means more security for my mom, I will move mountains.

 

“Monica?” I stop her in between her sentences. “Could you get me in?”

 

“In where?”

 

“The Tattooed Angels virginity auction. I want to enter myself.”