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Confessions of Super Mom, Chapter 1 (continued)
"I'm all right, sweetie. Really I am. A little tea and toast and I'll be myself again. Don't worry."
"OK," she finally said, turning to leave. "Martin, don't bother her."
"What a wench." Martin scratched his nose.
"She's just concerned. You know how she gets when she's scared."
"Yeah. Bossy and mean. Just like she is when she's not scared. Do you want another pillow?" He shoved an extra one behind my back, propping me up so that my spine was all twisted, which didn't help my headache in the least. But you know what? I didn't mind at all.
It's such bliss to be cared for. And when you're a mother-a single mother-that doesn't happen very often. I just wanted to fall back and surrender myself to my children's attention, let them kill me with their kindness. Literally- Martin shoved another pillow behind my back, cracking my skull against the headboard.
"Oof! Thanks, sweetie. Hey, could you bring me a couple of aspirin and a glass of water?" I closed my eyes and imagined lolling in bed all evening, my dinner brought to me on a silver tray, my children dabbing at my lips with a linen napkin.
"OK, Mom!" Martin bounced off the bed, scattering the pillows, wrenching my back again. But I smiled anyway, knowing that at least for this moment my children remembered me. Loved me.
I snuggled down under the covers and waited for my tea and toast and aspirin. I waited, and waited, and waited...Noises in the kitchen. Radio blaring, microwave beeping, dishes and pans clattering. Now the phone was ringing, my children were shouting-
"Miss Know-It-All, I do so know how to microwave brownie mix!"
"Yeah, but you're supposed to put it in a bowl first, imbecile."
"Well, duh!"
"Nice vocabulary, Einstein!"
I sighed. I threw off my blanket and stumbled down the hall, stopping at the top of the stairs. "I'll be right down," I croaked. "Eat something nutritious!" But no one answered.
"Never mind about me," I said with a sniff as I shuffled off to the bathroom, "up here, all alone, weak from toxic fumes. I might fall and hit my head and have a brain hemorrhage, but that's OK. Just put my body out with the garbage if I don't make it through the night...." I opened up the medicine cabinet and grabbed some aspirin, then I stared in the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot, my face was pale, and there were deep, purple crescents under my eyes. "God." I shivered, turning away from the apparition in the mirror. A forty-one-year-old woman does not look her best after a day spent sprawled on the bathroom floor.
Suddenly I tripped over an empty bottle: that new orange cleaner from the infomercial. I bent down to pick it up and read the label: caution! heavily concentrated. dilute with water first. do not mix with other cleaners, especially bleach.
"Too late for that," I mumbled. Then something else caught my eye.
The Stain. The vile, dastardly stain. It was still there. Grinning at me. Mocking me.
I couldn't help myself; I sank to my knees and reached for an empty can of Borox.
But before I could grasp it, my right hand burned. It went rigid and pointed right at the stain, something wet and hot and gritty shot out from my fingertips, and then my right hand was upon it, palm down, scrubbing and scrubbing so fast it was just a blur. I tried to stop myself-my left hand grabbed my arm, but still it kept scrubbing and scrubbing, liquid shooting out in measured spurts. I thought I must be bleeding or something; I tried to cry out but no sound came-
And then all of a sudden it stopped. My right arm hung limp by my side. I shook it and it felt all right; I flexed my fingers but saw no blood.
But there was something else I didn't see. The stain. It was gone. In fact, the entire floor was polished so bright it hurt my eyes.
Somehow I pulled myself up. I looked at the floor. I looked at my hand. I raised my fingertips to my nose and sniffed. They were slightly damp and smelled of orange and bleach and ammonia...and Swiffer fluid.
I shook my hand one more time and a droplet, a clear blue tear of fluid, glistened on my index finger. When I wiped it on my T-shirt, the material suddenly brightened and stiffened like new.
"Kids?" I managed to whisper, my lips dry and cracked. "Anybody?"
No one answered. Only the bathroom floor seemed to hear. It raised its shiny face to me and smiled.
I stumbled down the hall, afraid to look back, then crawled into bed and pulled the covers up over my head. Hours later, when Martin and Kelly finally remembered to check in on me, I grunted and pretended I was asleep. But I wasn't. I was studying the palms of my hands. They were rough, with tiny little bumps and crevasses, abrasive yet gentle.
Just like the bottom of my Swiffer.
- - - - - -
"So you hit your head on the toilet? Tell me again, how did you end up on the floor in the first place?" Carrie leaned on her register.
"I didn't have the exhaust fan on, so I guess I passed out from the fumes." I rubbed more moisturizer on my palms.
"What's wrong with you? You've used half a bottle of that stuff since you got here, Birdie!"
(OK, now is the part where I have to reveal my secret identity. In real life I am known as Birdie Lee, mild-mannered cashier at Marvel Food and Fine Beverages. It's short for Lady Bird Lee. My mother, unlike every other young woman in the early 1960s, couldn't stand Jackie Kennedy. "She's so snobby," Mom would say with a sniff. "So stuck up with her designer dresses. Now, that Lady Bird Johnson. She's a real person. Someone you could have over for coffee and a Danish." So, unlike the rest of the female population born in 1962, I was named after plain, dumpy Lady Bird, not tall, glamorous Jacqueline. It has proven to be depressingly prophetic.)
"I don't know"-I frowned at my textured hands-"I think I have a rash or something. Maybe from the chemicals?"
"You should have gone to a doctor right away." Carrie turned to greet a customer. "Those chemicals can really mess with your brain." She started to scan groceries; I went over to bag for her.
"Yeah, I know. I've been informed by my son." I didn't tell her about the part where my arm turned into a scrubbing machine. I decided I must have dreamed that; it must have been part of the whole "trippin'."
Carrie scanned, I bagged; we have a good rhythm together, and we make a good team. (Although we refuse to let Monty, our boss, enter us in those lame bagging contests you read about in the local paper. We have our dignity, after all.)
"Oh, boy. More Patriot Pops." I reached down into a box. "Don't forget your free toy. Do you want Teddy Rough Rider or George Washington Carve 'Em Up?"
"Don't you have any Abe Lincolnators?" Mrs. Banks, the customer-a tidy, round woman who always insisted on paper bags instead of plastic-stuck her head over the conveyor belt. "That's my son's favorite character."
I shook my head. "He's everyone's favorite. We ran out of him last week."
"Well ..." Mrs. Banks surveyed the box, full of plush toy figures from the newest video game sweeping Astro Park, American Justice. "He plays that game all the time. And he just loves those Patriot Pops."
"One hundred percent processed sugar, shaped like mini American flags. God Bless America." Carrie sighed. "Chrissie loves 'em too."
"But they're made by New Cosmos," Mrs. Banks pointed out. And in unison we all three looked out the window. There, across the street, sat the biggest jewel in the Astro Park, Kansas, corporate crown: New Cosmos Industries. Once the site of a small sugar-processing plant, it had seemingly morphed, overnight, into a shining symbol of American can-do ingenuity. A huge campus of sparkling buildings, meticulous landscaping, ribbons of walking paths, all for the legions of happy Astro Park citizens newly employed in the manufacturing of patriotic junk food. Liberty Lemonade ice pops, chocolate and vanilla Democracy Drops, Betsy Ross-a-Roni in a cup, Old Glory Gummi Flags, to name just a few. And the ubiquitous Patriot Pops, which was currently running a product tie-in promotion with the American Justice video game.
"I'm just so proud to support a local business." Mrs. Banks beamed. "And my Frank is so happy to be one of the Brethren."
"Brethren?" Carrie raised an eyebrow.
"You know. That's what they're calling the employees now," I told her.
"Because 'employee' is so cold and corporate. But New Cosmos is just one big happy family!" Mrs. Banks nodded.
I looked over at the main building. Seven stories of gleaming glass under friendly arched roofs and gables. In the daylight it looked like a crayon drawing of Cinderella's castle. But at night...I shuddered. Whenever I left work at night, there were always two seventh-floor lights on. They reminded me of eyes, and I could swear they followed me all the way home. Even now, thinking of them, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I shuddered again. Then I double-bagged some hamburger.
"Um, Carrie? Those carrots scanned wrong."
"Huh?"
"Those carrots came up wrong, on the scanner. They're on special, forty-nine cents a pound. They came up seventy-five cents."
"How do you know what they came up? My scanner screen isn't working." Carrie stared at me. So did Mrs. Banks.
"I don't know. I just...well, I just knew. The scanner didn't sound right." I stopped bagging and frowned at the scanner. It had sounded wrong, only I couldn't begin to explain just how.
"The scanner didn't sound right? How does it sound? It always makes that same beep. Are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm all right. Never mind. I don't know what I was talking about."
"Well, that's a funny thing." Carrie rescanned the carrots and checked her register tape. "You were right. They did come up wrong."
I shrugged and kept bagging. Carrie resumed her scanning.
"Those bananas are twenty-nine cents each. You keyed in organic, but they aren't." I hoisted a bag of kitty litter into the cart.
"I did not key in organic and, anyway, how would you know?"
"Check," said Mrs. Banks. Carrie glared at me, but she looked at the receipt.
"Oh, God. I'm sorry." She started tugging on her bangs like she always does when she's nervous. "Birdie, how did you know I keyed it in wrong?"
"I told you-it just sounded wrong." I shook my head a little, trying to clear my ears of a funny, urgent buzz that I hadn't noticed before. Then I went back to my register and rubbed more moisturizer on my palms before I picked up the latest issue of the National Enquirer. (Which I only occasionally read because it's stocked right by my cash register and sometimes I get bored, OK?)
Carrie didn't say anything as she finished up with Mrs. Banks. Then she switched her light off and joined me.
"Hey, get this!" I pointed to a headline. "'Carolina Fisherman Finds Real-Life Baby Moses.' Look! That sure looks like a baby in a basket, doesn't it?"
"It's a doll."
"Nuh-uh. That's a real baby-although the beard does look kind of fake. ..."
"So what's going on with you? How could you tell the scanner was wrong? Are you sure you're feeling all right?"
"Yes, I'm just fine. Jeez! I just had a little accident yesterday, and so what? Oh-look! 'Superman Really Does Exist! "He rents the apartment above my garage," says Edna Mortar of Gainesville, Florida. "Pervert! Him and his X-ray vision," sputtered the grandmother of two.' Look Carrie! Look at that picture-"
"Birdie!" Carrie snatched the paper out of my hands. "Stop! Your palms look like scrubbing pads. You have a goose egg the size of New Hampshire on your forehead. You're hearing things in the scanner! You need to go home. Now. I'm making you."
"Carrie, I can't. I can't afford to take two days off."
"I don't care. I'm telling you now-"
"Lady?"
A little boy was picking through the candy bars in my aisle. He had a runny nose.
"What?"
"Lady, where are the super-king-sized Hershey bars?"
"Have you eaten your lunch yet today?"
"Huh?" He looked up and wiped his nose with his sleeve.
"Don't do that. Use a tissue." His hand dropped to his side. "Did you eat your lunch today?"
"Y-Yes ..."
"You did?" I leaned toward him, drawn by a flicker of hesitation behind his eyes.
"Yes?" His lower lip started to tremble.
"You. Are. Lying, young man," I boomed in a voice that shook my cash register. "You haven't had your lunch yet, and your mother did not say it was OK for you to have a super-king-sized Hershey bar. Now, go get an apple from Produce and find your mother. She's in the cereal aisle, and she's looking for you. You should be ashamed of yourself, worrying her like that!"
He burst into tears and fled.
Carrie tugged her bangs, then reached over and switched my light off. "O-o-o-kay." She took me by the arm, gently, as if she were afraid I might break. "You're going home now. I don't know what just happened, but you scared a little boy to death, and we'll probably get sued. So you need to go home."
"But, Carrie- C'mon, you knew he was lying, didn't you? What child needs a super-king-sized Hershey bar at ten thirty in the morning?"
"Maybe he was lying, maybe not. But you put the fear of God in him somehow, and that's probably his mother I see marching toward us. So go. Get out of here. I'll handle it."
"But someone needed to tell him he was going to spoil his lunch-"
"Go!" Carrie pushed me and I tottered away on legs that were stiff, like they hadn't been broken-in yet. Everything about me felt fragile and tender-like I was trying out a new body. The lights were too bright for my raw eyes, the sounds-of cans clunking against metal shopping carts, of heels click-click-clicking on tile-too sharp for my sensitive ears.
Then it happened. I was walking by the juice aisle and I saw it all happen: A little girl reached for the apple juice, the bottle tilted from the shelf, then slipped from her grasp as it fell right toward her. Then I saw myself. I was scooping her up and handing her to her mother before the bottle hit her. But not before it hit the floor. It shattered, splashes of juice and shards of glass coating the floor and the shelves.
And before anyone could move, before anyone could blink, the mess was gone. The little girl and her mother looked at me. I looked at my right hand, still sticky with apple juice and that funky cleaning fluid from the night before. The muscles in my right arm ached. But the floor was sparkling, shiny and new.
"Is she OK?" I asked the mother. She nodded, her mouth gaping, her eyes blinking. "Good." I was shaking with adrenaline, ready-eager-to clean something else. I reached over to the little girl and with my trembling index finger erased a dark red stain-cherry Popsicle, I believe-from her Blue's Clues T-shirt.
We studied each other, the little girl and I. I gazed into her eyes, into her soul, and saw-everything. Everything about her. I saw the map of her life-the day she fell off a step stool in the kitchen and chipped her front baby tooth; the raggedy old baby blanket she still slept with, the corner worn down where she clutched it every night. "Don't do that again," I said. Her eyes, big and blue and terrified, did not waver from mine. "Remember the cookie jar you broke last week? You need to stop grabbing things. Ask your mother for help. And stop flushing your brother's LEGOs down the toilet." She nodded, and for a moment I was satisfied that she would do as I said; for a moment I felt like the most powerful mother in the universe and this was my child. They were all my children.
But then I saw myself through the mother's eyes: this crazed cashier with stuff spurting out of her hands babbling on about LEGOs and toilets. I backed away as the mother gathered the girl close, then I ran, speeding past Carrie and Monty and the angry mother with her crying boy who was stuffing pieces of Hershey bar in his mouth between sobs. But when I reached the door I stopped and looked back. I couldn't help it. I started giggling, bubbling over with fear and exhilaration-and power.
"I just- I just- Well, for heaven's sake!"
"What? Birdie, what is it?" Carrie clawed at her bangs.
"Well, you'll never believe it, but ..." I looked at my strange hands-strange and terrifying and powerful-my skin pricked and burned with a quick flush of adrenaline. The zesty scent of orange, bleach, ammonia, and Swiffer clung to me, invading my pores. Then I looked at my friend, who couldn't do what I had just done. And I didn't know which one of us to feel sorry for.
"But, Carrie? Carrie?" Tears sprang to my eyes, sobs mixed with giggles punctuated by hiccups.
I turned and fled, my white sneakers a blur, my tingling arms outstretched as if to catch a current that would spirit me away. "I think I just did one hell of a cleanup on Aisle Four!"
Then I drove away in my dented minivan. And as I did, I could swear I felt those eyes from New Cosmos following me, all the way home.
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Reprinted from Confessions of Super Mom by Melanie Lynne Hauser by permission of Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © 2005 by Melanie Lynne Hauser. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.
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