With Your Arms Around Me
By Patricia Russo

The apartment's never been so clean! Before, Mom didn't have time for stuff like mopping the floor or scrubbing the toilet or washing the twins' grubby handprints off the walls. Now, if even a little bitty crumb falls off the table, she's on it like a maniac, ripping off a wad of paper towels and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. If I don't stop her, she'll clean all day and all night. Guess that's my fault, really. Might be that I overtrained her. But back when this started, right after she died and all, it was like beating your head against the wall to get her to understand anything. She'd just squat there, her mouth opening and shutting like a guppy's, and play with her hair or chew her fingers or something. Luckily Kenny, the little shit, climbed on the counter and started rooting around in the cabinet over the sink. I told him to get down but he said he was sure there was half a box of Cocoa Puffs up there. Well, he didn't find any cereal but he did find some ramen noodles, which we ate that night, and when he was climbing down he knocked a pack of Newports off the shelf with his elbow. Which gave me an idea. Couldn't find any matches, but one of the burners on the stove still worked, so I set out the cleaning stuff again, bucket and rags and everything, fired up a Newport, and got going. Took some trial and error. Sticking the lit end into her back or neck or the back of her arms or legs wasn't worth spit, but darting the red end toward her eyes got Mom moving lickety-quick. Then, as long as she could see the little fire coming, or see the smoke curling up as her flesh scorched, I could get her motivated real good. Tommy used to complain when I burned her. The smell made him hungry, he said. But it worked. Like I said, now if the boys come in without taking off their sneakers and track dirt over everything, or one of the twins has an accident, Mom gets down on her hands and knees right away. Gets her back into it, too, really scrubs hard. Sometimes she forgets to use water, though. Sometimes she even forgets the paper towels. But I'm working on that.

Now, you'd think Mrs. Ocakci would've said something nice about how clean the place was. But no. First of all she just shoved her way in, which wasn't too polite, but the boys had left a trail of blood on the steps and in the hallway from their sacks, so Mrs. Ocakci got curious. I don't trust Mom out of the apartment yet, so Kenny and Tommy promised they would clean it up themselves, but then they started watching TV and forgot, and the next thing I knew someone was pounding on the door and one of the dumbass twins went and opened it up. I've told them and told them not to do that.

The twins had been playing with Mom, and after opening up the door the little dumbass shit ran right back to what she was doing. Mrs. Ocakci hurried right in without even a Hello?, then stopped dead.

"Oh honey, why'd you want to go and do that?" she said.

Mom was sitting on the floor in the front room, and the twins were having fun with her, posing her, you know, moving her arms and legs this way and that. However you arranged her limbs, she'd freeze like that, so some of the poses they thought up were pretty funny. But mostly they played at getting her to hug them and stroke their hair and stuff. They were laughing a lot. This last month, the twins have laughed more than they ever did in their lives. Mom had on the same blank expression she's always had since she died, but who knows, maybe she was enjoying it, too.

Mrs. Ocacki looked at me like I'd just pissed in public or something. "Honey."

"Mind your business," I said. I could tell by then that she wasn't going to say anything nice.

"There's blood in the hallway," she said, slowly.

"Kenny! Tommy!" I yelled. To Mrs. Ocakci, I said, "We'll clean it up."

"Later!" Tommy yelled over the bangs and explosions on the TV.

"Now!" I yelled back.

"Fresh blood," Mrs. Ocakci said. "Drops and drips all over the place."

Yeah. Kenny and Tommy had gone down to the dump early that morning. I hadn't even told them to, they did it on their own. That was pretty cool. Maybe they were growing up a little. See, Mom had gotten a little sick from the rats we trapped in the basement of the building. Went all trembly, and even puked a couple of times. She licked it up again, which was pretty gross. Tommy got the idea that maybe the rats in the building had got into some rat poison, so he and Kenny went off to get some, like, uncontaminated rats. They did pretty good, too, came back with a couple of plastic garbage bags full. The problem was the bags were kinda old and the rats' claws and stuff made some holes, and that's why the blood dripped on the stairs and the floor. In the apartment, too, but Mom took care of that. She hunted down every last speck. Course she used her tongue, which wasn't that cool to watch, but like I said to the twins - so don't look, then.

That's something that's changed in the last month, something really good. Now the only blood on the floor is rats' blood.

Not that that was any of Mrs. Ocakci's business, either. She'd been our downstairs neighbor since Mom moved us into this dump a couple of years ago. Now she was complaining about the mess in the hall, but she never came up here when one of us was bleeding.

"We'll take care of it," I told her.

Mrs. Ocakci was shaking her head, like sorrowfully. "Honey, this ain't right. When did your Mom pass?"

"Don't you got anything else to do?" I was getting pretty pissed off. Mrs. Ocacki was standing there, real bossy, like she had a right to be in our apartment, and running her mouth like she had a right to do that too. I stepped toward her, thinking that if I came close enough she'd have to start backing up, but she's a real stubborn old bitch. Wouldn't move an inch, except sideways to get a better look at Mom.

The twins had put one of her arms up like the Statue of Liberty. She had a carrot in her hand instead of a torch, but you could tell that's what she was supposed to be. Mom's head was sort of hanging loose, though, her chin down on her chest, and one of the twins was in back of her, yanking on her hair to get her head to come up. "Careful," the other twin said, only the way they talk it was more like "Caaawuful." Course the first twin didn't listen, and a whole hunk of Mom's hair came out in her hand.

"When folk are gone, you ought to let 'em stay gone," Mrs. Ocakci said.

The apartment door was still open. I pointed at it. "Good-bye." Tommy and Kenny were still watching TV, so I hollered at them again. "I said now!"

"This'll only lead to grief."

"What do you know about it?" I snapped. I was gonna seriously lose my temper in a minute, and then she'd be sorry. Mom'd fallen on those fresh rats like a starving woman. It was all I could do to get two or three away from her to stash in the fridge for later. All I had to do was give Mom the sign, and Mrs. Ocakci would be an ex old nagging witch. Would make a hell of a mess, though. Then again, Mom would be happy to clean it up.

The twins were giggling in a weird, kinda hysterical way. No, only one of them. I shot them one of my laser-looks. "What's going on?"

"Nofing."

"Nofing."

Mom's mouth was open. Not in its usual slack, drooly way. It was open wide, her thin, black lips pulled away from her teeth. Her head was moving slowly, this way and that, first in the direction of one twin, then the other.

"You guys, I told you. You can't play kisses. How many times do I got to say it? No kisses."

"Sorry."

The second twin pointed at the first in giggly accusation.

"Honey," said Mrs. Ocakci, "I'm from the old country. Believe me, I know about this."

Yeah, maybe, but she didn't know a damn thing about Mom.

"Go play another game for a little while," I told the twins. "Leave Mom alone now." One of them was going to argue, but the smarter one grabbed her wrist and dragged her toward the TV. You had to watch those damn twins every minute. But I kinda understood why they kept wanting to play kisses. Mom never kissed them once when she was alive, that I can remember.

Mom was a little agitated, rocking from side to side, head darting here and there. Reminded me of a snake hunting for prey, like you see on those nature programs. I walked over to her and showed her what I had in my pocket, and she calmed down pretty fast.

"So you know about salt," Mrs. Ocakci said.

"I know I want you to get out of here."

Tommy and Kenny finally decided to remember what they were supposed to do, or might be they just wanted to get away from the twins, but they trooped into the kitchen and clattered around, pulling the rags out from under the sink, filling the bucket, and everything. Mom started moaning a little, so I showed her the salt shaker again. Like I said, could be I overtrained her about the cleaning up business.

"The stairs, too. Don't forget."

Kenny waved his hand, like Yeah, whatever, and Tommy couldn't be bothered to say anything, but I wasn't really mad at them. They'd done real good that morning, going out and pegging all those rats with their BB gun. They'd left before dawn, and I hadn't even asked them to. I gotta talk to them later, see how they felt about cats and dogs. The rats were good, but bigger animals would last longer, and shit knows there are tons of strays around here nobody would miss.

"The dead must be permitted to rest," said Mrs. Ocakci solemnly.

"Good-bye, Mrs. Ocakci," I said again. I was proud of myself for staying so polite all this time. "You've got to go now, because I've got to go to work."

"You've got a job?" she said, wrinkling up her nose, real suspicious, and that was just about the last straw. Sure I got a job. Started last week. I got hired right away, too, the manager of the grocery store gave me an interview right after I filled out the application. Right now I'm on the cleanup crew, washing the floors and the shelves and wiping up messes people make when then drop a carton of eggs or break a jar of pickles, but in September after the other kids go back to school, I'm hoping to move up to stock crew.

"Where's this job? What do you do?" Mrs. Ocakci was asking, in a tone like who would hire you, and that's when I did lose it.

She had no right, no right at all.

I turned to Mom and gave her the signal. I make it with two hands, it's complicated. The boys were arguing over the bucket and the twins were TV-hypnotized, so nobody saw what the signal was. I'm careful about that.

Mom blinked real fast. A rumble started up in the back of her throat. The first time, when one of her boyfriends came by, looking for money, the twins got real scared when I let Mom loose, and even Tommy started to cry, saying, "Mommy's growling, Mommy's growling," but I prefer to think of it as a rumble.

Now the twins looked around, then went back to watching TV. The boys stopped arguing over who was going to carry the bucket; Kenny just grabbed it and hauled ass out into the hall, Tommy right on his heels with the rags and the jug of that piney-smelling stuff.

Mom reared up. It takes her a minute to get going, but once she's on her feet, she's pretty quick.

Mrs. Ocakci was mumbling something rapidly in a language I didn't know. Didn't have any effect on Mom, though. Mom shuffled forward, head swiveling, here, there, that snake-thing again.

Mrs. Ocakci backed up. She kept her eyes on Mom the whole time. It's a wonder she didn't trip over one of the twins' dumb toys and land flat on her butt, walking backwards like that. But she made it to the door. At the threshold she said more words, stepped over it, then shut the door fast.

Those words didn't stop Mom, either. I had to get out the salt, sprinkle a line of it across the floor, to get her to stop and go sit down again. Well, squat. She likes to squat, for some reason.

Old country my ass, I thought, after Mom was settled down enough and I could sweep up the salt. Give me the public library and the Internet any day.

When I left for work, the boys were still scrubbing the front steps, taking it pretty seriously, too, only messing around a little. "That's okay, you've done enough," I told them. "Now get upstairs, I left the twins with Mom, and you know you got to watch the twins all the time."

"Okay," Tommy said, no argument at all.

Kenny asked, "When you coming back?" He gets a little scared when I leave. I guess it's because he's the next oldest, and if anything goes wrong he'll get the blame. He knows about using the salt if Mom gets agitated, though, and also I told him if she really ever gets out of control and I'm not there he should get everybody out of the apartment, like a fire drill, so I'm not really worried. "You know," I said. "Same as yesterday."

The job's not so great, but I've got one check already, and I calculated that if I work seven days a week all month, I'll make enough to pay the rent. And the good thing about the job is that it's a supermarket, and the manager lets the staff pick over the dented cans and expired stuff before he puts it in the half-price bin, so I bring home a bunch of food every day, usually. Yesterday it was green beans, some bananas and a big sack of day-old muffins, which was pretty cool. Kenny says he's going to become a vegetarian, and I said I could understand that. Maybe I will, too.

I get off at four a.m., and when I come home (today I scored two big cans of peaches and an expired angelfood cake) everybody's still asleep. I'm tired, really wiped out, but I want to stay awake a little longer. I'm thinking I should start drinking coffee, even though the last big fight I had with Mom before she died, she caught me taking a swig of her donut-store coffee and she whipped me with the extension cord because she said I was too young to do that, and who did I think I was, did I think I was grown already, and what else did I want to do, start spreading my legs for men? All the junk Mom used to say.

I threw out that extension cord. That was almost the first thing I did.

Mom's squatting in the front room. I switch on the lamp, and she blinks a little. Her tongue's hanging out of her mouth; it's dried up a lot and turned black, so it looks kinda like a worm. She makes a sound in the back of her throat, and I know she wants the couple-three rats I stashed in the fridge before.

I'll feed her. But she's got to do something for me first.

She knows what it is. She skins her lips back from her teeth a little. She doesn't like this part. Well, too goddamn bad.

I sit down next to her, and silently pat the floor. Sit. She understands. I think Mom understand a fucking hell of a lot about what's going on around here. Maybe more than she did when she was alive.

That rumbled starts up in the back of her throat, but she sits. I don't know why she prefers to squat. It's one of those little mysteries.

Of course I have salt in my pocket. I took the shaker from the kitchen after I put away the groceries. All the kids have salt, too, in little baggies fastened up with twist-ties. Two baggies each, one to carry around and one to keep under their pillows when they're asleep, just in case. Mrs. Ocakci's wrong. I've thought everything out.

"Put your arms around me," I say.

Mom puts her arms around me. Her flesh is cold. Her breath stinks. The rest of her stinks, too. I sit there for a minute. I let myself close my eyes.

"Stroke my hair," I say, and Mom strokes my hair.

"Tell me I'm the best. Tell me you're proud of me. Tell me you love me."

She can't talk, of course, but after a moment she starts making noises with her mouth. If you listen just right, you can pretend that she's really saying it: I love you, I love you.

Her arms are cold, but I feel warm, warm from the inside out. Warm and safe. It's a funny feeling, I'm not used to it. I never felt safe like this before, not even when Mom used to be asleep or passed out.

When Kenny and Tommy wake up, I've got to remember to talk to them about dogs and cats. A couple of days ago I heard Dad was back in town. Knowing him, I'm sure he'll come over soon, thinking he can move right back in like nothing happened, knock Mom up again and then take off, like always. Boy, is he going to be surprised when he gets a look at her now.

But that's not the only surprise he's going to get.

I've been thinking about this, thinking really hard, and I've decided it's worth the trouble. I'm going to have to go through everything I did with Mom all over again, and then some. It'll be hard, but that's okay. It's true what people say. Every family should have two parents. It's better for the kids that way, with both.

A Mom, and a Dad.

The End

Story copyright Patricia Russo, published by the Fortean Bureau
http://www.forteanbureau.com