Flowers for Mama

“Mama loves that damn bird more ‘n she loves us,” LeeAnne said.
She sat on the laminate countertop with her back against the wall. She held a Marlboro a little ways out the trailer window. Sweat traced her collarbones; it was a hot summer in South Carolina.
Mama was singing again. Eddie perched on her head, talons buried in dark hair.
“Jolene, Jolene…”
Her voice bounced off the aluminum walls, high-pitched and clear. I loved Mama like this. Her yellow dress twirled around long, tan legs. She spun around the dark trailer with Eddie balancing, chirping along with her bluegrass voice. Sometimes Eddie might let out a little, “goddamnit!” --the only phrase he learned since Mama got him.
LeeAnne rolled her eyes.
“Chickee, you mind grabbin’ me a cigarette?” Mama called.
She stopped singing and walked toward her bedroom. She walked like she sang, floating. I pulled LeeAnne off the counter by her thigh—reached for the pack of Marlboros in her back pocket.
“**** off,” she said and tossed me the pack.
I ran toward Mama’s bedroom and waited by the door. It was always closed; she didn’t like us coming in.
She rushed out, stepped on my toes as she grabbed the cigarettes out of my hand. Her palms were sweaty.
“Thanks, baby,”
She tossed her hair over her shoulder before she walked out the door--flashed a smile I wanted to bottle like sweet wine. She had a slight gap in her front teeth.
I heard the truck rev up outside.
“Ain’t you supposed to be in school?” LeeAnne asked.
“Well ain’t you?”
“For ****’s sake, Chickee. You’re twelve, get your *** to school.”
LeeAnne clucked her teeth and walked to our bedroom. She came out a few minutes later smelling like tanning lotion and holding a 9th grade Algebra book. I sat on the counter, looking out the window for Mama’s truck to come back.
“Let’s get on with it,” LeeAnne said.
She wore a short skirt and a tight peach blouse. We were three hours late for school. Mama didn’t make us go—so why did LeeAnne care?
A Chevy pulled up our drive, one of LeeAnne’s friends. LeeAnne leaned over me and pulled my hair back. She tucked a fallen strand behind my ear and looked me in the face. Her sad brown eyes made me uncomfortable. She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door.

***

On Sundays, Mama’s hair held extra curl. I got to see her for a whole hour, maybe two, depending on the service.
“It’s thanks to Jesus himself you girls are alive today,” Mama said.
She gripped the steering wheel with newly painted French tips. She drove her Ford F150 in a low cut dress, a cross glittering between her breasts.
“Bull****,” LeeAnne muttered in the backseat.
She lit a Marlboro.
Mama drove too fast. If she caught somebody willing, she’d rev up engine and race them down a back road. She called out, “goddamnit!” to anyone who cut her off. Mama made dirty words sound lovely.
We pulled up to Barnwell First Baptist and swerved into a parking space. We were only fifteen minutes late this time. Mama slammed the truck door behind her as she walked toward church. LeeAnne stayed in the backseat to chain smoke. I sent her a glare and chased after Mama.
Once I got inside I couldn’t find her. I found a seat in the balcony and watched the preacher pace back and forth in front of the congregation, talking too fast and loud into a microphone for me to understand.
I spotted Mama walking out of the bathroom on the right side. She walked straight in front of the preacher and down the aisle, looking into every face she passed with a wide grin and a nod. The preacher watched her walk. Mama found a seat in a pew, empty aside from a young, blonde man listening closely. He nodded as she sat down. She sat slowly, crossed her legs toward him. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the cross glinting in the dark, secret part of her chest.

***

When night fell our trailer cooled off a little. LeeAnne was in the living room watching TV and doing her homework. A half-empty bottle of Jack sat on the end table.
“You need help with homework?” she asked.
The tone of her voice faltered. She was drunk, sympathetic.
“Nah,” I said.
I didn’t tell LeeAnne I hadn’t turned in homework all semester. I didn’t see the point. I didn’t want to slave over grunt work just to end up like the other girls in my grade—full of preoccupations about piles of homework and tears over pimpled boys. In my mind Mama was singing, “free as a bird.”
I got up from the couch to feed Eddie. I didn’t let him out of his cage though. He didn’t like anyone but Mama.
“Goddamnit!” he screeched.
I glanced at the kitchen toward the window.
“She’s not coming home tonight,” LeeAnne said.
She took a swig straight from the bottle. The liquor smelled like shoe-cleaner.
“How do you know?”
“She ain’t been home all week. What else you expect?”
“She been at church, I bet,” I said.
LeeAnne focused her eyes on the TV and put down her workbook. Her head fell slightly to the side.
I left the lazy drunk to go to Mama’s bedroom. She would be mad I was in here, but I wanted to know why she hadn’t come home. Maybe it was my fault.
The smell of stale cigarettes seeped in her walls. The floor was mapped with brightly colored clothes, flower prints. It looked like a garden across her floor. A carved wooden Jesus was nailed over her bed. I sat on her un-made sheets and pressed them to my face. They smelled sour. On the nightstand the lamp was left on, shedding yellow light on a full ashtray. Next to the ashtray—a small baggy traced with fine white powder on top of a square mirror. I bet she used it to see how pretty she looked every morning. If I had eyes like Mama’s, I’d have a mirror by my bed.

***

The next day was Sunday, Mama’s favorite day of the week and she hadn’t come back yet. Eddie didn’t sing anymore now that she was gone. I imagined her dancing in our kitchen again. The scent of lemons. Her yellow dress.
The sky was bright that day, casting shadows across our driveway. I left the trailer and headed down the street. The other trailers looked prettier than ours, with flowerbeds and trimmed trees, mowed lawns. All we had was a plastic windmill. I wanted flowers for Mama.
Mama always told us not to talk to the neighbors so I kept my distance. I just went far enough to pick the most beautiful flowers.
The third trailer had a screened in porch. Spider plants and potted flowers of every color hung inside. I figured no one was home so it couldn’t do any harm. I opened the screen door and walked in.
The yellow daffodils were the prettiest, but they were small. They reminded me of Mama. I tried to pick them one by one, shoved them into my dress pocket.
I heard a door quickly open and a deep voice,
“What you doin’ here, young lady?”
I looked up to see an older man in a stained t-shirt. He had a short beard. His face was welcoming, smiling. He leaned against the doorway.
“You got a name, there?”
“Chickee. Uh, Chelsey. At home they call me Chickee.”
“And where is it you call home, Miss Chelsey?”
“Right down the road, 146.”
His face changed; the smile dropped.
“Yer mama Lissie?”
I nodded.
He balled a fist against the door. He muttered something I could barely hear.
I caught, “Goddamn whore shouldn’t have kids,”
Then, louder, “Go on home now, Chelsey.”
He slammed the trailer door behind him. I raced out, clutching the flowers for Mama in my pocket. My jellies left a small wake of dust behind me. A few daffodils spilled out of my pocket and left a trail down the dirt road to the trailer.

I placed the flowers carefully in front of Mama’s door. She’d be home soon. The man down the road didn’t know Mama at all.

***

Two days later, early in the morning, the sound of her truck in our driveway sounded like a chariot to me. LeeAnne didn’t stir from her bed, but I raced to the kitchen to get busy before she walked through the door. I grabbed a crate of eggs; Mama liked scrambled eggs.
When she came in, she wasn’t my daffodil Mama. Her hair looked darker than usual from oil or sweat. Her gaze was strained, unemotional. She wore a too big t-shirt, from one of her boyfriends, I guessed. It slouched over her thin body past her jeans. She held a duffle bag full of clothes.
“I’m makin’ eggs, Mama!”
“Not hungry, baby.”
She cast her gaze away from me and walked to her bedroom. She didn’t stop to say hello to Eddie. She stepped on the flowers outside her door before walking in.
She probably noticed the flowers had wilted. I couldn’t get it right.

***

Mama started having boyfriends over more often and stopped going to church. I wondered if her boyfriends were in love with her. One was young, with brown hair and soft eyes. The sweet smell of pot flowed from her room when he came over. I could hear them making love from our bedroom. One was overweight, wearing a watch that caught every glint of light. His shoes shone like a business man’s over our soiled carpet. Mama screamed louder when he came. One had wrinkles with hard eyes, deep caverns in his cheeks. He always knocked on our bedroom door, asking for LeeAnne. She didn’t get out of bed much anymore, except for school.
“Can you ****in’ chill?” she yelled when we could hear Mama with one of her boyfriends.
The squeak of the bed didn’t stop.
“Why does Mama have so many boyfriends?” I asked LeeAnne.
She grunted and put a pillow over her head.
“Guys like Mama, Chickee,” she said under the pillow.
“Mama’s beautiful,” I said.
LeeAnne pulled the pillow off. She walked over to my bed. She smelled like a fresh shower. Her brown eyes were clear of any makeup. She put a hand over mine; it was cold.
“Look, Chickee, we might be leavin’ here soon,”
“What?”
“Mama wants private time, see. We can’t be here when she needs her privacy,”
LeeAnne’s voice was smooth. Her words felt hot on my skin.
I didn’t want to wake up in a house without Mama. I couldn’t imagine sunshine without Mama’s curly hair. Her gapped teeth. Her voice lightening our trailer. If LeeAnne was leaving, I wasn’t going--not ‘til I heard it from Mama herself.

***

In the morning, before any of Mama’s new boyfriends came over, I realized I should feed Eddie. I hadn’t fed him in a few days but I figured Mama was taking care of him. After all, LeeAnne said Mama loved him more than us.
I grabbed some seed from the kitchen and headed toward his cage. From a distance it looked empty. I opened it. Green feathers sprawled over metal. Eddie lay dead across the bottom of the cage.

***

I knocked on Mama’s door. She didn’t respond so I walked in.
She sat on her bed, facing the lamp. Her eyes were fixed in the mirror on her bed stand. Her hair was tied messily on top of her head. She turned to look at me; her eyes were pained.
“Chickee,” she said.
“Mama, I need to talk to you,” I said.
Her hands trembled.
I walked across the garden of clothes on her floor. I sat next to her. She hadn’t showered yet and she smelled metallic. She wasn’t looking at me. She was set on the white baggy on the countertop.
“Babygirl,” she said, “you want to help me?”
Her eyes were desperate. Mama needed me right now.
“Yeah,” I said.
“My hands are too shaky, baby. Will you pour a lil’ bit out for me?”
I nodded and emptied the powder onto the mirror, where she had started.
“Be careful. Do it slow. Right baby, you got it… Now take that card out from behind the lamp, Chickee. Separate it into lines for me, like you’re in art class. Straight lines.”
Mama’s voice was almost as shaky as her hands. The powder was easy to break up, finer than sand. She asked me to roll up a dollar bill.
Mama put the dollar bill up to her nose and leaned into the mirror. She closed one nostril, and breathed in one thick line. Then another. She took a few breaths. One more.
Then, Mama looked at me with a sharp face. Her eyes no longer looked desperate, but angry.
“What the **** you doin’ in here, Chelsey?” she screamed.
The veins in her neck popped out at me.
“Mama, you’re scaring me,”
“Git the **** out!”
I didn’t want to leave Mama here, looking so strange. I sat on the bed and stared her.
“I wanna talk to--”
Mama cut me off, grabbing my arm. She seemed strong for how thin she was. I heard her bedroom door open and then LeeAnne’s voice.
“Hell no!”
LeeAnne grabbed me from Mama’s grip, carried me, left Mama’s room. She grabbed the keys off the couch and left the front door open on the way out.
She swerved the Ford out the drive. She cranked the radio, “Jolene, Jolene,” LeeAnne sang along at the top of her lungs. She sang hard, not like Mama sang. She didn’t look at me but fixed her eyes on the road. I didn’t know where we were going. I didn’t bother asking; LeeAnne didn’t want to talk.
I looked in the side-view mirror. Mama’s eyes. She hung over me. Her floating voice. Her dark hair. Her glittering cross. Her yellow dress. The daffodils outside her door. Who was gonna bring Mama flowers now?