Between 11:00 and 11:05 PM

I look at my reflection in the tilted mirrors in the produce section. It's eerie-in a cheesy 80’s slasher movie way. I run a hand through my ruffled black hair- blue under the florescent lights. Huge saggy gray circles weigh down my eyes and the rest of my face is a practically jaundiced yellow color. I need to shave the spot I missed at the edge of my jaw. God, I look like a hobo.

I’m so tired. I don’t sleep anymore. That is, except for in AP Latin and while I’m supposed to be doing my homework. Of course. I almost scoff at the fact right there that I choose the most unreasonable times to fall asleep.

I rub the tear duct of my left eye with my knuckle as I stare sullenly at the mud caked green mat beneath me.

We’re here every night, at the grocery store, me and my Mom. The woman likes food-or more- she needs it, craves it like a necessary and especially addictive drug. She hasn’t gotten a raise in five years since Dad left her for an older woman who looks younger than her. For that, she needs a steady supply of empty calories to stock our cabinets with. She never goes out and likes to watch reruns of Jay Leno in her dimly lit bedroom with the lights off and a bag of chocolate covered pretzels.

I used to blame her for Dad leaving. I hated her for not spending time with me- like she didn’t care about me, like I wasn’t important enough to be even acknowledged. Then, one Christmas, after I opened all of my presents by myself under an undecorated plastic Christmas tree and I decided to take my new cell phone and kick it with the heel of my shoe until it was in pieces. I did it just to see if she would care, to see if she would notice me, look at me, be angry with me. I felt an odd sort of satisfaction afterwards, like it was the right thing to do, I felt smugly gratified.

When she came downstairs into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee around noon, she saw the pieces of the broken cell phone lying on the cold tile floor. She didn’t look at me. She just brushed past and slowly ascended the stairs. She left the mess on the ground. I threw the busted bits into the trash and sat down on the floor. I felt like the cell phone now. All broken up and dysfunctional, not even cared about.

I heard Mom wailing from upstairs and resentment flowed through me. I hated her. She was crying when she was the one doing the neglecting. She was the one who was doing the hurting. I didn’t understand. I began to cry too. I figured that this is what people do when they’re hated someone. They cried.

A while later, sometime around nine at night, I realized there was no food left, just some condiments and a half empty carton of orange juice. I went up to Mom’s room and knocked on the door dully. She didn’t answer so I jiggled the door knob and it was unlocked.

I slipped into the room and discovered my Mom asleep in her bed, buried under a mountain of covers, only her erratic black hair peeping out from under them.

I strode forward, planning on waking her up. But my hesitated and my eyes were brought to a book on her nightstand next to empty pretzel bags and used tissues and half-full water bottles. The book lay open and worn on the spine. I picked it up and rushed downstairs.

In the book was my Mother’s first and only diary entry. I read it.

I’m trying. I really am. But I don’t want to. The only thing left that is keeping me alive is pulling away from me. I don’t know how to stop it. I love my baby so much. More than anything else in the world. But he wouldn’t understand that. I think that he blames me for what happened. I tried then. But- I lost Kyle along with Jack. Jack is long gone, but I want my baby back.

And the entry ended.

Suddenly, the hatred disappeared. I felt bad about the phone and I took pity on my Mother. I could never look at her the same way. I could never look up to her again. I could no longer even think of her as a role model since I pitied her. But I decided to stop the blame and become her friend. Not her son, but a companion that will not judge her and will offer an adequate amount of sympathy. I decided to come back to my Mom, but not in the same way. I was no longer the child. I was alone. I grew more that day than any other time in my life.

I cut Mom some slack every now and then and I allow myself to be dragged to the grocery store every night.

Mom has been staring at the same carton of pre-cut watermelon for the past few minutes, skimming her faded emerald eyes over the expiration date.

“Mom,” I say out of the fear that she may never make her decision about whether or not she wanted the watermelon.

She lowers the carton from her face and the pink tinted water swirls around the tear shaped seeds. “What? ... Do you like watermelon?” She asks, shifting her eyes to mine.

“Yup,” I say with a sigh and Mom plops the watermelon down into the cart.

She grabs the plastic handle of the cart and angles it towards the bakery items. I follow along, the ever faithful son, dragging my heels and too-long lucky jeans across the dirty linoleum.



After checking out, we stop at a green laminate counter near the movie center that hasn’t gotten a new release since 1995. An old man leers over the counter at Mom. The air vent above blows down cold air on the plastic bagged groceries below.

Mom gets a lotto ticket and two pouches of chewing tobacco.

“I thought you quit,” I say quietly.

“This is different,” she mumbles and her silver credit card appears form out of a plastic sandwich bag in her frayed sweater pocket.

The man at the counter cards Mom and her lips tighten into a hard line. He smiles with his gross, crusty old man mouth and winks a wrinkled eyelid.

I look around for something to do while ‘Hi my name is: Fred’ jabs his thumb suggestively out the door of the grocery store and slowly licks his bottom dentures.

I pick up a pamphlet for tourists and skip through the sunshine-y testimonial on the first two pages and flip to the section where a kinky bucktoothed miner grins up at me with his disproportionate head. In cartoony yellow letters it reads, ‘Famous Places!’ and they list down the page.

-Miner Forty-Niner Diner
-Piney’s Candy Shoppe
-Broomington Mine
-Magpie Bowling
-Silverspur Hospital

I’ve already heard of and been to all of these. Well, all except for Silverspur Hospital. The closest hospital is in the next town over. There isn’t a picture of it.

I look up and Mom’s now walking through the smudged glass doors. I stuff the brochure into my jacket pocket and jog after her. She isn’t in a good mood. She has an unlit cigarette between her teeth and her old white tennis shoes hit the pavement forcefully.

Mom gets in the car and I’m left to unload the bags. I hear angry muttering from the car as I lift the bags into the little old Volvo. I figure she’s on the phone because, which an abrupt snap of a flip phone, the muttering stops and is replaced by the manual cranking of the car window and a faint flicking sound.

I leave the cart in the empty space next to our car and I duck into the passenger’s seat.

Mom is holding a lit cigarette between two plump, yellowed fingers; her mouth is ringed with little lines, the cigarette secured between her lips. She puffs a cloud of smoke over the dashboard and watches it disappear with her head flattened against the seat.

She takes another drag, holds it, and then exhales, almost regretting the motion and flicks the Marlboro out the window.

Mom stares at the keys in the ignition for a while, then turns it and the Volvo rumbles to life and she wordlessly peels out of the parking lot.

On the ride home, I keep thinking about Silverspur hospital. Why have I never heard of it?