“What the—” Jerry’s grip on me loosens as he faces her. “What’s going on?”
She tries again, inches from him. She swipes, putting up her fists. Another shock ripples through her, and my mom cries out. It’s a low, gritty sound of pain that has me cringing. Her entire body stiffens. I can see foam in the corners of her mouth.
“Stop it, Jerry! Just stop it! Stop taunting her!” I kick and punch at him, but he holds me off the way I used to hold off Opal with a hand to her forehead, her arms too short to reach me as she swung.
The spasm passes. My mom moves again. Jerry’s laughing, like this is the finest sort of joke.
“C’mon,” he breathes. “Come on. Let’s see what happens when you try to kill me, you piece of crap.” The collar beeps.
This time, the spasm drops her to her knees, then onto her side. She’s jittering and jerking, and I yank myself from Jerry’s grip. I turn her on her back, helpless, not sure what to do. Foam is curdling in the corners of her mouth, and her eyes have rolled toward the back of her head.
“What the hell is that? What’s she doing?” Jerry asks.
My mouth is dry, but the words come out. Just two, but they choke me. I can’t look away from her.
“Mercy Mode.”
ELEVEN
“OPAL, GET ME A CLEAN DISHRAG. HURRY UP!”
Opal does, ducking out of reach of Jerry’s halfhearted grab. He’s not shouting anymore. He still seems fascinated, though, bending over us. Opal brings me the cloth and I tuck it between my mom’s teeth.
I have no idea what I’m doing.
The video and training materials described what would trigger Mercy Mode. It didn’t say anything about how to stop it or how to treat it. All I can do is stroke her hair back from her forehead and try to keep her from biting off her tongue. I roll her on her side, thinking that will help.
A bad smell fills the air, and Jerry recoils. “Did she just crap herself?”
“Velvet, what’s wrong with Mama? What’s wrong with her? What’s wrong?” Opal says this over and over, her face white and eyes wide.
“She’s… it’s okay, Opal. Really, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” Under my fingers, which are resting on her hip, the muscle spasms seem to be easing. She’s stopped making that noise, too. The silence is very loud.
“Wow.” Jerry doesn’t sound fascinated or gleeful now. He sounds wary, and when I look at him, he looks confused. “The collar does that?”
“It’s called Mercy Mode.” I shoot a glance at Opal, but the kid doesn’t deserve lies, even one that would make things sweeter. “They build it into the collar. If the person wearing it becomes too agitated, too… aggressive, it…”
“Kills them?”
“Get out, Jerry,” I say in a quiet, terrible voice. “Or so help me, I will kill you.”
He laughs, scoffing, but the look on my face sets him back. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but nothing comes out.
“Yeah,” Opal says, that tough, adorable little kid. She holds up a fist. “Me, too!”
Jerry backs up. At the door he broke to get in here, he stops. “You should just let her die.”
Then he steps through and is gone.
On the floor, my mom is finally still. She blinks and sits. She does stink, and the drool and foam have smeared all over her face. Her eyes focus, though. On me and on Opal. She reaches, takes each of our hands. She squeezes them just once before her fingers lose their grip.
“Is she okay?” Opal’s stopped crying, but her face is swollen and her nose runny. “Is she going to be okay, Velvet?”
“I think so.”
How much brain damage can any one person can take? When does she become a vegetable? When do I start believing what Jerry said is the truth?
“Mom. Sit up.” I help her.
Beneath my fingers, all her muscles are trembling and twitching even though she looks perfectly still. Her breathing is a little harsh, too. She swallows convulsively and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Actually, seeing this gives me hope. She’s aware, at least a little bit.
Opal wrinkles her nose. “She smells bad.”
“She probably had an accident.”
Opal’s eyes go wide. She looks more scared of this than what happened before. “You mean… like, in her pants?”
“Yeah.” I want to make this somehow better for Opal, like I should try to pretend it didn’t happen. Maybe I should lie to her about it or something. But I don’t. “That’s what happens to you sometimes when your brain gets shocked like that.”
“Could it happen to her a lot?” Opal sounds tearful. She’s petting Mom’s hair.
“It could. It’s because she’s sick, Opal. She can’t really help it. And it’s because of the collar.”
Opal’s face twists. “Can’t we take it off?”
Her fingers toy with it, and I push them away, but gently. Mom looks back and forth between us. “It doesn’t come off.”
“Not ever?” Opal puts her hands on her hips, her face going from sad and scared to angry. Tantrum ready.
I wish I were a little kid and could get away with tantrums. “Nope. It’s the law. Besides, it’s supposed to keep everyone safe. Us and her, too.”
Opal pets Mom’s hair again. Mom leans toward the touch just the barest amount. Opal’s small fingers tug on a tangle hard enough to tilt Mom’s head, but she makes no noise of protest.
“We need to clean her up.” I’m not looking forward to this. “She needs a shower, her hair washed, clean clothes put on. That sort of thing.”
Opal’s looking anxious again. “She can’t take a shower by herself, huh?”
“No. But I’ll help her. It’ll be okay.” I hope.
“I want to help, too.” Opal says this firmly, like there’s no choice of me disagreeing.
I don’t want to disagree. I don’t want to be the only one taking care of our mom. And I don’t want to not give Opal credit, either, for what she’s capable of doing. She’s a kid, but she’s not stupid.
“Okay. You go get the shower started. C’mon, Mom. Stand up.” I stand, and with Opal’s help, we both get Mom to her feet.
She’s a little wobbly. She clings to both of us, pulling us toward her. For one moment it feels like it used to when she called for a group hug, squeezing us both while we usually squirmed and protested. The moment passes fast; I know she’s not hugging us, no matter how it feels. She can’t hug us anymore.
This, more than anything that’s happened so far, settles a stone in the pit of my gut and makes me want to just give up. Everything. All of this.
Then I hear Opal whispering, “C’mon, Mama, it’s all going to be all right,” and how can I give up?
I can’t abandon Opal, and I can’t abandon my mom. No matter how hard all of this is, I have to believe it’s going to be better, in the end. I just have to.
Opal starts the shower running while I start to help my mom out of her clothes. I’m afraid she’ll protest again, the way she did last night when I tried to lift her nightgown. I’m afraid of what will happen if Mercy Mode is activated so soon after the last time. Mom doesn’t struggle, though. She’s even helpful, lifting her arms when I pull her shirt off over her head.
It’s easier to see her naked this time. It’s not easy to undo the diaper, though what’s inside isn’t worse than anything I’ve had to deal with at Cedar Crest Manor. It’s sure not worse than anything she ever had to handle with me or Opal. I can tell Opal’s trying not to be upset. She’s doing a pretty good job, too. I make sure to keep my voice light and cheery, the way I talk to the old people when I’m taking care of them.
“All righty, into the shower! Opal,” I say quietly, “hold her other hand so she doesn’t slip.”
My mom shudders when she gets into the shower, but after a minute she tilts her face into the warm spray with a low sound of relief. Working together, Opal and I wash her clean. We don’t talk much while we do it. I think maybe Opal will get the giggles about Mom being naked, but she’s more mature than I give her credit for. She just shares the washcloth and soap with me so we make sure to get her clean all over.
When we get to washing her hair, though, Opal says, offhandedly, “It’s like when we used to wash Jody.”
Jody, our golden Lab. Unlike a lot of dogs, Jody loved baths. She’d let us scrub her for an hour if we wanted.
“It’s nothing like that.” My voice comes out short and sharp, low and not like my own.
Opal shrugs and fills up the oversized plastic cup we’re using to rinse Mom’s hair. “Hold the cloth over her eyes so the soap doesn’t get in them.”
We don’t really talk for the next few minutes, until it’s time to help her dry off and get dressed again. Both Opal and I are soaked, too, so it’s changes of clothes for us. I hang the wet things on the backs of chairs next to the radiators. In the past we’d have tossed everything we’re wearing into the laundry and not worried about it, but I want to get at least another day’s wear out of them.
All of this has taken hours and hours of time. I’m glad I took the day off. I’d never have made it on time. I’m glad, too, I let Opal stay home from school. She’s been a big help.
“I’m hungry,” she says. “Mama, are you hungry?”
I don’t bother to point out that she’s not going to answer. I just go to the kitchen and open the fridge. It’s pretty bare.
“Grilled cheese and tomato soup?” I say.
Opal nods and leads Mom to the table to sit her down. “Mama likes that.”
She does, I remember that. She used to make fancy grilled cheese sandwiches, with blue cheese or mozzarella and herbed garlic butter. We’ll have to make do with stale tortillas, since the bread’s all gone, and plain old American cheese. The tomato soup’s made with water, since we finished the milk, but we have some golden cheese crackers shaped like fish to put in it.
It’s our first real meal together as a family in a long, long time. Opal sets the table with the plates. Only a couple of them match, and they’re the ones that were here when we moved in. The rest I picked up one or two at a time from the Jubilee shop. It’s the same with the silverware and glasses, too. We don’t have any napkins, so Opal folds a square of paper towel at each plate.
“All right, everything’s ready—” I turn, a plate of grilled cheese in my hands, and stop short.
My mom has a knife in her hand. She’s turning it from side to side, catching the light from the overhead fixture. It’s not a sharp knife, and she’s not holding it like she’s trying to cut anything. She’s looking.
I think of the list of instructions in the packet they gave me. It specifically said to keep knives, scissors, all sharp things from the Contaminated. Even with the collars, they could be “incited to action.” My mom doesn’t look incited, just confused.
“Here, Mom, let me have that.” I put down the plate of sandwiches and gently take the knife. I give her a spoon, instead. “Use this for your soup.”
“Put an ice cube in it,” Opal says. “Mama always put ice cubes in the soup when it was too hot.”
“Good idea.” I ladle soup—there’s exactly enough for three bowls, and I make sure to take a little less so they both have more. I add an ice cube or two to each bowl and break my mom’s sandwich in half before putting it on her plate.
“Like this, Mama.” Opal snaps her fingers to get my mom’s attention, and surprisingly, Mom looks up. Opal pushes the spoon through her soup, away from herself, then purses her lips and sips daintily. “Like in Heidi, remember?”
She demonstrates again, crooking her pinky finger. “Fancy. Remember, Mama?”
Heidi was a movie about a little Swiss girl who’d been raised by her grandpa, then taken to live with rich people. She’d had to learn new manners. My mom has more than that to learn.
“Away from yourself,” Opal says in a high, hoity-toity voice, and does it again. She sips her soup. “And no slurping!”
“Like this?” I follow her lead, but make sure to slurp my soup extra loud, to tease her.
Opal giggles, then forces her expression to be serious. “No slurping!”
I try again, slurping louder, then talk with my mouth full of soup. “Like this?” Mom pushes her spoon through the soup and lifts it, spilling most of it, to her mouth.
She slurps.
So does Opal.
So do I.
I want to sing and dance—she’s feeding herself. She reacted again to us, something Jean and the instructional videos had warned would be unlikely to ever happen unless it was a negative reaction, like what had happened with Jerry. Yes, she’s sloppy and uncoordinated. Yes, she has a hard time with the sandwich until I break it into bite-sized pieces for her, but she feeds them to herself.
“She likes it,” Opal says. “See, Velvet? I told you Mama liked grilled cheese and tomato soup!”
After dinner, Mom watches TV while Opal and I do the dishes. We have a dishwasher, but it’s broken, and getting the landlord to fix anything around here is ridiculous. Besides, I don’t mind, really. We don’t have a lot of dishes, and we’ve sort of made a game out of it, me seeing if I can wash and rinse a dish before she’s dried and put away the last one. Opal doesn’t know it, but I go extra slow sometimes to make sure she doesn’t fall behind.
We’re almost finished when the floor squeaks behind us. Opal and I both turn. The apartment’s not big, one big room, basically. Mom’s come around the back of the couch to stand at the line where the carpet of the living room area meets the vinyl flooring of the kitchen. She’s standing there, watching us, her head tilted the smallest bit.
“Mom?” I say.
She doesn’t answer. She just looks. I’m tempted to tell Opal to take her back to the TV, but I think about how she’s been behaving differently from what they told me to expect. If she doesn’t want to watch television, she shouldn’t have to.
Opal and I finish the dishes a couple of minutes later. Mom’s still watching us. She hasn’t moved, except to bring her hands together in front of her. Her fingers link and unlink, twist and turn.
“What’s she doing?” Opal says.
“She’s wringing her hands.” I’ve never actually seen anyone do that, but it’s a good description.
“Like… a bell?”
“No. Not ringing like a bell.” I demonstrate, imitating the motion my mom’s making with my hands. “It’s like this. Like you’re worried about something.”
Opal goes to her at once and puts her arms around her. “Are you worried about something, Mama?”
It would be the perfect time for my mom to put her arms around Opal and hug her for real, but just like everything else, this isn’t a movie. My mom simply stands there until Opal steps back. Then she shuffles again toward the couch, where she sits and faces the television as though she really cares what’s on it.
I think we’ve all had enough for one day, so though it’s not late, I tell Opal to make sure her homework’s finished and to go take a shower so she’ll be ready for school the next day. She makes a face, and I’m pretty sure she intends to fight me about going to school tomorrow, but there’s nothing she can do about it. I have to go to work. Mom will have to be alone. I’ll think about that tomorrow, too.