The fronts of the cabinets were white once, but now looked as though they were covered in fine, brown dirt, like someone had stood in the middle of the kitchen and flung bags of potting soil all over everything. Except it wasn’t potting soil. It was mold that had crept along the counters and down over the cabinets until you couldn’t tell what color the cabinets were supposed to be. The mold had made its way up the tiles and the walls until the bottoms of the curtains hung heavy with black. It happened so gradually that we really didn’t notice. We just stayed out of that room as much as we could and tried not to look at anything too closely. After a while, it didn’t seem to matter anymore.
Getting rid of this stuff was probably some kind of biohazard. I coughed just thinking about it. Mom’s breathing problems had gotten a lot worse lately—inhaling mold spores for years would do that to you. It might even kill you.
It was creepy looking closely at everything like this. If you walked by it every day you didn’t notice how bad it really was. Now that I was paying attention, it was hard not to see it like Josh or Kaylie would—a disgusting mess that nobody sane would live in. Thinking about Josh just made me sadder. I don’t know who I was kidding last night.
Until I got this fixed, I couldn’t let anybody near it. Or near me. It was amazing Kaylie still didn’t know—I’d been getting careless letting her pick me up and drop me off here. What if she’d seen how we really live? What if Josh smelled the house stink on my jacket when he put his arm around me? The heaviness started to take over as I let these thoughts race through my brain. I shook my head and tried to erase the image of him backing away from me in disgust. I couldn’t think any further than right now if I had any hope of making this work.
There was no getting around cleaning the kitchen because that’s where most of the stink was coming from. Like every other horizontal surface in the house, the counters were piled high with everything you’d find in a normal kitchen—times twelve. If a few empty grocery bags might come in handy someday, Mom would save hundreds, because you never knew when the world might run out. Stacks of newspapers stood here and there waiting to be read and clipped. Empty food containers were everywhere—margarine and yogurt containers, water bottles, and cylinders that once held potato chips. Those were some of Mom’s favorite treasures. And it’s not like these just came from us. Mom “saved” empty containers from work and even random trash cans. She always said with some sort of strange, misplaced pride that she didn’t go digging in other people’s trash cans, but if something was sitting right there on top for all the world to see, well, then, she had an obligation to see it wasn’t wasted.
I’d have to clear off some counter space to really get down to it, so I started with the stove. It was piled with miscellaneous junk as high as the range hood. A few years back the refrigerator broke, so Mom just piled groceries on the counter next to the stove, lining up the cans of food instead of putting them away anywhere. This would probably have been okay if she had only bought things in cans, but I was pretty sure she’d stashed things like lunch meat and fruit here too with the idea that as long as it was visible, we’d eat it quickly enough. Which was good in theory, I guess.
In order to reach the stove, I had to make a new pathway through the piles of stuff that littered the kitchen floor. I couldn’t get the trash can in here, which meant my only option was to grab a trash bag and shove anything into it that I could find. Most of the stuff in here was so destroyed by mold, I didn’t bother wondering what was in the bags or boxes. It was better not to think about it, particularly if something was soggy or leaking or smelled so bad my gag reflex kicked in.
I grabbed a can of green beans from the counter beside the stove. It had an expiration date that was two years earlier. And that was probably one of the newer cans in her collection. I started to load a bag with all the canned food, but realized that cans of food would make the bag really heavy really fast. I decided to leave the rest of them on the counter. Once everything else was cleaned up, a bunch of cans sitting on a counter wouldn’t look as weird. Maybe the paramedics would think she’d just gotten home from grocery shopping. If they didn’t look closely, they might not figure out that the shopping trip was from five years ago.
With one hand, I held the trash bag against the stove, and with the other, I swept the containers, plastic bags, cups, and old food packages off the top. A few things missed the bag and bounced onto the floor, but I could deal with that later. I found not one, not two, but three big margarine containers full of those little plastic clips that come on bread packages. It only took one trash bag to clear most of the stove and uncover the burners. Real safe to have things piled on top of something that actually makes fire all these years, but it didn’t seem to have worried Mom. On a hunch, I turned the knob for the burner, thinking that like everything else in this house it wouldn’t work, but to my surprise it clicked and with a small whoosh burst into a bright blue flame.
Maybe I could start cooking in here one day, if I could get the memory of the old kitchen smell out of my brain. Once Phil moved back, I’d make meals for the two of us—I’d have to start watching the Food Network to get some ideas. Maybe I could even have people over for dinner. I could learn to make complicated casseroles and fancy appetizers. Someday, after all this had been taken care of, maybe I could even have Josh over for dinner. It would be amazing having him in my house for dinner without worrying about Mom and the mess. I turned the burner off and threw a stack of about fifty empty cottage cheese containers in the bag. Good thing someday wasn’t all that soon.
Working my way from the stove toward the sink, I cleared the counters pretty quickly. There were a few things that might have been worth keeping, but I had to just close my eyes and toss them in the garbage. Mom had three thermoses sitting next to the sink, and I could have saved them for the Salvation Army, but the thought of having some poor unsuspecting worker actually opening one of the jars and encountering some sort of festering, mummified stew was just too cruel. In the bag they went. Opened Diet Pepsi cans that were full of something that was probably liquid once but had through the wonders of science turned solid? In the bag. A shoebox full of bottle caps? In the bag. A plastic grocery bag full of some gelatinous brown goo that was probably produce at one point? Definitely in the bag.
All the hard work made me forget about the cold wind that blew through the open windows. That and the rapid progress I was making toward the sink. Under a pile of plastic bags on the counter, I found a white dish drainer complete with dishes that had been clean once upon a time. I reached in and stroked the Underdog glass that had been the only cup I would drink from when I was little. Holding it in my hand was like discovering an old friend that I’d thought was gone forever. Underdog looked great, still bright red, white, and blue; his arm raised as he took off for parts unknown. Maybe that’s what I’d liked about him—he was always ready to go somewhere new.
For the first time in more than an hour, I stopped working and carefully wiped the glass with the bottom of my shirt to remove any traces of mold. I took the rest of the dishes out of the drainer and tossed them into the garbage bag. Aside from the Underdog glass, there was nothing here I was ever going to use again. I grabbed a coffee cup that had “World’s Greatest Mom” printed on it in flowery pink letters. I could still see traces of lipstick around the edge and could picture it sitting on the side of the bathroom sink full of coffee as she got ready for work. Mornings were the best time for talking to her when I was a little kid. I’d sit on the fuzzy pink toilet lid and watch Mom as she did her hair with the curling iron and put her makeup on. She’d ask about my second-grade teacher, Ms. Davis, who always had lipstick on her teeth and I’d usually tell her about something rotten Phil had done. If I was lucky, she’d spray some of her perfume in the air and let me walk through it so I could smell like her for the rest of the day. If I missed her while I was at school, I’d just sniff my sleeve and the smell of her perfume would make me feel safe. I didn’t remember very much about being little, but I knew, once upon a time, Mom might have deserved the World’s Greatest Mom mug.