“Good job, guys,” she said. “The place looks good. Now let me go change.”
She rushed back to her room and slammed the door, leaving my brother and me bored on the couch. We got on the floor and had a foot war. I placed the bottoms of my feet against his and we pushed our feet back and forth like they were glued together. When our legs grew tired, my brother drew up a peace treaty that we signed with an imaginary feather pen. Our mother still hadn’t come out of her room.
There was a knock at the door and the first thing I thought was Chris. My brother could read my mind. “It’s not him,” he said. “He wouldn’t come up here.”
Whoever it was knocked again.
“Maybe he wants to say sorry,” I said. “Or maybe we forgot something.”
“Maybe,” my brother said, with his thinking face on. I could tell he didn’t buy my idea, but like me, I think he was picturing what it would look like if Chris were in our apartment.
There was another knock, this one louder, less patient. My brother ran to the door.
It was Sandy and Cornbread. Sandy stood smiling with a cake. Carrot, she said. Your mother’s favorite. Cornbread towered behind Sandy, twice her size, holding four boxes of wine, two under each arm. Both of them were wearing what they always wore, jeans and a hunter-green polo shirt from work. They smelled of grease and grass.
“How are my two favorite men?” Sandy said. She pushed her way past us, and Cornbread stooped his head to get in the door. We showed them to the kitchen, and Sandy set the cake on the empty table. She asked where our mother was and we pointed. “Oh, she must be getting pretty,” Sandy said, and went down the hall to help her put on the final touches.
Cornbread put the wine on the counter and sat at the kitchen table, drumming his fingers. Like everything else he touched, the table now looked like it was made for a small kid, the size of the child with the chalk. He tried to make conversation, but we only gave him one-word answers. Yes. No. Fine. When he ran out of questions, my brother and I returned to the couch and listened for our mother coming down the hall. Instead, we heard Cornbread checking the cupboard for cups. A moment later, he came out drinking from a glass dark with wine.
“That looks good,” my brother said.
“It is good, but you can’t have any.” He came over to the couch and told us to scoot over. It was a tight squeeze. Even with his legs bent, Cornbread’s knees still came up to my head. He asked if the TV worked and we said no, not really. “Well, we need something to look at.”
And like a magic trick, Sandy came out with our mother, the two holding each other at the elbow. Sandy looked the same, face plain, head shaped like a hairnet, but our mother was changed. Her work clothes were gone, and so were the ink smudges. She was wearing a loose summer dress, yellow and flowing, and her wild hair fell completely straight, teasing her bare shoulders. She stepped closer, into the light, and I saw that her eyes looked different too — larger, her lashes longer, like they wanted to reach out and touch me.
“What do you think, boys?” she said.
“You look new,” I said, and Cornbread laughed, causing the couch to shake. But I meant what I said. My mother was like a new mother. Bright, beautiful, she belonged to one of the royal families she liked to read about in history books. This was the queen she promised to be.
There was another knock, and Sandy threw her hands up. “Ooh, here they come,” she said, and did a little dance to the door. My brother rolled his eyes and went to the kitchen to grab a glass of mixed milk. But I stayed where I was, marveling at our mother. Her newness. For some reason, it felt wrong to do so, to look for so long. It felt like I was looking at the lady in the encyclopedia, the one who was half naked, half insides — but I couldn’t help it.
A few seconds later, Sandy came back with new people, a man and a woman I’d never seen before. The man had his shirt tucked in when he probably shouldn’t have. His belly ballooned over his belt like a waist floatie. The woman, less pretty than the witch lady, had brought party hats for everyone, and stuck close to the man until she saw how beautiful my mother was. Once the ladies were talking in a tight triangle, Cornbread got up and started talking to the man, leaving my brother and me alone.
Several more partygoers arrived over the next half hour, all with small presents in hand. I didn’t recognize any of these people. They were not from my mother’s work, and I had no idea where she had met them, where they had come from. They all waved hello, went to the kitchen, and returned with red plastic cups. The party had begun.
* * *
No one was talking to my brother or me, including our mother, so we went to our room. We shut the door behind us and that made things better for a while. But the party’s murmur grew with each new guest. Someone brought speakers and a record player. The music went through our room’s thin walls like they were made of paper, and the bass rattled our door. My brother said it was like there were zombies out there, pounding for us to let them in. Brains, my brother said. Brains. We made a game out of this, lying there in the bottom bunk. We listed all the dumb things people did in the zombie films we’d seen with our dad. I said we should avoid shopping malls, which wasn’t a problem in our city, since there were none. My brother suggested we hole up in the old people’s home, because the zombies would probably come for the elderly last. Yes, I said, they would taste the worst. My brother laughed, said that wherever we go we should stick together. Of course, this was the first thing I thought of, but I didn’t say anything because I knew if I really thought about the zombie scenario, I would do what I always did and think about what would happen if only one of us was bitten. What would I do if my brother began to turn? What then?
“It wouldn’t matter anyway,” he said. “Those movies always end horribly. Just when you think they’re in the clear, another zombie appears and ruins everything. The undead mailman pops out of a dumpster.”
I wished he would change the subject, but our door still thumped. The party was growing louder. Maybe I could call my dad and file a complaint. Or maybe the smoking lady would, unless she was out there too.
“What if one got into a prison?” my brother said. “All those guys would be eaten alive.”
Somebody rapped at the door, making me jump. Sandy poked her head in, and the music followed. “Hey, guys, it’s time for cake!” she said.
“Ah!” my brother screamed. “Zombie! Breach! Breach!” He rolled off the bed and grabbed a balled-up sock. “Head shot! Head shot! Shoot to kill!” He threw the sock ball at Sandy, just missing her face.
“Wow,” Sandy said. “Well, OK, more for me, I guess.”
She shut the door, leaving me to sit in the dark and think about zombies, me getting bitten and my brother being the one who had to put me down.
“I want some cake,” I said.
“Are you crazy?” my brother said. “This place is crawling with brain-eaters.”
“But I’m hungry,” I said, which was true. In our mother’s rush to get ready, she had forgotten to make us dinner.
My brother picked up the sock ball. “All right, I’ll cover you. But watch out. If you see anybody you know, don’t trust them. They’re probably a zombie. They probably want your brains.”
He opened the door to the loud music, and we pushed our way through a maze of adult legs, some attached to shaking hips. We didn’t see any cake, only ironed pants and smooth dresses. Finally, the crowd parted and we could see what was going on. Someone had dragged the square kitchen table into the tiny dining room we never used, along with one chair. A moment later our mother emerged from the living room and sat at the table’s only seat. The crowd closed around her. The music was muted and talk dwindled to a murmur. We were waiting.