There’s Ma in the window.
The red spills. I try and wipe it up but it’s all on my foot and the floor. Ma’s face isn’t there anymore, I run to the window but she’s gone. Was I just imagining? I’ve got red on the window and the sink and the counter. “Grandma?” I shout. “Grandma?”
Then Ma’s right behind me.
I run to nearly at her. She goes to hug me but I say, “No, I’m all painty.”
She laughs, she undoes my apron and drops it on the table. She holds me hard all over but I keep my sticky hands and foot away. “I wouldn’t know you,” she says to my head.
“Why you wouldn’t—?”
“I guess it’s your hair.”
“Look, I have some long in a bracelet, but it keeps getting catched on things.”
“Can I have it?”
“Sure.”
The bracelet gets some paint on it sliding off my wrist. Ma puts it on hers. She looks different but I don’t know how. “Sorry I made you red on your arm.” “It’s all washable,” says Grandma, coming in.
“You didn’t tell him I was coming?” asks Ma, giving her a kiss.
“Ithought it best not,incase of a hitch.”
“There’s no hitches.”
“Good to hear it.” Grandma wipes her eyes and starts cleaning the paint up. “Now, Jack’s been sleeping on a blow-up mattress in our room, but I can make you up a bed on the couch . . .”
“Actually, we better head off.”
Grandma stands still for a minute. “You’ll stay for a bit of supper?”
“Sure,” says Ma.
Steppa makes pork chops with risotto, I don’t like the bone bits but I eat all the rice and scrape the sauce with my fork. Steppa steals a bit of my pork.
“Swiper no swiping.”
He groans, “Oh, man!”
Grandma shows me a heavy book with kids she says were Ma and Paul when they were small. I’m working on believing, then I see one of the girl on a beach, the one Grandma and Steppa took me there, and her face is Ma’s exact face. I show Ma.
“That’s me, all right,” she says, turning the page. There’s one of Paul waving out of a window in a gigantic banana that’s actually a statue, and one of them both eating ice cream in cones with Grandpa but he looks different and Grandma too, she has dark hair in the picture.
“Where’s one of the hammock?”
“We were in it all the time, so probably nobody ever thought of taking a picture,” says Ma.
“It must be terrible to not have any,” Grandma tells her.
“Any what?” says Ma.
“Pictures of Jack when he was a baby and a toddler,” she says. “I mean, just to remember him by.”
Ma’s face is all blank. “I don’t forget a day of it.” She looks at her watch, I didn’t know she had one, it’s got pointy fingers.
“What time are they expecting you at the clinic?” asks Steppa.
She shakes her head. “I’m all done with that.” She takes something out of her pocket and shakes it, it’s a key on a ring. “Guess what, Jack, you and me have our own apartment.”
Grandma says her other name. “Is that such a good idea, do you think?”
“It was my idea. It’s OK, Mom. There’s counselors there around the clock.”
“But you’ve never lived away from home before . . .”
Ma’s staring at Grandma, and so is Steppa. He lets out a big whoop of laughing.
“It’s not funny,” says Grandma, whacking him in the chest. “She knows what I mean.”
Ma takes me upstairs to pack my stuff.
“Close your eyes,” I tell her, “there’s surprises.” I lead her into the bedroom. “Ta-da.” I wait. “It’s Rug and lots of our things, the police gave them back.”
“So I see,” says Ma.
“Look, Jeep and Remote—”
“Let’s not cart broken stuff around with us,” she says, “just take what you really need and put it in your new Dora bag.” “I need all of it.”
Ma breathes out. “Have it your way.”
What’s my way?
“There’s boxes it all came in.”
“I said OK.”
Steppa puts all our stuff into the back of the white car.
“I must get my license renewed,” says Ma when Grandma’s driving along.
“You might find you’re a bit rusty.”
“Oh, I’m rusty at everything,” says Ma.
I ask, “Why you’re—?”
“Like the Tin Man,” Ma says over her shoulder. She lifts her elbow and does a squeak. “Hey, Jack, will we buy a car of our own someday?” “Yeah. Or actually a helicopter. A super zoomer helicopter train car submarine.”
“Now, that sounds like a ride.”
It’s hours and hours in the car. “How come it’s so long?” I ask.
“Because it’s all the way across the city,” says Grandma. “It’s practically the next state.”
“Mom . . .”
The sky’s getting dark.
Grandma parks where Ma says. There is a big sign. INDEPENDENT LIVING RESIDENTIAL FACILITY. She helps us carry all our boxes and bags in the building that’s made of brown bricks, except I pull my Dora on its wheels. We go in a big door with a man called the doorman that smiles. “Does he lock us in?” I whisper to Ma.
“No, just other people out.”
There’s three women and a man called Support Staff, we’re very welcome to buzz down anytime we need help with anything at all, buzzing is like calling on the phone. There’s lots of floors, and apartments on each one, mine and Ma’s is on six. I tug at her sleeve, I whisper, “Five.” “What’s that?”
“Can we be on five instead?”
“Sorry, we don’t get to choose,” she says.
When the elevator bangs shut Ma shivers.
“You OK?” asks Grandma.
“Just one more thing to get used to.”
Ma has to tap in the secret code to make the elevator shake. My tummy feels odd when it ups. Then the doors open and we’re on six already, we flew without knowing it. There’s a little hatch that says INCINERATOR, when we put trash in it it’ll fall down down down and go up in smoke. On the doors it’s not numbers it’s letters, ours is the B, that means we live in Six B. Six is not a bad number like nine, it’s the upside down of it actually. Ma puts the key in the hole, when she turns it she makes a face because of her bad wrist. She’s not all fixed yet. “Home,” she says, pushing the door open.
How is it home if I’ve never been here?
An apartment’s like a house but all squished flat. There’s five rooms, that’s lucky, one is the bathroom with a bath so we can have baths not showers. “Can we have one now?”
“Let’s get settled in first,” says Ma.
The stove does flames like at Grandma’s. The next to the kitchen is the living room that has a couch and a low-down table and a super-big TV in it.
Grandma’s in the kitchen unpacking a box. “Milk, bagels, I don’t know if you’ve started drinking coffee again . . . He likes this alphabet cereal, he spelled out Volcano the other day.”
Ma puts her arms on Grandma and stops her moving for a minute. “Thanks.”
“Should I run out for anything else?”
“No, I think you’ve thought of everything. ’Night, Mom.”
Grandma’s face is twisted. “You know—”
“What?” Ma waits. “What is it?”
“I didn’t forget a day of you either.”
They aren’t saying anything so I go try the beds for which is bouncier. When I’m doing somersaults I hear them talking a lot. I go around opening and shutting everything.
After Grandma’s gone back to her house Ma shows me how to do the bolt, that’s like a key that only us on the inside can open or shut.
In bed I remember, I pull her T-shirt up.