Chapter Seven – Part 1
Allison woke with the hazy memory of agony and the dull ache of faded cramps in her arms. She didn't to move, or open her eyes— she barely breathed, for fear of triggering the pain again.
Eventually the need to be clean again won over the fear.
The sheets were drenched with sweat. The clothes she'd slept in adhered to her body in the most grotesque way. She could smell the fact that her bladder— and worse— had given way while her mind had abdicated.
She was sick with embarrassment. The last time she had wet the bed was when she was six. Upon opening her eyes, she saw a puddle of vomit next to her head. She bolted upright-
Bad idea.
The sudden movement overwhelmed her with a tidal-wave of dizziness. She clamped her eyes shut until she was certain that she wasn't going to throw up again. She took several deep shuddering breaths, trying not to gag on the sour taste in her mouth.
When her brain stopped spinning, she opened her eyes. When she finally saw her room, she almost threw up anyway.
"Oh my. . ."
First she thought that she was in the wrong place, but the feeling passed. . .
It was her room, but it was a godawful mess. Her bedding, and some of the clothes she'd slept in, had been thrown to the walls. Her bed‑stand had been upended, spilling lamp, phone, and alarm‑clock. Something must have hit her bureau because stuffed animals were everywhere and the TV was blind, silent, and face down on the throw rug between the bed and the dresser. Frozen in shafts of dawn light, her homework lay in drifts like an academic blizzard.
At the foot of her bed, on top of the naked mattress, a stuffed Tasmanian Devil sat a little cockeyed on top of Allison's history textbook, as if it had planned all this.
I must have been delirious, Allison thought. Delirious and violent. She was frightened by the fact that she remembered none of it. She couldn't remember moving at all.
Where was Mom?
There had to have been a hell of a racket, at least when the TV upended. Why didn't her mother come to check her out?
Scared in more ways she could name, Allison got out of bed and walked the length of the hall to her mother's bedroom. She had to hold on to the wall to stay upright. Her perception felt off in odd directions that she couldn't fathom. Her arms and legs didn't occupy the right spaces. She had to think about simple motions like walking.
It reminded her of the one time she'd been drunk. Except her vision was so oddly sharp. She felt she actually saw more of the world than she should. When she thought about it, her eyes hurt.
Allison reached her mom's bedroom door, the last one at the end of the hallway, and knocked on it softly. "Mom?"
She heard breathing beyond, and pushed gently on the door.
Scarlett's striped‑orange form bolted out of the room, between Allison's legs. She had to hold on to the door‑frame to keep from falling over.
The first thing Allison saw was the empty bed. Her breath caught in her throat. But when she turned away from the bed, she saw Mom, asleep on a recliner in the corner.
Across Mom's lap was a photo album Allison had never seen before. Yellowed newsprint stuck out the edges of the book, and it was open to a picture of a uniformed man posing in front of the American flag. The pose was familiar. Macy's oldest brother, Jason, had sent home a picture just like that when he joined the marines.
On the floor, by Mom's dangling right hand, was a half‑full tumbler of amber liquid, and a nearly empty bottle of Jim Beam.
"Mom?" Allison repeated, softly.
A grumble and a slight stirring, but no other reaction. Allison looked at the tumbler, and the scrapbook, and knew that this was a scene she wasn't supposed to see. She closed her mother's door and walked back to her room trying not to think of how far away the floor seemed, or the thought that her questions about Dad had driven Mom so deep into a bottle that she couldn't hear it when she was tearing her room apart in some sort of delerium.
She grabbed all the bedding that had scattered to the points of the compass, pulled her white fluffy bathrobe out of the closet, and went to the bathroom. The bedding, and her clothes, went into the laundry hamper, filling it. She managed to confirm, to her disgust, that all her bodily functions had let go in the night.
She let her underwear soak in the sink while she tried to shower off the filth. The hot shower was the best thing she'd felt in quite a long while.
