Pieces of My Mother by Melissa Cistaro Page A

let it all out. So much inside me. It won’t stop. It splatters on the wood, then seeps like hot tea into my red socks. It sounds like there is a faucet on, except this is the house with no running water. I close my eyes until it stops. It is not the smell of orange soda that fills this corner, but the distinct scent of boiled chard water.
    Then I hear the worst sound of all—urine spilling through the wood slats and hitting the floor below like hard rain. I jump up and leap into my sleeping bag, tripping across Eden on the way. He stirs.
    â€œWhat are you doing? What’s going on?” he says.
    â€œ Shhh . Nothing. Go to sleep.”
    â€œYeah, whatever,” he says and rolls over.
    I push as far into my sleeping bag as I can go. I peel off my wet socks. For all I know, I have peed on Ray’s head. What if the paperback books got hit? For a second I feel safe in my sleeping bag, like I’m sealed in a cocoon. But I also have a terrible thought— I like the idea that I may have peed on Ray’s head. Maybe he’ll get so mad that he’ll send us away to some motel. A cheap motel with a bathroom that works and no stupid geese. Maybe I will be sent back to California where I am safe with my dad. Maybe my mom will be so disgusted with Ray’s peed-on head that she’ll leave him.
    Then I feel tugged the other way. I think about the sweet and sour huckleberries here in Chimacum, and how the baby goats aren’t afraid to jump around and have a ball. Neither are my brothers. But I am. I am afraid of so much, and I don’t want my mom to know that I am afraid of anything. Because if I’m afraid of her and Ray and the goats and this strange place, she might not let me come back.
    Like the sea turtle at the aquarium, I pull my head out of my sleeping bag. I listen. Everything is quiet and still.
    â€¢ • •
    When I wake up in the morning, it feels like a jagged piece of glass is pressing against the inside of my cheek. I reach into my mouth. My baby tooth, clean and white, falls into my palm. I look down over the rafters. My mom is alone, sitting on the mattress with a book and a cigarette. Sheets of newspaper are spread out across the floor like a huge Chinese fan.
    She sees me. “I’m sorry about not having a bathroom,” she says.
    I want to pretend that I don’t know what she’s talking about or that one of my brothers must have peed in the night. But she points to the floor with her cigarette. “I threw down newspaper, same as you do with a puppy.”
    I don’t want to be the same as a puppy. I want to be her “Little Liddy Bumpkins.” As she looks up at me, I get the rules now. I won’t drink soda at night. I won’t wear red ever again. I’ll study her hands and learn to cut the poppies. I’ll be tough-skinned like my brothers.
    â€œMy tooth came out,” I say, excited that I have something to show her. I hold it up in the air like a pearl from an oyster.
    She smiles up at me. Her eyes are as blue and open as the sky. “Lemme see, lemme see.”
    This will be the first tooth of mine that she’s ever seen.
    I hold on tightly to my baby tooth as I climb barefoot down the ladder toward her.

NOW
faithful
    Before boarding the plane to come here to Olympia, Bella told me that her tooth was loose. She always leaves a letter for the tooth fairy underneath her pillow, and her fairy replies with tiny handwritten notes as well as some kind of special treasure—a pearl, a fairy chandelier, an amethyst jewel, a rhinestone button, a crystal teardrop—mostly pieces that sparkle and are the proper size for a fairy to deliver. In my role as the tooth fairy, I revel in finding each treasure. I suppose it comes from what I might have liked as a young girl who believed in good fairies.
    I think about calling Bella back to tell her I miss her. It’s late. Maybe she’s already gone to bed. And I should