We’re sle eping in the car. In the parking lot of a gas station between Chaps and East Kent. Daddo says we’ve been to this gas station a bunch but it all looks different to me if we have. Everybody else in the car is asle ep. Daddo is in the driver’s seat with his hands hanging over the wheel. Grandma Ruth is in the passenger seat with her arms crossed. Mommy is in the backseat with me. It’s bright here because the gas station has a lot of lights and there’s some people walking around and a lot of them look at us in the car. Do they know something bad is happening to us? It feels like they do. It feels like people don’t want to come near us. Like how Amanda and Dan were glad we left their house. I bet that man Frank wishes he didn’t come near us. Grandma was breathing hard on the drive here and I asked if she was okay and she said she is a sixty-one-year-old woman who has never experienced anything like this in her life and she’s trying to “process.” She also told me I am brave if I sat and talked with “that thing” in my bedroom before. Mommy said I was wrong when I called her a woman. Said it’d also be wrong to call her a man. But... I still see her as Other Mommy. The woman whose eyes were a little less dark than the rest of the inside of the closet, the first time she ever spoke to me. Hello there, and who are you? She’d come like that, most nights. I’d sit in bed after Mommy and Daddo tucked me in and I’d look to the closet doors and they would open, just a little bit. I’d see her eyes in there like she was smiling. Sometimes I thought I saw her teeth, too, but when car headlights came through the window, I’d see she wasn’t smiling. Sometimes it felt like she was checking to see if I was there. Like she was looking to see if I was asle ep or not. One night I sat on the edge of the foot of my bed and waited for the doors to open but then I got too scared and I crawled back to my pillow and I heard the closet creak open behind me. I hurried up and got under the blankets, all of me, and pulled the blankets over my head. I heard her walking in my bedroom that night. The floor creaked and then it didn’t and then it did again and then I smelled her next to my bed. That night she said, Peekaboo. Like Mommy used to say. Back when I was littler. Back when Mommy was happier I think and her and Daddo made jokes that made each other laugh all the time. Peekaboo, you. I didn’t come out from under the blankets when she was beside the bed. Then she must’ve walked back to the closet because she said, Do you like me better in here? Then I did look and I saw she was in the closet again, between my hanging clothes, and the closet doors were open a little wider. I nodded yes. I wanted her to know I liked her better in there. Did she smile then? Did she ever? Mommy? I said.
I think I said it because she’d said “peekaboo.” Other Mommy, she said from the closet. Then she sunk back into the darkness between two of my sweatshirts and the closet doors closed on their own. Other Mommy, I say now, quietly, to myself. Daddo was the one who picked the gas station. He k ept saying we’re gonna figure this out tomorrow. He k ept saying it’s important to be an “optimist at a time like this.” Mommy said we should go home because it doesn’t matter where we are. The car got quiet after she said that. Grandma didn’t talk much since we left that house. She did mention a priest, but Daddo wasn’t raised like that and I didn’t even know what a priest was until tonight. Not really. But still, if one can help... I don’t know. Daddo said other people might help too. He used the word “occultist” but he said it slowly, like a word he didn’t know. I do that all the time. Daddo, Mommy, and Grandma Ruth don’t know what to do. They always know what to do. But they don’t know now. Other Mommy, I say again, even quieter this time. I look over and see Mommy is asle ep with her head against the window. Her eyes are puffy. Her lips are shaped like a frown. If I turn and press my chest and my ear to the backseat, I can hear my heart. Could someone get in there? Really? I think someone could. I worry. And it worries me that I liked Other Mommy. I thought of her as my friend. Do I still? There were times I sat up in bed waiting for her to come out of the closet. Times I was just as excited as I was scared. Because sometimes I feel angry, and upset, and like I want to scream and I think Other Mommy is like that too. She’s different from my friends at school. Different from Deb. Different from Daddo and Mommy and Grandma Ruth. She’s mad too. Are you angry, Other Mommy? Other Mommy are you there? I wanna sle ep, but I think maybe I already did a little because I closed my eyes and when I opened them I saw a worker from the gas station close to the window and he made a sign with his hands like he was sorry, he didn’t mean to bother me, he was just making sure we were okay. Then he walked away and I pressed my chest and my ear to the seat to hear what my heart sounds like and if there’s room in there for two. I don’t know... Where does Other Mommy come from? I try to stay calm like Daddo said I should. I’ve seen Other Mommy so many times. It used to be only at night. It used to be only in my bedroom. It even used to be only peeking out from my closet doors. But then one night when I sat up waiting for her to show up I smelled her and I looked to the side of my bed and saw her on her hands and
knees there, looking back at me. Other Mommy, I whisper. I thought we were friends. Are we? I don’t think Mommy and Daddo would like me talking like this. But I can’t help it. Outside by a pump, a man is washing his front window. I like when Mommy or Daddo do that with our car. I like watching the soap get wiped away. I wish we could do that with my bedroom. Clean it up like Grandma said a priest could do. The man is big and his shirt is too small and he ke eps pulling up his pants to meet it. He makes the window wet and then he dries the squeegee with a towel and then he makes a dry line along the glass. I see a face in the water sliding down the glass. I look away. But I look back. Yeah. There could be a face dripping down his window and he’s at the garbage can and his car door is open and he’s taking garbage from his car and putting it in the can and I think the face could be looking at me from across the gas station lot. It’s upside down. And it’s getting longer, drooping, until it touches where the wipers are. The man comes back to the window and uses the squeegee to wipe the face away. I can’t tell if he got all the way down to the eyes. I just can’t tell. Even when he drives away, as Daddo snores and Mommy sle eps against the window, even as Grandma sle eps with her arms crossed and I look out at the car pulling away, even then I can’t tell if he got the whole face, if he got the eyes, or if she’s still looking at me. I close my eyes and I still can’t tell if she’s looking at me. Even as I fall asle ep. Even then. Are we friends? I don’t think so. I don’t think friends are this scared of each other. But still... I wonder. Mommy and Daddo sometimes seem scared of each other. I used to be just as excited as I was scared. But now I just sle
Ep I had a friend who wanted to yell as badly as I sometimes do. I had a friend who wanted to scream. Doesn’t everyone want to scream sometimes? Doesn’t everybody want to scream?