When I stepped out of the shower, I thought I heard my youngest sister whimpering. She had been sleeping with my mother for almost a year now, ever since my stepfather left. Well, truth is, he didn’t exactly leave on his own. The day after he urinated on the bedroom rug because he was so drunk he thought he was in the bathroom and followed up with putting his cigarette out on the night table because he thought he saw an ash tray there, my mother finally had enough. Late that night, she packed his clothes in two old suitcases that were already sitting by the front door when I left for school that morning. We never saw him again. I wrapped the towel around myself and stepped just outside of the bathroom door. For sure that was Ella I heard, no longer whimpering but crying out loud. I walked a few steps down the hallway and cracked open the door to my mother’s bedroom. On seeing me, Ella shouted my name. I started to say “shhhh” so she wouldn’t wake my mother, who had not been sleeping well. Lately, I often heard my mother walking around our small townhouse at night. Sometimes she was weeping softly. Once when I got up to go and comfort her, she reached out to give me a hug before I could initiate one and whispered in my ear “Don’t let me be misunderstood.” I found that strange, even a little frightening. But a few days later when I heard it blasting from the hi-fi and heard my mother singing it along with Nina Simone, I felt better. “It’s just a song,” I told myself. Ella drew my attention back to the present as she pleaded with me, “I can’t move Mommy,” she said, “I heard something under the bed that made me scared but I couldn’t wake her up!” I approached the bed where my mother lay, looking so peaceful. Eerily peaceful.
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