“Gidge, can you help me sew my project for my Life Skills class? I have to make a pillow. Mom already bought the fabric, all you have to do is teach me how to use the machine.” She held up the bright-yellow, smiley-face fabric for me to see. “No! I told you last night! It’s not my job to teach you how to sew. That’s Mom’s job.” “I’m telling Mom you won’t help me!” Rita whines as she turns the corner. Little Brat. Mom comes back with a stern look on her face. She was studying tonight. She always studies on Friday nights. She has class on Monday nights in addition to the fifty hours a week she puts in at the office. She insists that her going to school is in order to give us a better life. It’s really just so she can get her damn promotion. She can’t get any higher in the company until she finishes her four year degree. “Gidget, please help Rita with her project. You know I study on Friday nights.” “No! Teaching her to sew is your job! Why should I have to do your job?!” I sat up quickly from my bed and let my magazine drop to the floor. “Gidge, we’ve talked about this. How many of your classmates don’t work after school and still drive cars?” “What does that have to do with this? Raising Rita is your job, not mine!” “Please, Gidge. I have to get this paper done tonight and I have five pages left to write. Rita will catch on quick, just show her how. She looks up to you!” “So what?! She looks up to you, too! You’re her mother and you can’t even take ten minutes away from your studies to show her how to sew!” I stood up. I was taller than my mother by a whole inch. I felt as if I towered over her, though. “You know, I could use a little help with Rita in exchange for all the things I do for you.” “Like what? ‘Oh, yeah, Gidge, can you make supper? I’m working late.’ ‘Gidge, can you clean the house? I’m having company over tomorrow night.’ ‘Gidget, can you go get Rita from piano lessons?’ Yeah, all the stuff you do for me.” “Do you want me to explain this to your father when he gets home from work?” Yeah, Dad’s second job at the Super America so he can afford to make payments on his tricked-out fishing boat he bought last summer. “You know, I don’t need this! I’m leaving! I have my own life! I don’t need to take this shit from you!” I grab my keys and forget my jacket as I stormed past Mom in my doorway and Rita, with her knees to her nose, sitting on the stairs. I get into my car and just drive. My big, old, red Buick Towncar roars as I back out of the driveway and into the street. The gears crunch as I shift it into drive and take off down the street. If only I could just live by myself. My parents expect me to raise Rita for them. It’s not my job. I’m just another kid. I drove around town for awhile then decided to park in front of the park and stretch out on the back seat. It had been Gran Alice’s car until she was too old to drive and they had to put her in the nursing home. The back seat showed no wear because she’d bought the car after Grandpa died when I was only eight. It still smelled like “White Shoulders,” the perfume she always wore. I was surprised how strong the odor in the old seats still was. I hardly noticed the smell when I drove the car. I left the radio on. My new stereo system still looked foreign in the old car. The metallic silver stereo sitting in the dark maroon dash of the old Buick. Mom had bought it for me as a thank you gift for making supper. She’d just walked in the door that night and given it to me. She wanted to surprise me. I was ecstatic! The radio in the car hadn’t worked very well. It was forever tuned to the polka channel, so I usually just shut it off. My hand fell to the floor mats and clinked against the four empty pop bottles and two empty chip bags. Grandma never would have let me have food in her car. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I woke up a little after one in the morning because I was so cold. It was so dark outside. I was relieved to find I’d parked under a street lamp. As I got closer to my house, I remembered the fight I’d had with Mom. She did so much for me. Why didn’t I just show Rita how to sew. I opened the walk-door to the garage to find the mini-van gone. Where had they gone in the middle of the night? There was a note taped to the laundry room door: Gidge-- Grandma Alice had a stroke. They brought her to the hospital in Nortonville, so we went to see her. We’ll call you tomorrow. Love M & D It’s after one in the morning. I’m in my parents’ house but they’re not here. They were supposed to be home. Our house dog wags her tail curiously at me as if she knows I’m not supposed to be home, too. She follows me into the living room, as does the navy blue Berber carpeting. The house all around me is dark except the path down the hall I’ve taken that is now illuminated behind me. I stop short at the entrance to the living room. The house is as they left it. There are newspapers near the two mauve recliners on the navy rug. The flowered mauve couch is strewn with folded clothes and half-full clothes baskets. Mom’s bow window almost frowns to see she has not returned. The window’s only happiness is my mother’s devoted care of its glossy poly-urethaned ledge and tall, clear panes. The dining room table sits on the back wall of the living room, yet that wall is the front of the house. It is a walnut color, its recently refurbished surface shiny, smooth and new. The only light in the entire, spacious room comes from the small twenty-year-old sewing machine that sits at the end of the table: the small bulb shoning the platform, needle and foot of the machine and an angled, square-shaped stream of light caresses the carpet, not quite reaching my feet. Our small white and tan Shih Tzu house dog awaits enlightenment as she sits at my feet impatiently, but she doesn’t speak. All of the lights in the house had been off, probably shut off by my dad’s efficient hand. But this one small bulb had carelessly been forgotten. My expressionless face fell into my hands and I fell to my knees as I collapsed in tears into the small stream of light.
