I’m dreaming about The Indian in the Cupboard because we’re reading the book in class.
I’m trying to shove my Hulk Hogan figurine into the cupboard but it won’t fit. I’m crying but in the middle of it Mama wakes me up.
Through the dim light of the plug-in light that I keep on all night, I can see that she’s sweating. Her eyes are wide like big Styrofoam plates, so white that it scares me. I want to go back to sleep because I want to go back to my dream. Her breath is hot on my nose and the nasty smell of nail polish gets my heart pumping.
She tugs on the old Lightning McQueen shirt I wear most nights, pushing me toward the front door.
“Quick, quick,” she hisses like Noodle.
“Where?” I rub my eyes and blink at her. She doesn’t answer, though. She pulls me with her so fast that I trip and fall against her. My knees scrape against the rough carpet but I barely feel it because I’m the man of the house.
“Get up, get up,” she says. She puts her hands under my arms and gets me back up onto my feet. She pulls me fast again but I’m ready this time and together we step outside.
It is nighttime but it’s still hot like always. The crickets are loud and Mama notices it at the same time that I do. She sits on the first step and lights up a cigarette. I pinch my nose and she sucks her teeth like she does when she thinks I’m being silly.
“They’re rubbing their legs together like instruments,” she says. “Like violins and harps and stuff. Like your daddy’s guitar.” She laughs but I don’t see what’s so funny. “Sit with me,” she says.
I move next to her and sit on my hands.
“Look up there,” she tells me and when I look at her she points at the sky. “Look at all of the stars. Come on. Help me find that Big Dipper and the little one, too, like we used to.”
I look for a long time through the sky, trying to find the little glitter dots like how I do when I’m looking for four-leaf clovers. I don’t see anything. I never do.
“Do you feel the magic out here?”
I feel her hand rest over mine when she asks me.
“Magic?”
Uncle Ed thinks she’s crazy but I don’t think so. If he was here right now, he’d smack his lips and spit black into a bottle and call her a “big fuckhead.” One time when she was going on about magic, he looked at her right in the eye and called her a devil-trottin’ bitch. That’s the only time I ever saw mama hit anybody.
“Yes, the magic! It’s here, it’s everywhere. In the stars. In the Big Dipper,” she lifts her hand and wiggles her fingers at me. Her eyes are still big and bright, even in the dark.
“I’m reading about a magic cabinet in school. In it, he puts a plastic figure like mine inside and it turns real. There’s a movie, too. We’re gonna watch it on Friday. I wish we had that,” I say. I hate that it’s what I say, though. I don’t want her to think I’m weak because I’m not and so I ask her about a new sleep shirt with someone else like Batman and not Lightning McQueen because Lightning McQueen is for babies.
She ignores me.
“Have what? A magical cabinet? Please! Look at the sky again. Look at the stars and how each one of them do that little twinkle thing when you squint your eyes at it. That’s magic, baw. The only magic you’ll ever need,” she sayss
“That’s stupid,” I say. But I look anyway and I do squint my eyes and imagine them sparkling and dancing like they might be strung up on a big, dark Christmas tree. Christmas is my favorite. The lights are so pretty and bright and you don’t have to squint to find them.
“See, sha?” She smiles. “Look. I mean really look.”
I wake up in the living room and my mouth is dry and my throat, too. I rub my fists into my eyes and pick out the boogers because if I don’t Mama will. The TV is still on and it’s playing Everybody Hates Chris and I love that show so I don’t get up yet. The sun is awake with me. Big yellow sun lasers come through the holes in the blinds and during the commercial breaks I flap the blankets so that the little dots of light jump around like they’re alive.
I don’t wake Mama up because she deserves to sleep. I want to make her an Eggo for breakfast but last time I did it, the glowy red part on the inside of the toaster that looked like its organs sparked up and shot little balls of fire all over the kitchen. She probably wouldn’t eat it anyways because she can never eat in the morning times or else she’ll get sick or something. I’ve seen it. She gets all green in the face and starts sweating bad.
My show goes off and the stupid iCarly show for girls comes on and so I turn the TV off.
Mama isn’t up, still, so I finally get up and go to her room. There is a little spot she digs out in her bed before she goes to sleep every night because she keeps all of her laundry there but right now it’s empty.
I go into the kitchen and she isn’t there either and her bottle still isn’t cleaned up from last night. I wonder why she would’ve gone somewhere so early when I step out onto our old wobbly porch that Uncle Ed calls a death trap waiting to happen.
He’s right because Mama’s out here and she’s dead. I know she’s dead because she looks cold and stiff like Daddy did when I found him up against the bathroom sink with his pants around his ankles and a shot in his elbow.
I can’t hear myself but I know I’m crying. My knees burn against the old wood but it feels better than the ripping in my chest. I move her head so that it is pointed to the sky and I stretch her eyelids open wide and I beg her to see the stars and I squeeze them down so they’re squinting and I cry and I cry until Ms. Blanchard from next door comes outside.
She calls Uncle Ed and he comes to get me. He gets angry and punches the side of his truck hard, cussing about what a stupid motherfucker my Mama is for doing what she did. I don’t ask him what he thinks she did because I know he’d tell me to shut the fuck up, too.
He tells me that I’m going to be living with him now and that I better be grateful because if it wasn’t for him I would be headed for somewhere the people would just see me as a paycheck. My new room has a dresser and so I put the only picture I have of Mama inside of it so that if it’s magic, she’ll come back.
When it’s night time, I’m outside and I’m crying because I want to go home. I hear Uncle Ed from behind me,
“Get your ass in the house and get to bed. I don’t know how Donna was running her house, but you ain’t gonna do what you want here.”
“I want to see the stars,” I say.
And he tells me there are no stars and that the stars don’t shine because we live too close to Lafayette and Lafayette is too bright.
Deo Lail is a queer and proud southern writer from rural south Louisiana who lives in western North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains.They are currently working on obtaining their bachelor’s degree from Western Carolina University and they intend to attend an MFA in the future. Their work can be found in Western Carolina University’s undergraduate literary magazine The Nomad. If you enjoy their work, you can find them at @deo.lail on Instagram.