The apartment smells like yellow smoke, and my mother is in the kitchen humming "Mr. Tambourine Man." Her voice is caught on "I'll come following you-oo-" holding the tune better than Bob Dylan ever did. I'm nine, and old enough to think there must be some imaginary tambourine man she sings to. Some figment who is not my father maybe. Not that there is an actual Tambourine man somewhere, he doesn't exist anywhere other than behind her eyes. It might even be my father, or the memory of him when he was handsome and she was beautiful and they were seventeen. The faucet drips irregularly into the pile of dishes because Cary hasn't fixed it yet goddamnit. She hums, smoothing the soapy sponge. The faucet's pinks, the click, gloonk, splash and hush of the dishes make their own sentences, whispering to each other. Blessedly everyone else is out.
I have a headache. Have had one since I woke up bleary eyed this morning. It's all I can do to lie here with my arm over my face, pretending to sleep, listening to my mother hum and the dishes talk to each other. I tried reading for a while, but that just made my eyes cross and my head pound. I would sort of like to get up and get something to drink, but all there is in the fridge is beer, and my mother is busy at the sink and I'm afraid that any movement is going to disturb the eeting peace in the living room. I can't drink water from the bathroom, even though everyone says it's from the same pipes so what's the difference. The difference is that it's from the bathroom, the room with the toilet where everyone in the world is naked at one point or another. Drinking water from the bathroom faucet makes me feel like I'm drinking toilet water off of someone's butt.
The click of the dishes stops and I raise an eyebrow underneath my arm. Maybe she's finished and I can get a drink of water from the kitchen. I take slow steady breaths, willing my head to stop thudding angrily behind my eyes. My mother has changed songs, humming something else that I don't know as well now. Reluctantly I lift my arm a little and am immediately rewarded with a grinding screech of pain through my skull that hurts so much it must be audible. How could she not hear it? I look toward the kitchen and bite my lip like I'm not supposed I might as well chap my lip until it bleeds for Christ's sake? I force one of my eyes open, watching her stare idly out the window, leaning against the counter. She takes a breath and mid-sigh her breath hitches and her face twists slightly with tiredness and something intangible that makes my chest feel like someone is sitting on it.
Something tells me now is not the time, so I put my arm back over my face, pretending to sleep again, and after a minute the click and shush of dishes starts again.
I was definitely massively hungover, and trying to be quiet so that my mother wouldn't send me outside to "play" with my siblings. At this age I would have cut my hand off and let myself bleed to death if it meant I would be allowed to stay in the same room as my mother. I think I still had hope, at that point, that she would start to see me again.