No Room for Mom

When I rushed downstairs, Mom was sitting beside one of the flower beds outside the building.

"Mom," I called.

She turned around, her eyes red from crying. The moment she saw me, she wiped her face with her sleeve.

"Justin, what are you doing down here? It's getting dark, and it's not safe out here. Go back upstairs."

She reached into her jacket pocket. She'd had that jacket for ten years. The collar was frayed, but it was always spotless.

Without looking up, she searched her pocket and murmured, "I should've told you before I came. That was my fault. Deborah and Ella are from the city. They care a lot about keeping things clean."

Mom reached deep into her pocket and pulled out a bundle wrapped in several layers of plastic. She carefully unwrapped it.

Inside was a wad of cash, mostly fives, tens, and fifties, neatly held together with a rubber band.

She pressed it into my hand. "Here's 2,000 dollars. This money's clean. Go buy yourself some pecan pies. I know how much you like them."

I swallowed past the lump in my throat and took her hand. "Mom, come back upstairs with me."

She waved me off and took a small step back. "No, no. I'm leaving. My bus leaves at 7:00 pm. Go back upstairs, and don't fight with Ella because of me."

"Mom…"

She didn't give me a chance to say anything else. She closed my fingers around the money and headed toward the gate.

I stood there, too choked up to speak.

When I went back upstairs, my mother-in-law, Deborah Garner, was in the living room. She was telling my wife, Ella Shaw, to move some things into the spare bedroom.

"Come on, hurry up. We need to get this room ready. Kevin's coming back soon."

Kevin Shaw was Ella's younger brother. In the five years Ella and I had been married, he'd come stay with us every few weeks, usually for ten days or two weeks at a time.

Whenever he was here, he acted like he owned the place, never lifting a finger and expecting everyone to wait on him hand and foot. I'd put up with it for five years without saying a word.

I stopped in the doorway. "So you kicked my mom out because Kevin's coming back. Is that it?"

Deborah pointed toward the storage room like it was no big deal. "Who kicked her out? We gave her a room, didn't we?"

I looked at the storage room. It was barely 32 square feet. I struggled to keep my temper in check.

"There's no window, and once you put a bed in there, there's barely any room to move. Mom's getting older, and she has a bad back. She can't sleep in a place like that."