Mary Shaver

Mary Shaver

Cleaned Out

Cami stops in the kitchen, her arms crossed, forehead creased. She says it plain, but I can hear the accusation in her voice. “Mom, I can’t find my GameBoy.”

I meet her eyes, trying to figure out if she knows I slid it from under her pillow just yesterday and pawned it for forty dollars. And when I see the pink around her eyelids and the glimmer of tears, I know she knows, but still I say—

“Why the hell would I know where you put the damn thing?”

Her lip wobbles and my first thought is she’s way too old to be crying. Even from the earliest days of her life, she was nothing like the red-faced, screaming babies I’d seen on TV or at The Dollar Tree. She was quiet from the start, with her lips pursed tight and these dark, watchful eyes. The first few nights I lay awake listening for her, hoping for a cry, hoping she’d need me, but she didn’t move, her breaths whispering through a tiny nose.

One night I brushed my finger against her little hand, praying she’d grab hold, but her fist just stayed there, closed up like a bud. I was so sure she could see through me in that moment, like she could look into my past. See what I’d done. I wanted her to cry, to talk things out, but there she slept, just a small, quiet weight on my chest.

“I promised Sonny he could play with it today,” Cami says, full of eleven-year-old tears now.

I want to tell her it’s her own damn fault for leaving it around, but we just stare at each other. A face off. Her watery glare takes me right back to the slithery feeling of her tiny hands when she used to live within me, the way they’d drag down the walls of my insides and send my lunch straight into the toilet. She did that almost every day until I pushed her out, like she enjoyed the upheaval of my constantly emptying stomach, like she knew I’d spent all those early weeks wishing she weren’t there at all.

“Alright,” I sigh. “I’ll help you look for it.”

I’m not sure why I say it. I already spent the forty dollars on a couple of blues. Still, I start lifting the pile of FPL bills and Montgomery School absence slips and Little Caesars coupons that are scattered across the kitchen counter.

“What color is it?”

Cami’s mouth hangs open. She swipes the backside of her arm across her eyes and snorts in all the snot that was hanging out her nostrils.

“It’s red.”

We start at Cami’s bed, pressed against the wall opposite my own. The mattress lies slightly crooked on the floor. Her pillow is at the foot of the bed, her faint pink pillowcase pulled off and cast across the carpet. The pillow itself was already stained with yellow sweat and mysterious white spots when I got it from the Salvation Army. Over the years, the discolored splotches had multiplied. I kick it away and squat to lift the mattress.

“I already looked underneath there,” Cami says.

“Don’t you know that moms are better at looking for things?” I tease, but when I turn back toward her hoping to see a smile, her face is still crinkled like a raisin. Eyes still red. Lips still fat. I lift the mattress and find myself scanning the carpet from top to bottom for the red plastic, that vomit green metallic screen.

There’s nothing. Nothing except an old purple bouncy ball that is wedged

between her mattress and the wall. It’s now more of a brownish gray than pur-

ple. I grab the ball and put it next to me. Cami sighs, walks around my squatting

body, and takes it, ducking away as I let the mattress thump back onto the floor.

Cami stares at the ball, rolling it between her palms.

“Let’s check behind your dresser,” I say between tight teeth. The thing I’m calling her “dresser” is three Rubbermaid drawers which, along with her clothes, store all of Cami’s junk.

I lean the drawers to the left to look for the GameBoy, but the cheap plastic frame buckles. The whole thing collapses, sending three overstuffed bins onto their sides. Old t-shirts, even older pants, small tan bras spill out. Last year’s school papers, yellow pencil shavings, Cami’s collection of those mini plastic Little Caesars pizza tables. They’re now all over the floor. I groan and turn to Cami. She’s on the other side of the room, bouncing the ball against the wall and catching it.

Thump smack. Thump smack. Thump smack.

“Quit throwing balls in the house,” I snap.

She rolls her eyes as the ball quietly settles back into her palm. I’m not even sure why I bothered scolding her; there’s nothing in here worth much and the walls are dirty anyways. Her entire room—our room—is just a couple of mattresses on the floor and these flimsy, now toppled, drawers.

Before Cami, my house was just another one of those loud, overstuffed rooms people from my street drifted through, tracking in beach sand and depositing it among the tan threads of the living room carpet where it became almost indistinguishable from another powder, thin coatings of white crystalline residue. There was always someone knocking on the door, always someone opening and slamming it over and over. The kitchen just had a single working burner, and a blackened spoon on the counter at all times. Someone else had long ago taped a Walmart bag to the ceiling, covering the smoke detector. When that didn’t prevent the alarm from going off, it just hung there like a large gray lesion. The entire house became one big bedroom to me, and my bed was wherever I could find another warm body to snuggle up to, wherever someone would engulf me in their arms and press their lips into the faded ivy tattoo laced across my col- larbone. Days collided into nights and nights collided into days. Time was an empty pot on a fire, just smoking away. I wasn’t thinking about the future. My only concern was the fast crawl toward the next mind-blistering high—whatever would reset the brainy static long enough for me to sleep or forget my shitty job waiting tables at Perkins Diner or convince myself that I loved the man sleeping next to me whose name I didn’t know and never cared to find out.

I didn’t even notice the tiny bump forming at the hems of my shirts. But one morning, I stood in the mirror, fingers pressed to the curve of my belly, and thought, no way. No. Way. There was no room in this life for someone else.

Luckily, the people who came in and out of my house, they knew things. Information moved like the smoke on the ends of their cigarettes. And so, in passing conversations, I asked neighbors how I could put an end to the thing growing inside me. They spoke of a woman with supplements that would fix my problem, that would keep my life from changing forever. I breathed it all in.

Cami stuffs the small ball into her jean pocket, its brown, grayish top bulges out. Her gaze drifts to the mess scattered around us: the sagging mattress on the floor, the wobbly plastic drawers now fallen and emptied, her small tan bras.

“It’s not in here,” she says finally.

“Well, it didn’t grow legs and walk off.”

I look at one of the mini plastic Little Caesars tables on the ground and am suddenly filled with rage.

“It’s around here somewhere. Do you want my help or not?” I’m yelling now. I don’t know why.

Cami looks at me, a little frightened, then nods. Her cheeks are pink from crying earlier. Nose still puffy. She shifts her weight from right foot to left under the pressure of my angry stare.

“I don’t know where else to look,” she says.

I think for a moment.

“You were at Sonny’s yesterday. Maybe you gave it to him.”

Something flashes across her face, like a wince and a glare rolled into one devastating look. I watch her for a beat longer, but she huffs and leaves our bedroom. In the sudden solitude, all I can think about is how easy it would be to pop a couple blues and disappear from the mess I’ve gotten myself into. But I already did that last night.

My feet are heavy as they drag across the floor and out of the bedroom.

We walk over to Sonny’s house, strolling across the uneven asphalt with the midday heat pressing on our backs. Overhead, scrawny palm trees are unmoving in the still, humid air. A black and white stray cat follows beside us, ribs showing, its eyes crusty in the corners. Cami stops for a moment, bends down, and holds out her hand. The cat sniffs it, rubs its cheek against her pinky, and yowls, opening a mouth full of yellowing canines.

A little further down the street, near the neighborhood dumpster, I open the splintering wooden gate that leads to Sonny’s front porch. It squeaks above the concrete, announcing our presence. I knock once on the front door and push it open. Sonny’s mom, Marcella, is sprawled out on the couch, still in her teal scrubs, her hair only a few strands away from falling out of the messy bun sag- ging at the base of her skull.

She barely glances over from the TV, giving a lazy grin as she puffs on her cigarette. “There they are,” she drawls, exhaling a cloud of smoke. Sonny sits cross-legged on the floor a few feet away from his mother, flipping through a bent comic book, his dark hair falling in his face. He looks up and, seeing Cami, gives her a crooked smile, one that she returns. I join Marcella on the couch, pecking her on the forehead and sighing.

“What’s up with you two, huh?” she says, arching an eyebrow.

“We’re looking for Cami’s GameBoy,” I say, watching Cami’s face as I do. “It’s gone missing.”

I feel Marcella’s eyes on me. She’s known me for ten years; it’s hard to get anything past her, especially how I suddenly “came into” a few extra blues last night. Enough to share with her.

“Damn,” she sighs, blowing smoke through her nose and shaking her head.

“How the hell you lose a Gameboy?” she says to Cami, her eyes big and crinkling at the sides.

Cami stares at the green carpeted floor, arms crossed. After a pause, she shrugs. Marcella turns back to me.

“We can’t find it anywhere,” I say, shifting my eyes away from Cami to the TV. Marcella’s all-knowing stare is on me.

She takes another drag, shaking her head once more. “Sonny, take Cami upstairs and help her look for it.”

Sonny flips to another page in his comic. “It’s not upstairs, Mom.”

Marcella’s head snaps toward him. “Don’t you tell me no,” she warns.

“But it’s not here! You know it’s not!”

“Did you hear me? Upstairs. Now.” says Marcella.

“It’s gotta be somewhere,” I say quickly, eyes shooting back to Cami. She’s still hunched, staring down into God-knows-what. Sonny grumbles as he stands, comic in hand. He lingers for a second, giving me a pointed glance that I can’t quite decipher, then trudges upstairs. Cami floats up after him, like a ghost.

The sound of their footsteps fades, leaving Marcella and me in silence. She’s back to watching me, the smirk returning as she ashes her cigarette into her finished mug on the coffee table.

“Sounds like you chicas got your work cut out for you.”

She pushes herself up from the couch, heading into the kitchen.

“Let me fix you a drink.”

In the next room over, there’s the sharp hiss of a soda can opening, followed by the thud of heavy glass hitting the counter. I was expecting this drink as soon as I started walking over to Marcella’s. In all our years of friendship, that’s what we’ve always done together. Drink.

One of the few exceptions was the day we met. By then, the strange “supplements” I’d bought from the old neighbor to solve the problem in my belly sat untouched atop the plastic dresser next to my bed. There they lay, collecting dust for weeks. I couldn’t take them. I still don’t know why. A month went by, then two, and soon enough, it was too late to take them. My stomach was swollen and heavy, too large to fit inside my shirts, so it just hung out on its own. Outside, it was a pale and purple beacon in the bright sun.

I was checking the mail, my only outing each day. The nausea had me stuck indoors. My limbs were simultaneously gelatinous and stiff, like they’d been filled with wet concrete. Sometimes the only place I could sit was in warm bathwater. Everywhere else felt like a dull ache or a bed of nails. I couldn’t keep food down. The smell of anything—bread, coffee, even the clean outside air—made my stomach flip.

Uterine Cami knew that I hadn’t wanted her. Of this I was certain. And every pang of nausea, every cramp in my abdomen, every burp that brought acid up with it, was her revenge for the love I hadn’t shown in those early months, for all the conversations and paths I’d explored to get rid of her. I was certain that, in my belly, she had access to my thoughts directly, passing straight to her through the umbilical cord. I spent the second trimester apologizing to her, but by the third, I called her Demon Child. My Undoing.

At the mailbox, Marcella shuffled over from across the street, her own belly bulging beneath her scrubs, her eyes lined with dark circles. She squinted at me, then my belly.

“Boy or girl?” she asked, her chin flicking upward.

“Girl,” I said.

Marcella’s face lit up just a little. “‘At least you get to buy all those pink frilly things.” She placed both hands on her tummy. “I’ve got a blanket, a toy car with little stars. Just small stuff, you know? But the boy stuff’s not as cute as the girly stuff.”

I shrugged. “I haven’t thought much about that,” which really meant, “I can’t afford any of that.” But Marcella’s words hung there, stirring something in me. I could almost picture a soft pink blanket folded in a crib, a place for a little girl.

I’m staring at an infomercial on TV for a cordless vacuum when Marcella finally returns with the drinks. She hands me one and sets her own on the coffee table. My ice rattles as Marcella settles back down onto the couch, sinking deep into the cushions.

“Here’s to that GameBoy,” she says with a sad grin, raising her glass.

We have two drinks. My muscles loosen a little more than a fraction. Marcella pokes my arm and directs my attention to the stairs. Sonny and Cami trudge down. She pats a hand on my shoulder. Time’s up.

I stand from the couch and Cami meets my eyes.

“It wasn’t upstairs?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“There’s gotta be somewhere left to look,” I say to Cami, wiping the last bit of ice and liquor from my upper lip.

Sonny stares at me with quiet, distrusting eyes. Just before Cami follows me out the door, he mutters something to her. She nods, her eyes closing for a moment, before leaving the house.

We silently head back home. But before we can get there, I turn suddenly toward the neighborhood dumpster a few houses down from Marcella’s, catching both Cami and myself by surprise.

“I don’t think it’s—” she begins, but her voice trails off. She opens and closes her mouth without saying anything, but I hear it all.

Cami glances at the old rusty thing—its chipping green paint, the slanted white letters of graffiti tags—and then back at me, her eyes wide and uncertain. My stomach twists. I think about the drinks I had on Marcella’s couch. That purple bouncy ball hitting the wall over and over.

I take a sharp breath, looking hard at the dumpster’s grimy black lip. Maybe if I wanted it badly enough—really wanted it, deep down—maybe I could somehow make the thing appear. Maybe I could search deep enough into the ugly mess of whatever is under the lid and pull out that red plastic thing, or something else that Cami’s been waiting for this whole time.

The lip of the dumpster is right at my collarbone, so it takes all the strength I have to hoist myself up. For a moment, my legs straddle it and I’m halfway in and halfway out. I tug my knee to my chest, twist my hips, and scramble over the edge. The metal groans under my weight, and my shoe sinks into something soft.

“Come on,” I urge Cami, craning my neck over the metal lip between us. “It’s in here,” I tell her—I tell myself. “I can smell it.”

Cami stares at me, her lips pressed tight. Then she steps onto a piece of metal jutting out from the base of the dumpster. Both of her hands grip the edge of it, and she pushes herself up just enough to fold in half across the rusted lip. She shimmies forward, inching headfirst into the garbage. I grab her beneath her arms and tug her upright. She looks around at the many garbage bags with some combination of amusement and disgust.

I flip over a bulging, white trash bag and tear it apart, like my sense of urgency might make the GameBoy spontaneously appear in someone else’s garbage. Cami sifts on her own. She’s being selective, and I realize she’s looking for the thin, white Dollar Tree bags we use. She digs with this strange focus, and for a moment, I wonder if she’s really convinced we’ll find it here.

“Look under that bag,” she says, her voice muffled, like she’s trying to holdher breath. I yank at another heavier bag, glancing inside at the mess of stained Tupperware and takeout boxes, crumpled playing cards, and half of a picture frame. A bent plastic fork , slick with something orange, sticks to my wrist. I flick it off. Every now and then, a faint whiff of something sweet and rotten wafts out, finding its way to the back of my throat.

I spot a flash of red in the trash bag I’m pulling apart and reach out, my heart lurching, before realizing it’s an empty pack of BigRed. Throwing it aside, I grab hold of another large bag that’s almost too heavy to lift. It catches on the sharp plastic of a snapped hanger and tears in my hands, splitting open with a wet, sucking sound. A splatter of cold, slimy mush hits my cheek. I freeze. It slides slowly down toward my mouth. Cami looks at me wide-eyed, her hand pressed over her nose.

Then, she lets out this tiny, strangled snicker. I wipe my cheek, but all I manage to do is smear the mess further across my face. My own laughter bubbles up, small fits at first, but then it builds, something from deep inside me. Cami’s laughter joins mine, a high, gasping sound as she watches me, clutching her stomach.

Through my scrunched, smiling eyes I watch her, still giggling, and something shifts inside me, something long buried. Like I’m back in that hospital bed, my whole body burning and exhausted, cradling her fresh, scrunched-up face close to mine for the first time. I remember the near nothingness of her against my chest, so light I could hardly feel her torso, her legs. I couldn’t speak then. Just stared at her in this stunned, shaky silence, feeling that tight knot of fear and awe and misery in the now empty space of my abdomen. I tried to find the words I’d lost. I could feel them stuck somewhere in that aching hollow inside, deep, unreachable. So I held her tighter, certain there’d always be something left, some part of me I’d never quite be able to clean out.

I swear, I thought, but I couldn’t get any further than those two words. I swear.

A nurse pressed down on my stomach with two gloved hands, pushing deep like she was kneading dough, forcing everything else out. I looked down at my belly, deflated and stretched and strange. I was certain there was more inside there, like there was something they hadn’t been able to squeeze out of me. But the nurse pressed and kneaded for a moment more, wiped away what she could, and eventually nodded. Done.

I looked down at Cami, this tiny thing still breathing against me. How I loved her.

The stale, gritty air of the dumpster closes back in, and Cami is still watching me, her laughter settling into a small, soft smile. The ache in my belly returns.

“Maybe it’s not here,” she murmurs, almost apologetic, like it’s her fault.

“Maybe not,” I say.

We walk side by side, heading home, our steps slow. The sky is sinking into a wash of purple and orange, and there’s a thick dusk that feels like the night holding its breath. The air is heavy with the sticky-sweet smell of gardenias tangled in rusty chain-link fences. It’s almost enough to hide the garbage wafting off us. The houses we walk past are quiet except for a dog barking a few lots down. A single porch light flickers on.

Cami kicks a small stone down the road, her gaze fixed forward, shoulders still slumped. I breathe in the warm smoke of my cigarette, glancing at her. Her hand hangs at her side, all five fingers spread open like a wilted flower. I reach over and take it, feeling hers slip into mine, so much bigger than I remember. Big and soft and unfamiliar.

We pass under a row of low palm trees. Their fronds hang still in the muggy air, casting thinning shadows over our path. The end of my cigarette glows orange. I wiggle my hand free for just a moment to flick ash onto the sidewalk, then replace it between my lips. But when my hand is back at my side, she doesn’t reach for me again. She just keeps walking, head down, her steps falling in line with mine.

“I’ll get you a new one,” I say softly, the words slipping out into the dark. “Soon as the next check comes. We’ll pick it out together. Find one that’s even better.”

She doesn’t answer for a few seconds, then gives the faintest nod. There’s no questioning look or pushback, just that same quiet acceptance that stings, and stings, and stings. We walk, the promise settling between us, just something to follow us home.

Hisham Bustani is a Jordanian writer of poetry, fiction, and hybrid works that focus on the dystopian experience of postcolonial modernity in the Arab region.

Mary Shaver is a writer and educator pursuing an MFA in creative writing at the University of South Florida. Her work engages with themes of grief, coming-of-age, and the notion of cycles.