Messy

Krista has the flu and she has an awful temperature; her hair is springing up and out, and the curls are boinging in a million spirals all over her head. Her eyes are half closed and red. It is 2 a.m. and she flops on my waterbed making me flip up several inches off the bed as she hits bottom. "I'm sick, what do I dooooo?" she whines.I'm infuriated because she's woken me up, I have bad breath, and I'm achy."Well I'm sick too!" I whine back. "I'm sicker than you. I'm so sick I think I'll die. I'm way sicker than anyone, anywhere, anytime."I am, in fact, not sick."Mom, what do I do?"She is desperate for attention, love, comfort, a cure."How the hell am I supposed to know? What am I Mother Teresa, Joan of Arc, Madame Curie?" I say. This is my idea of maternal comfort."Mommmmeeeee."Krista's intensity is growing, and I get that I'm too little for all of this feeling. Further, I'm freaked out at my lack of caring and nurturing. I always feel bad, tired, and awful, especially in the morning. My back aches; I work too hard; I sleep wrong, have bad dreams; my eyes are running, hurting and crusty from residual mascara. I've already nursed a thousand of her natural shocks. Am I not yet done? When does this mothering thing end? When do they leave? How long do I have to keep up this facade of sanity? "Go take some Advil and lay back in bed," I say. But I am thinking, What are you retarded that I have to tell you that? It's not cancer for God's sake. Come to me when you have a brain tumor then we'll talk.She's crying now and I feel bad, but then I am relieved that she's left the room. What does one do when one is finished being a Mom, yet the children are still preteens?What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?HamletShe stays home from school all day and is feeling better. "Krista honey," I say as I am going out to my studio to work, "please don't watch TV in my room and make sure you eat only in the kitchen. Oh and don't eat the lasagna, that is for dinner.""Okay Mom, I love you," Krista says subserviently.After working for several hours cutting velvet, answering calls, boxing dresses, I go in the house for a snack and to work on the computer in my room. I enter the house from the back yard where my studio is, and I am in work mode. I'm hustling, juggling, staying on task, getting to all my customers, and meeting my goals. Yet something jars me from my working obsession. Something grabs me from the corner of my eye, something in the kitchen. I notice red on the gray cupboards; however, I rush by undeterred. I walk through the living room and hear the television. Loud. It is coming from my room. My blood pressure is elevating slightly, but I am staying on task. There is an odd reddish glare from under my bedroom door; I brave on and thrust through the door. As I burst into my room, my body's momentum crashes through my stomach. I stop dead. My eyes pop straight forward; my shoulders tense to my earrings. There, on the bed, is Krista watching cartoons with the entire tray of lasagna sitting on my bureau completely eaten. There is red lasagna sauce dripping from the tray onto the dresser, on the wood floor, and seeping into the cracks between the wooden slats. It is on my blue jacquard bedspread that I bought to impress the gang of men I'd hoped to lure to my room when I was first single, on the sheets, pillows and all over Krista's shirt, hands, hair and eyelashes."What in the hell!" I screech hysterically while tearing at my hair."What in the hell!"Emphasis changing from the to hell. I go back into the kitchen to assess the damage and to purposely further my madness, to increase my blood pressure and insane rage at Krista. I go in the kitchen because I love to be stark, raving mad at Krista. There are three spatulas with sauce and cheese stuck to them; one on the floor, one in the microwave, one on the stove. There is cheese, sauce, and meat strewn on the floor, sink, refrigerator door handle, on and in the microwave. Krista recklessly follows me into the kitchen. I look at her with my mouth trembling, tears forming in my eyes. There is red sauce on her pants, and at first I think she has started her period. I can't figure out how she managed to get blood on her eyelashes. Then I know it is lasagna."What kind of abortion is going on here?!" I yell."Mom, settle down. This can't be good for your heart. Don't forget how old you are," she says."Clean," I say grinding my front teeth to sand. "Just clean."She does clean, but she reddens all of the dish towels, tosses the lasagna trays and dripping paper towels into the trash, splattering more red on the clean cupboards behind the trash can. She flicks lasagna noodles off my bed and onto the floor and walls, and tracks lasagna meat sauce from the bedroom to the kitchen while carrying dripping dish and fork. When she has finished cleaning, I have new and different problems. I have to get a ladder to reach the tall, stained walls, mop the hall floors and launder all the dirty towels. And I have to cook chicken and potatoes since Krista has ingested our entire dinner.Later I tell Luke, my then boyfriend, about this and he has advice, "Well, why don't you.....have you tried....I would have....you oughtta....""Oh fuck off," I shout like a Tourette syndrome sufferer.Three days pass."Krista, I'm going out to work," I say as Krista passes me with a one gallon Tupperware bowl of Cheerios. "and do NOT eat those Cheerios in your room."She sits down at the kitchen table obediently, obsequiously, sycophantically. I go out to my studio to work, and when I come back in for a snack and to work on the computer in my room, I notice, happily and joyfully, that she has not left a Cheerios mess in the kitchen. I am relieved but misinformed. I walk into the hall, and a whitish light is glaring from under her bedroom door. Slowly I open the door. What I see next makes the blood retreat from my upper half, and I feel instantly faint. There are Cheerios and milk everywhere. There is milk dripping from Brook's top bunk bed; there are soggy Cheerios on the floor, all over her bed, the blankets, and the towels on her bed that she had used to clean up (or cover up) earlier messes. There is milk dripping and soaking her dirty clothes on the ground, and all over the $23.00 Media Map I bought for her classroom with the pictures of Grizzlies in Yosemite, the Needle in Seattle, the Statue of Liberty in New York, topographical pictures of the Grand Canyon and the Mississippi River. I bought this map to prove that I am a caring, involved, interested, highly educated Mom who invests in her child's education and welfare; to prove that I matter, I am good and great as a parent and a person; to show that I am smart, involved, cool, neat. Now the Media Map sits drenched in milk, useless to her class and my ego. Krista says, "I came in here to eat (even though you told me not to), and I tripped over the Media Map, then Cheerios went flying, milk went splashing everywhere, it got all over everything."Krista's room is usually piled about two feet high with dirty clothes, dishes, food, and crap in general so that the milk was splashed onto everything on that floor. It was seeping down into the depths. Krista once cut her finger and showed it to me."What happened?" I asked."I cut it on my floor," Krista answered. "I tried to pick something up off the floor and cut myself on that dumb glass chess board that is broken and in sharp pieces on my floor. I taped a big piece of that glass to my wall for symbolism and as a cautious reminder next time I want something down there."This milky mess w"as serious in a room so cluttered."Clean this fucking shit up," I scream. "If I see one. One. One fucking Cheerio, one happy, little tan circle, I will burst and you will no longer have a mother. I will flat out explode and combust before your eyes, and you will forever be alone. Alone! Do you hear me...alone!"Krista grabs a dirty sock off the ground with her toes and starts spreading Cheerios and milk around with her foot and the sock. I can’t even think of the name of the article of clothing. It isn't even a sock but a sockette, a footie, a shortie, a bootie. Why would she want, when I am so enraged, on top of everything else, to get her socks milky? Is this her idea of getting me back?"Mom, I am using the sock to clean up the mess," she replies.I am dumb-founded. I did not know, had not heard of this cleaning technique, and I am frankly and completely confounded. My good friend Stacy once called her husband Retarded Boy because he would never remember to put the lids on the trash cans, and the crows would abuse the trash every week no matter how often she reminded him. Krista is smart and clever. I believe this. She astounds me with her intellect regularly. That is why I am even more astounded by this imbecilic behavior. She is Retarded Girl."What are you an imbecile? Are you a retard? Who cleans up milk and Cheerios with a dirty sock? Dammit you will do this correctly and properly! Dammit you will not clean this up with a fucking bootie," I vainly try to terrorize her. I have experience with milk and carpet, summer heat and smell. Krista had spilled (poured) an entire gallon of milk on our old brown carpet when she was two. Spoiled milk that you can't get out of brown carpet in the summer is nauseating."I'll clean it up. I'll clean it up Mom just go out and stop freaking," she says."You'll do it wrong. You always do, you do everything wrong!" I yell.And she did. For weeks I would find crunchy, shriveled O's: in the bathroom, in my room, in the hall, and halfway under the baseboards, their little cheeks peaking out. When I shook out her sleeping bag a week later, twenty Cheerios went flying all over. And yes, the spoiled milk smell lasted a couple of months until we could pinpoint the area beneath months of dirty clothes, paper, glitter, CD's, dirty socks, barrettes and brushes.