A Scene From When My Mother Moved Out Of My One-Bedroom Apartment After Living With Me For Six Months


The alarms went off at 4am. My mother insisted I set every one we own.

There was no way I was getting up at that ungodly hour so I stayed in bed listening to her rustling⁠—her hairdryer, her zippering⁠—all the things that’ve been annoying me for months, and yet I found myself soaking them all in, knowing I won’t be hearing them again anytime soon.

At quarter to five, she appeared above me, her hands on her hips. “Let’s go, little girl. Time to get moving.”  

She was wearing her perfume and that camo jacket I hate.

“It looks like you’re heading off to Iraq,” I said. 

“This is a perfect coat for traveling,” she said. “Lots of pockets.”

She had that air of nostalgia about her as she looked around my apartment one last time for anything she may have forgotten to pack.

Sealips was meowing and she leaned down to pet him. “Goodbye my precious, precious kitty,” she said, stroking the top of his head. “I’m going to miss you so very much.”

“It’s funny isn’t it, Mother, how at first you couldn’t stand him, but  now he’s your precious kitty?”

My mother ignored me. She was too busy being moved by herself. 

“You make sure to brush him every day.”

“I will.”

I threw a coat over my pajamas and lugged my mother’s extremely heavy suitcase down the five flights of stairs. 

“Now don't you go dragging it against the marble,” she said.

“I won’t.”

The drive was uneventful. A lot of ‘Jessica, slow the fuck down’s. The usual.

We found a parking space on 41st street and each held a suitcase strap. The streets were empty except for men in orange hard hats working in strange humungous holes in the side of a dilapidated building.

“What a strange job,” I said.

“Well, someone’s got to do it,” she replied, holding her head high.

Inside Port Authority, I carried the suitcase on my own so that my mother could limp dramatically towards the information booth, her horrible strategy for making sure she gets the handicapped seat on the front of the bus to avoid mingling with what she referred to as the Armpits of America. 

The man was very cordial and handed my mother a slip of paper with a special code while I stood by trying not to make eye contact with anyone.

We took the escalator down. All sorts of miserable looking people wandered about, waiting for the bus to take them someplace better. 

My mother got a coffee and spread a plastic bag on the floor for me to sit on since there weren’t any chairs.

I scooted over and tapped the bag and she gave me one of her snooty smiles, “I’ll stand, thank you.”  

So my mother stood, rustling through her army bag making sure everything was still there, that horrible bag she found at the Westchester garage sale the other week for two bucks. And then she whispered to me, “I’m going to powder my nose. Stay put.”

She wasn’t gone ten seconds before the man next to me, who was wearing snow pants, started sharing.

“It’s a tough world,” he said. “After the medical malpractice and the lawyers that stole my money and my mother and father who’re dead, what’re you gonna do?” 

I just let him download. I didn’t say a word. I knew my mother would kill me. He would think he was part of the family and sit next to her on the bus and talk for 18 hours about being on the street in Washington DC because of the carbohydrate deficiency and my mother would be pissed. 

He kept talking though so I finally said, “You gotta stop talking about the past, or you’ll never have any peace.”  

“I’m trying,” he said. 

And I could see he really was, and I was too, after all, so I said, “Well, maybe in South Carolina things will be different.”  “Maybe,” he said. 

Then a pigeon flew through the door and started flying all over the place. I watched this flapping filthy magnificent creature as it soared through the hallways past all us paralyzed people. 

But this man hardly flinched. He just kept going. “You have family?” “Yep. My mom.”  “That’s nice. It’s good to have family. Otherwise you have no one. Like me. I mean, I have a brother, but he won’t talk to me.”  


Then my mother returned from the ladies’ room, and she took one look at this gentleman in snow pants and instructed me to pick up my plastic and relocate. 

And after I sat back down, my mother stared at me. She was wearing sunglasses, but I could tell she was emotional. “What are you going to do without me,” she asked.

“I don’t know, Mother.”

“Who is going to sweep the floor?”

“Nobody,” I said, smiling.

“Who is going to make sure you take your vitamins?”

“Nobody.”

“You had best take care of yourself, little girl.”

“I will, Mother.”

The line to board the bus was growing. Unhealthy looking people with bellies rolling out of half-shirts sat waiting on their suitcases single file. 

My mother of course didn’t have to wait in line because of her handicap, because of her severe distaste for the human species which has fallen into the category of handicap. 

Then the bus pulled in and everyone stood to board.

I could tell my mother was getting excited.

Then a man appeared with her luggage and the bus driver called her name. She gave me a big hug. “I don’t know how to thank you… Jessica  you saved my life.”

“You saved mine,” I said, not understanding exactly how this was true, but feeling like it was, somehow.

“I don’t know what I would have done without you,” she said.

She was crying by this point, so I gave her a hug.

“I love you so much,” she said.

“I love you!”

I felt the emotion well up. I didn’t want to experience anymore of it, though. It was too much. “Stop it,” I said. “You’re making me cry.”

Then the nice man holding my mother’s suitcase started sniffling. “I’m sorry,” he said. “My mother passed last year.”

It was all just way too much for me. Until I saw my mother walk toward the bus with her artificial limp. Always adding a skew to the sweetness. Or a sweetness to the skew. I can never tell which is which. 

And she thanked the man for helping her sit in the front seat, right behind the driver.

And she winked at me from the window. And she looked good. She had that smile she always has when it’s time to start over. When there aren’t any disappointments…  yet. Only hope. And I felt it, too. 

And I gathered my belongings, passed all the people still staggering and limping about, looking for where they’re supposed to be. 

And I headed back up the escalator and onto the street. 
The air was thick walking across 41st street.

I could hear my mother’s voice in my head, “I will not miss the air in this fucking city. You can’t even breathe!”

And I tried to remember where I parked my car. Then I drove home. And into this apartment. A motherless apartment.

No smoke.
No booze.
No toilet paper on the seat to protect her from my germs.

All that’s left are her things in boxes with a big sign on top written in black sharpie:
“Jessica, do not drop these boxes, and at some event in the future when I have a home, make sure you tape the shit out of them.”

Now it’s back to me, alone.
Back to me and Chris.
The end of another chapter.
But I can feel now. I am a little bit more part of things now.

-JLK