Your Second Smile by Christina Brooks
2024 Honourable Mention
Cool air seeped in through the passenger window above where you sat, full of milk and asleep. Your left jowl, plump and lightly feathered with pale hairs, rested against the seat belt covers. You stirred and sighed. You usually slept well in your car seat, even without the engine on, but I resisted running my hand over the swell of your forehead. The skin was so soft there; it was almost like touching water. I checked the buckle one last time.
The car door’s slam did not wake you. Pressing the lock button, I backed away toward the house, my eyes on your window until my heel met the stone of the front porch.
The house looked the same from the outside. Almost. The screen door hung by one hinge, and no one had fixed it or removed it. The door itself was dirty. I should clean my door at home, I thought then. People clean their doors. Or, at least, my mother did at one time. Next to the entryway sat a pot with a dead plant in it, so dead I couldn’t tell what it was.
I looked back toward you once more before knocking. No one would be coming, except for maybe the cat. I counted to five. It wouldn’t be long enough to straighten up, but it was more than nothing, and all that I could spare.
Inside, it smelled like someone had smoked a hundred cigarettes, vomited, urinated, defecated, and died. And for a moment I thought that maybe someone had died. Maybe this would be that day. I would find a bloated body, the very last trauma this house would inflict on me, and I would call emergency services and wait in the car. With you.
A noise came from the living room. A croak maybe. Someone trying to say something with a dry throat.
“Mom?”
“Hi, honey.” The voice sounded happy and almost normal. It sounded very much like the voice that used to say “hi, honey” when she picked me up from school, or when I phoned from university.
A brown trail of her handprints on the wall led me to where she sat, like a walrus, in a stained upholstered chair. She smiled through chipped teeth. A heart-shaped bruise covered her left forearm. On the side table stood a row of highballs, some of them empty, some of them full or half full of orange liquid. A cigarette smoked itself in the ashtray. Garbage lay around her feet. The room smelled of urine.
“Where’s the baby?”
I smiled back. “I left her with my neighbour, Barbara.”
“The one with the bad hip?”
“I kind of sprung it on her so I’m staying only a minute.” “Sorry about the mess.”
“I really mean a minute.”
“Of course, I understand. Thanks for coming at all.”
“Sure.”
“Maybe just the usual? Garbage day’s tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“I thought you would bring her.”
“Next time.”
I went to the kitchen, where the walls came alive with startled flies. At the table sat a nest of take-out receipts, stained with food spatter. On the counter stood a row of spent vodka bottles and empty cans of juice concentrate, some of them with spoons sticking out.
“Things have piled up,” she called. “I guess you haven’t been since she was born.”
“I know.”
“Sorry, I mean, of course you couldn't.”
“It’s been much busier than I thought.”
“It’s alright. I remember. There should be bags under the sink.”
“I know.”
I pushed fistfuls of receipts into a black bag. In went the half-eaten, dried up food on stacked plates in the sink, and the cartons and cartons of white take-out styrofoam. I filled a blue bag with the bottles. I counted seventeen. The clanks grew loud.
“I guess I haven’t been doing very well,” she called.
From one of the bottlenecks hung a tiny sample of flavoured vodka, unopened. I slid it into my pocket and said what I always say. “It’s okay. Things are hard.”
“Yes." She chuckled.
I went past her with two of the bags. “First run to the curb.” “Sure. Just… honey?”
“Yes.”
“I really appreciate it.”
I dragged the bags behind me, one light with styrofoam and receipts, the other heavy and difficult to wield. The broken door snapped closed and struck me on the shoulder. I lurched down the driveway, straining to hear your cries in the air. I heard only the wind in the trees. Am I going to find you dead? Does it happen that fast, even when it’s cool?
Your lashes lay closed against your cheeks. I tried to still my heaving chest, staring hard at your face and shoulders. After a long instant, I saw a subtle rise and fall, and a puff of air through your lips. A sob rose in my throat. I dumped the bags and hurried back to the door.
“I wasn’t expecting you today,” my mother said.
“Sorry,” I said, collecting the remaining bags in my hands. “I really have to go. Can I call you a cleaning service?”
“How’s she doing?”
The question stopped me. “The baby?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, fine. She’s with the neighbour.”
“You said that.” She lit a cigarette before tamping out the last one. She inhaled and looked at me directly, her eyes swimming with feelings. "Are you okay? Tired?"
"Yeah."
"But okay?"
“She had her first smile yesterday.”
“Her first smile.”
“She’s had a few gas smiles but this was a real one.”
“Isn’t that wonderful.”
“She likes to watch her hands.”
“I remember you doing that.”
I took the other two bags from the floor. “I’m on my way now.”
“You just got here.”
“I’m not used to leaving her.”
“Alright, I know. Will you bring her next time?”
“I will.”
“Do you promise? I still don’t know why you didn’t bring her this time.”
“Where’s the cat?”
My mother scowled and shifted in her chair. “Probably downstairs. She’s always hiding down there now. That reminds me,” she said sweetly. “Can you change my vacuum bag? I haven’t been able to do it. My hands aren’t working properly.”
“I really have to go.”
“My fingers hurt too much somehow.” She crinkled them out in front of her, yellow and withered. “Maybe it’s arthritis.”
“Could the neighbour do it? I can call him.”
“He does so much already. And for god’s sake, it’ll only take a minute.” She looked away from me.
I carefully lowered the bags. “Where’s the vacuum?”
“In the basement. The replacements are on the shelf in the closet down there. An orange box.”
I slipped down to the room at the bottom of the stairs. Above the lightswitch hung the photo we posed for at Sears in 1984. It was my first time seeing it as a mother. Mom is glossy-haired, well-dressed, and flushed with pride. She looks like an actress or a woman from a fashion magazine. I am very small with round cheeks, just like you. I turned away quickly.
The vacuum was coated in the hairy brown dust that covered everything now. I released the panel and grasped the bag, puffed out like a diseased lung. Stuff wisped out of it as I set it on the floor. I affixed the new bag with shaking fingers. It took longer than I wanted. The cardboard mouth wouldn’t grip. As I finished, a long low howl came from somewhere behind the boxes.
“Sammy,” I sang, still focused on the bag. “It’s okay. It’s only me.”
Another howl came and turned sour at the end. I took a few steps toward the shadows before the cat skittered out and rushed past me up the stairs.
“It’s okay, Sam,” I said again. I followed the cat to the top, the disgusting bag between two fingers. “Is Sam alright?”
“Oh, god. Yes. She’s really driving me nuts.”
“Is she sick?”
“She’s fine. She has the run of the place. Drives me crazy with her howling, day and night. A person can’t sleep. She won’t even cuddle anymore. I wish I’d made her an outdoor cat from the start.”
“Should we take her to the vet? Maybe she’s howling because she’s sick.” “She’s fine. It'll be over soon. One of these days she’ll get out when the neighbour comes in, and that’ll be that.”
From somewhere in the bedrooms beyond came another howl. I remembered her arriving in our home fifteen years before as a Christmas kitten, her meows like little telephone rings. I opened my mouth and closed it again. How many minutes had passed? Three minutes? Five? Had it been five minutes?
“I’ll just put this in the garbage and head away,” I said. My hands numbed as I eased the vacuum bag inside, the smells thick in my nose.
“Did you bring the vacuum up with you?”
“No.”
“I’m having trouble getting down the stairs lately.”
“Are you really well enough to vacuum?” I said to the floor. “I’m getting better.”
“Let me find you a cleaning service. They’ll bring their own stuff.”
She fell silent for a while as I squeezed the bags in my fists. I could feel the tender place on my shoulder where the door had hit me, and the small bottle in my pocket.
“I’ll get to it. I’d rather not spend the money.” She added a moment later, “don’t be so short with me.”
A siren sounded in the distance. Someone must have happened by and called the police. They are coming to take me away. They are coming to take you away. The bags fell from my hands. I flew down to the basement and hoisted the vacuum onto my back. I ran back up and set it down with a crash.
“Goodbye,” I said, taking the two bags out with me. “Sorry to run.”
“Alright, honey. Love you. Next time,” she said, and her voice broke, “bring the baby.”
Out in the clean air, no cruiser sat at the curb, and no crowd circled the car. The garbage bags slammed against my legs as I ran to your window, blood sounding in my ears. I thought, I’ve left you too long, and you’ve suffocated under the blanket. I’m about to find your dead body.
On the other side of the window, you sat awake. You were watching the fingers on your left hand. A few seconds passed before you noticed me. Both hands went up and down, and again, and your lips opened and stretched across your gums. I could see it in your eyes. Mama, you’re here, they said. It’s you.
Christina Brooks (she/her) is a writer who has held many other job titles: a tutor, a production assistant, a copy editor, a knife seller, a tech writer, a research assistant, an educational developer, and a secondary English teacher. She also earned a PhD in English and Cultural Studies from McMaster University. Currently, Christina is supply teaching and working on two novel-length fiction projects: one on the trauma of birthing and caring for an infant, and the other about a frog-obsessed child who comes to learn about climate disaster. She lives in Hamilton with her cute husband and kids.