The Mother

Everyone in the sixth-grade class hated Heavenly Andrews, because if they hadn't hated her, they would have had to feel sorry for her. She came to school in dumpy jeans, likely hand-me-downs, and her notebooks were the cheap steno kind used by secretaries, rumply and grocery-listed besides. She had a habit of raising her hand in class for the sole purpose of telling anecdotes, which was part of the reason her classmates felt safe from any sort of pity on her account.

"Once," Heavenly said, in the middle of biology, for example, "my sister and I saved up enough money to have lunch at Denny's, and when we got there there was only a clown in the whole entire restaurant, in the booth next door, and he still had his makeup on and all." No one found this amusing, especially as it was likely the fiftieth such inanity they had been subjected to that month.

She was also fond of telling classmates how she hadn't slept, or hadn't eaten, because her sister had fought all night on the phone with her boyfriend, or her mother hadn't had money for groceries that week, or any of a score of unfortunate circumstances. As they would squirm and puzzle out what to say, a vacant smile would settle on her face, and this smile was the worst of all her intolerable qualities: it radiated a good-natured expectancy which more perceptive (or less self-deceptive) individuals might have recognized as desperation. Either way, Heavenly's comrades at Parkway Intermediate School only got as far, with regard to concern for their haplessly indigent classmate, as wondering about her mother: what must she be like? For though she garnered many mentions in Heavenly's anecdotes, there was little concrete information to be had.

They did know that Heavenly's mother worked a demanding job. She seemed always to be away, and not a few of Heavenly's acquaintances had begun to wonder if she existed at all. She had never been spotted in the flesh, and besides, what kind of mother would name her daughters Heavenly, Sparrow, and Glee? (for those were the names of Heavenly's sisters). And what kind of mother would raise a daughter to be so insufferable? Of course, Heavenly must have had some kind of mother at some point, unless she was an alien (could this be the case?), but at the very least, her mother was uncaring or neglectful. Most of Heavenly's classmates left their assumptions at that; further inquiry of Heavenly herself might have come across as an invitation to friendship, and that was a catastrophe none of them could afford.

The school's administrators, though, had an interest (or perhaps a soft obligation) in investigating Heavenly's family situation, because her homework was rarely completed, and her grades belied the potential such an otherwise enthusiastic child could be perceived to have (not to mention that her test scores were a poor reflection on the school's otherwise glowing performance). At the bottom of Heavenly's backpack was a detritus of notes to her parents, and her home answering machine, had her family owned one, would have been backlogged with well-meaning and occasionally stern messages from her teachers. Their concerns were rarely addressed, certainly never by Heavenly's mysterious mother, and only occasionally by her father, who had twice been persuaded to show up at the parent meetings the school counselor had arranged.

"Do you know how your daughter is doing in school?" he would begin. Or, "Heavenly tells us she doesn't get enough to eat." But no matter what the prelude, the fundamental question remained the same: "Is everything all right at home?" Heavenly's father would sit across the table, a small, pudgy man of few words. In sparse sentences he would dispel the leading implications of his family's insolvency and/or domestic turmoil, and then he would go home.

His daughter's irritating stories persisted.

Parkway Intermediate School's unofficial policy with regard to family matters was relatively hands-off; Heavenly's case, in fact, had merited a degree of intervention far beyond that which was considered SOP. And luckily for the burdened consciences of her teachers, the official regulations of the Westham County school board prohibited anything more invasive; the messy business of social service involvement was out of the question. A few months into Heavenly's sixth grade career, no one was any the wiser on the particulars of Heavenly's mother, but her father was minimally cooperative, and Heavenly did come to school with at least enough clothing to form a week's worth of yucky outfits and a few coins to buy chips and lemonade during lunch. Thus she was left to her own attention-seeking devices in the quest for whatever it was she so desperately sought.

One day she came to class telling everyone that she had a secret.

"My mother is picking me up from school today," she said to Bobby and Evelyn and Grace and Mackenzie, in turn. Soon the secret was hardly a secret at all. And her teachers, who inevitably learned of it, were at a loss to explain why it had to be a secret in the first place (the other children's mothers picked them up from school every day, completely unabashed at their fulfillment of normal parental duties).

When prompted, Heavenly gushed that her father hadn't wanted her to tell anyone, that the school had asked after her mother too often and he wanted them to "just stay out of it," but Heavenly said that she didn't much get to see her mother, and she was "just so excited" that she couldn't help herself. As the day wore on, Heavenly's normal hyperactivity cycled into overdrive, and by the end of US History (her third class) she had excused herself to use the pencil sharpener no less than seven times. Whenever the students heard the grating "rrrrr", they cringed. If it had been anyone different, they would have continued as though nothing were the matter, but it was Heavenly using the pencil sharpener, and they could picture her out in the hallway, pencils in her fist, lips peeled back to expose her front teeth, jamming one pencil after the other into the small hole with inordinate gusto.

By the end of the day, she had informed each member of her home ec class that her mother would probably take her out for ice cream, and then it was quite likely that they would go shopping and rent a movie. She imparted this information in a tone that made it clear she intended for her classmates to be jealous, only adding to the pathetic cast of the situation: what sixth-grade girl desires to get ice cream and go shopping with her mother? Her classmates exchanged glances, rolled eyes. They hoped that she would get what she wanted so that she would "just shut up." If not, they knew they would be hearing about it the next day, though admittedly, they doubted whether the woman who supposedly didn't have money to buy groceries was the same woman who would spoil her daughter with a whole month's worth of treats at once.

At car line the moment of truth arrived. The other students waited eagerly for their parents, watching Heavenly all the while as she hummed and paced and sang. She appeared to be in the best of moods, even considering her habitually obnoxious good cheer.

"Did you know my mother was an opera singer?" she told Helen Pearson. Helen hadn't known. "I'm practicing my singing for her," she said, then let out a warble. Later on she told Steven White that her mother had been a zookeeper at the Australia Zoo.

"A zookeeper?" he said. "I bet she was really a monkey. Besides, you just told Helen that she was an opera singer. I don't see how she could do both."

"She performed at the opera house in Sydney, thank you very much." Heavenly stalked off in a huff, but even the huff held a twinge of proud delight.

"If she's from Sydney," asked Rebecca Wieters, "how'd she get all the way over here?"
"She took a cruise ship," Heavenly said. "A big, beautiful cruise ship, and that was how she met my father. It was very romantic." Rebecca Wieters stuck out her tongue.

The subject of adults and romance put a damper on the sixth-grade conversation, and the other children retreated to let Heavenly be her confounding self. There were fewer of them now; parents were arriving by the moment, and their numbers were dwindling. Soon Heavenly was left alone.

Mrs. Teagan, the car line monitor, began the vigil of watch-and-wait that was her lot whenever there were late parents, and there always were one or two. It hardly surprised her that Heavenly's mother would be one of them, though Heavenly wasn't a car line regular (she usually took the bus). Mrs. Teagan sat down in the chair she had brought out and struck up a conversation with Heavenly, as she often did with children whose parents were latecomers.

"How was your day at school today?"

"It was great. In biology Mr. Herron took apart a cow's eye. Some of the other girls thought it was gross, but I thought it was pretty cool. Did you know my mother is picking me up?"

"I did know that. Mr. Hamrick told me at lunch, and I was surprised because you've said you don't see her very often. Do you think she'll be here soon?"

Heavenly began an energized scan of the horizon, her eyes raking the hills beyond the drive.

"I don't know, I haven't talked to her, but I know she'll be here. My father said so."

Mrs. Teagan did not like the way the elements of the situation were converging, but she decided, for Heavenly's sake, that she ought to wait a little while longer. So she sat and chattered with her young pupil, whom she happened to have in English, until the shadows on the playground started to lengthen, at which point she suggested they go inside.

"Perhaps we ought to call your father. Maybe he can explain why your mother is late. Or does your mother have a cell phone? We could get a hold of her, then, and find out where she is."

"No cell phone," Heavenly said, "but you can call my dad. He'll tell you she's coming. I'm sure she's just stuck in traffic. There's a lot of that where she works."

"Where does she work?" Mrs. Teagan asked.

"I don't know, exactly," said Heavenly, "but I know it's important. So important that she doesn't come home very often, and my dad can't tell me anything about it. He says it would be dangerous because he knows how I am with secrets. Personally, I think she works for the CIA. You won't tell anyone, will you, Mrs. Teagan?"

"No, of course not." There was a wrongness to this situation which unsettled her. She began to consider, deeply, what sort of circumstances the school had failed to grasp: what kind of person was her father, beneath his appearance of perfect adequacy, and why on earth was Heavenly so constantly deprived of a mother? The professional inside her was inclined to turn gracefully away, but she felt she could not; she didn't like what Heavenly had said, and like Heavenly's classmates, she didn't like her expression of dependent optimism, the expression which a flower, had it a face, might turn upon the sun.

Calmly she retrieved the file folder containing all of her students' contact information, and flipped to the page with Heavenly's name. There was only one phone number and an address, no email and no cell phone, as Heavenly had said. Mrs. Teagan dialed the number, and it rang three, four times. Finally, there was a click from the other end of the line. A man's voice.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Mr. Andrews? This is Anna Teagan from Parkway Intermediate School. I have Heavenly here; she hasn't been picked up."

"Dammit, I knew I shouldn't have answered the phone."

"Excuse me?"

"It's just... look, is she still waiting? Tell her her mother will be there, I'm busy."

"I understand that you're busy, Mr. Andrews, but Heavenly can't stay at school. I'm not authorized to supervise her after hours."

"What did I just say? Her mother will be there."

"That's what Heavenly told me, but I have to be honest, given the amount of time that's passed, I don't believe that's the case."

"Well, believe me, it is. She has this intense job, and she tends to get stuck in traffic, so... just-- just wait for her. She'll be there."

Mrs. Teagan heard a child wail in the background. The sound stitched a furrow into her brow.

"Mr. Andrews, is everything all right?"

"Peachy. Just peachy. Tell her to wait and her mom'll be there. Look, I really have to go, I hope you understand." A pause. "I know you understand. You're a teacher. I--" He breathed a deep and heavy sigh. "Thank you."

"Mr. Andrews?" This was not what she had bargained for. "Mr. Andrews!"

There was a click.

The room returned and swam before Mrs. Teagan: she registered that Heavenly, little Heavenly, who now seemed so impossibly young and small, was playing tic tac toe with herself on the blackboard. She watched her place the first X, then the first O (a diagonal block) as she thought: what to do with this girl? What could she do, what could anyone do? Her feelings led her as far as a consideration of stealing her away, of adopting her, of filling the vacancy in that smile on her face. But she censored herself; she returned to the world of concrete possibilities and insurmountable difficulties, at which point she decided that the only sensible thing to do was to submit the unfortunate situation to the authority of the principal. In a turn of truly unheard-of necessity, Heavenly ended up spending the night at his house; no one had come to pick her up, and she said she didn't remember her sister Sparrow's cell phone number (besides, Sparrow had gotten engaged to her boyfriend and moved far away). Glee, her other sister, was only a baby, and could be of no help.

The next morning the police were notified, as telephone calls to the Andrews house went unanswered, and a series of insistent knockings revealed that no one was at home. This did not seem to alarm Heavenly, who stayed back from school while the principal made more phone calls from his home office (for once Heavenly was hushed into silence by her awe of its mahogany paneling and green leather chair). That afternoon she ate Pop Tarts and played with his cat. Occasionally she mentioned how bad the traffic must have been, but said that her mom would turn up soon, he'd see.

"Right now we're more concerned about your father," he told her. The search for her mother had long been given up; she was an enigma not to be touched.

After wanteds were circulated and word got around, Raymond Andrews was captured at a gas station two states away from the house in which he was purported to live. He had a grubby sleeping baby in the backseat and barely enough money to fill his tank. He was decidedly unstable.

What the cops managed to discover was that he had run away from his home with no intention of providing for Heavenly-- her mother was "in a mental hospital, you sick fucks," she had been for two years, and his job selling insurance left him with just enough money to pay for his wife's, nothing else. He had managed to foist his eldest daughter off on her boyfriend, and his youngest daughter he could deal with "for the moment," but he "just didn't know what to do" with the middle one.

"I mean," he said, with the cuffs around his wrists, "she's just so goddamn happy all the time, and what do you tell a nine-year old when her mother's gone off the deep end? That she doesn't love her? That she can't take care of her? A new job was as good as anything. I told her it was far away and important, and she couldn't come home hardly ever. And the few times I brought her back, the traffic was always bad. That part was the truth."

But she believed the rest of it, they asked him, the entire time?

"Oh, she loved the stories, officer. She lived off of all those lies. So did I. If we didn't have food that week, it was because her mother hadn't made enough money at work. I couldn't have her blaming me. It was bad for morale. And she thought her mother was saving the world."

And her older sister, Sparrow? What did she have to say about the situation?

"I never saw her after six pm." He smiled. "Who was I to get in the way of her being self-sufficient?"

The final question they asked him was one that had been asked before, in many different guises, by many different people. It had been asked by Heavenly's classmates, in their disturbed expressions as she cheerfully regaled them with the details of her plight; it had been asked by Mrs. Teagan, as Heavenly's long-suffering mother continually refused to appear; and most notably, it had been asked by Heavenly herself, underpinning each one of her nonsensical anecdotes, which had continued, in part, because she had never gotten an answer.

What would you have us do with Heavenly, your middle daughter?

"Why would you ask me that? I have no idea. Don't they have programs for kids like her?" He looked far off, as if at the horizon, as if at a spot behind his interrogator. "Either way, it doesn't matter. She's your own goddamn problem now."