When I heaved myself into Mom’s room she was half sitting up in bed. The phone was on the floor and her face was frozen over like she had hit her own pause button. Whatever button she had pressed I wanted to reverse it. Around her belly button I knew she had that dumb old tattoo that read Press here for more options! But that was not the button I was looking for.

I stood there panting and swallowing my own gritty spit until I caught my breath. Carter Junior was on his doggy bed and playing with his toes.

“Mom,” I said gently, and touched her shoulder. “It will get better. Don’t give up.” I reached around and massaged her damp neck. I glanced at her bedside clock. The battery was nearly dead and the second hand twitched with less and less effort, like a worn-out heart.

She raised her head and gazed up into my eyes and as she quietly wept, the tears flowed down her cheeks and pooled inside the closed world within me. Nothing was going to change for the better. Her tears were drowning both of us.

I remembered something else sad she had said to me last week before she started locking her door most of the day. “If I don’t get help soon,” she had said, “I’ll flip out like before. I’ll find your dad again and run off and do to Carter Junior what I did to you.”

“No, you won’t,” I had replied. “I won’t let you.”

“Even if my body is still in this wretched trap of a house, my mind will have run off,” she said.

“That’s not true,” I replied. “Not at all.”

“Look at me.” She sighed and slumped back into her pillows. “What you see is not what you get. I’m depressed from the neck up. One of these days you’ll come home and find me with my head in the oven.”

“Don’t say awful things like that,” I had said and gave her a brave look in return, but I was so upset I later walked downstairs and found some old packing tape and taped the oven up.

It had been one sad mood after another since Carter Junior was born, and now all those moods had added up to beat her down. She looked like something that died only you don’t know it yet, like a winter branch that gets hollow from the cold and doesn’t grow back in the spring and you just snap it off and throw it over our back fence and into the cemetery. I knew there was still a little life deep inside her and I wished I could stir up a spark and make her furious with me. I wished she would smack me across the room, or say something hateful, or curl her lip at me like a mean dog. But she wouldn’t even heat up and give me her anger. She gave me nothing.

I pulled some baby wipes from a plastic tub and gave them to her.

She blew her nose. “I’ve been through hell and back, Joey,” she finally said. “I only have it in me to straighten up one last time. Once and for all I have to fix myself right or I’m done for.”

“You’re not done for,” I whispered. “Stay pawzzz-i-tive. Put your best foot forward.”

“If I take just one more baby step forward it will be to jump off the edge of a cliff. Believe me, Joey, I’m not good. I’m broken. I’m beaten down.”

“I’ll fix you a cup of tea,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. “With honey.”

“I’m leaving,” she said quietly.

“What?” I asked, because her voice was like rustling leaves.

“Leaving,” she repeated with sudden strength. “Get my suitcase.” She pointed toward her small closet, which was, as she put it, “a casket for clothes.”

I opened the closet door. The clothes were shoved in any old way as if they had been caught in a stampede. Her battered suitcase was on a top shelf. When I jumped up and pulled it down an avalanche of scuffed shoes and empty boxes tumbled onto me. I flicked open the snaps on the suitcase and hesitated. I was afraid to open it. Who knew what she might be hiding inside? She looked so crazy I thought she was going to tell me to put Carter Junior in there, but now he was asleep with his ear next to the little radio speaker that broadcast white noise.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said to her, meaning everything—her giving up, and packing, and leaving us.

“I have to,” she replied, and slowly ran her hand over her face as if she were mapping her sadness. “My hair is a mess. I’ve let myself go.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to leave,” I replied. “I can fix your hair.”

“I’m sure you can,” she agreed. “But it’s more than hair. It’s what’s under the hair. I need help in the head.”

“I can always do more,” I offered. “I can be your houseboy. You can do all the resting and I’ll do all the working.” But I knew her mind was made up.

Suddenly she pulled back the bedsheet and surprised me. She was already wearing high heels.

“I’m not running out on you,” she said tiredly. “It’s that I’m sick. Depressed. I honestly don’t mind if I hurt myself. It’s Carter Junior I worry about.” Her voice was jittery. “He’s still good but I’ll ruin him. When he cries do you know what I do?”

I hesitated because I was suddenly thinking about the meat cleaver. Maybe she had gotten up when I was at school and gone into the freezer and found it and now she had it in the hand that had slid back under the covers.

I took a slide-step toward the door. “What?” I said softly.

“Well, I’ll tell you. When he cries I pick him up and toss him into the air.”

“He likes that,” I said. “It’s a game. It makes him stop crying.”

“Maybe with you it’s a game, but with me I keep thinking if I throw him higher he might hit the ceiling and quiet down. Sometimes I almost let him drop to the floor and I can see his little eyes pop open and I can tell that I’m filling him with fear. A mother is supposed to give love, but I can’t because I hate myself, and now I’m so full up with self-hate I’m filling him with the overflow.”

“But I’m not filled with hate,” I whispered. “You did okay with me. If you cut me open with the meat cleaver, you’d find nothing but love inside me—the love you put there. Really.”

She wiped her eyes and nose. “You,” she said, pointing the balled-up tissue at my forehead as if she were pointing at a defect. “I already ruined you. Inside, your head is a ticking time bomb. One day you’ll wake up and do something awful, and you won’t mean to do it, but you’ll be thinking of your lousy mother, and how I made you crazy, and you’ll explode.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I shouted, because every day I worked so hard at not going crazy, and now my own mother said I was crazy. I expected my hand to go mental with the yips and pluck out every single hair on my head. My pulse was pounding and my blood was so boiling hot I felt like I was about to erupt through my skin like a human volcano. “Why are you saying this stuff?” I asked. “Why?”

“Because I’m sick,” she hissed. “And I’m going to hurt Carter Junior if I stay, and he is pure goodness and I don’t want to do to him what I did to you.”

My shoulders dropped and I could feel something in me break and give up because I knew there was a part of me that was ruined. If you looked at me, I was like a perfect piece of fruit you pull from a beautiful tree, but when you bite into the fruit you find the whole inside is rotten. Maybe she was right. It was too late for me, but not for him. He was still the perfect Pigza and had to be protected.

She stood up and pulled her stretchy shirt down to her hips and stepped toward the open closet. “I hate these crappy clothes,” she said with sudden fury, then snatched a few things without really thinking about it.

“Don’t go,” I said, begging.

“Don’t talk,” she replied, and suddenly she hunched forward and gagged as if she was going to throw up, and I wished she would throw up because maybe some of the hate inside her would vomit out and I could clean it up and rinse it away. “The food stamps are in the drawer,” she said between halting breaths. “If you run out, call me.”

“Do you need a cab?” I asked.

“I know my way to the hospital,” she replied. “Over the years I’ve worn a path down to that emergency room. It’s like a church for me.”

“Can we all go together?” I asked. “Like one big sick family? We could get an apartment there and they could fix me too.” I smiled my big sunflower smile.

She didn’t smile. She didn’t even answer. Instead she held up a finger to let me know a distant thought was on its way. Suddenly, it arrived, and she loudly blurted out, “Promise me!”

I jumped back. “Promise what?”

“Promise not to tell anyone I’m not here. I told the school secretary I needed you with me for a few days, because if Child Welfare finds I’ve left you two alone, they’ll take Carter Junior away—and you too. So promise you’ll take care of him and not let the state hand him to someone else—some other mom. That would kill me for sure if they gave him to a better mom. Even though it would be good for him, it would kill me.”

“I promise,” I said.

“Prove it,” she insisted.

“Cross my heart,” I added, and slashed an X across my shirt as if it were a treasure map, and below the X was my heart wrapped up in chains, and inside of that was my promise not to let anyone hurt us.

She nodded her approval.

“And one more promise,” she said in a deeper voice. “Don’t let that man steal him.”

“What man?” I asked.

She lunged at me and I pulled back, terrified.

“The man who stands across the street at night with a mask on.”

“I’ve never seen a masked man outside,” I said.

“He’s in the shadows,” she whispered harshly. “I see him. He’s shifty, but I know those shifts. Your father is out there—lurking. He wants the baby.”

I glanced toward the window.

“I know I sound a little out of my mind,” she said, reading my thoughts. “I’m a little too sad, and a little too afraid of myself. It’s like your father stole the best parts of me. He took the happy me away and left the sad one behind. He’ll steal the good out of you too. And he’ll steal Carter Junior because little Junior doesn’t know sadness yet. He’s not like you and me. Carter Junior is still pure and that’s what your dad wants. Something that isn’t spoiled.”

I knew what Mom meant, because I stayed awake at night just wishing I was perfect and happy and smart and that everyone liked me and that when I came home from school my mom and dad were both waiting and when I opened the door they hopped up from their chairs and did a little happy dance around me and sang a cheerful song because I was the sweet center of their lives. I was the sun and they were my planets and when they danced around me my face beamed and beamed with happiness. Then they would cook for me and help me with my homework and tuck me into bed. I knew that wishful dream from hoping for it all my life, and suddenly I could feel that my dad had that dream too. In his dream he wanted something that he hadn’t screwed up yet. He wanted something unspoiled that would be the new center of his life—something he could hold in his arms and cook for and tuck into bed. And that something was not me. It was little Carter Junior.

“Promise me,” Mom said, and gently touched my face like she does when I’m sleeping and she is sneakily treating me like a baby. “Promise me you’ll take care of the one pure thing in this house. Just for a few days. A week maybe.”

“But how can I take care of him if I’m ruined like you said?” I asked.

“You were broken once but you healed and are stronger. You have what I want,” she said. “Inner strength. Self-love. You have it. I want it. Carter Junior is full of it and your dad wants to steal it. Don’t you let him!”

She picked up her suitcase. “I’m going,” she said.

“Can I visit?” I asked.

“I’ll call when I get situated. I’m not sure what they are going to do with me. I don’t care, as long as they do something. Now close your eyes and count to a hundred,” she ordered, and pushed me facedown onto the bed as if she were robbing me of herself. “And keep them closed.”

“Okay,” I replied with my voice muffled by the pillow. I listened as she descended the stairs down to the first floor and walked across the living room. The dogs yapped a little after she opened the front door, but since it wasn’t Mr. Fong with pizza, they grumbled and settled down. Mom carefully closed the door behind her, but I could still hear the sharp snap of the lock and feel a little shudder run through the spine of our house. Then she walked slowly across the porch and down the outside stairs. When her shoe hit the concrete sidewalk I heard the scrape and gouge of the bare metal tip of her high heel, then the other. Then she picked up speed and tap, tap, tap, tap, tap she hurried away as if someone was chasing after her.

It was easier for me to imagine her as just a pair of scuffed-up shoes that were running away to be fixed at the shoe repairman, than to think of her as a mom who had to leave her kids behind in order to be fixed at the hospital.

When I couldn’t hear the tapping any longer I opened my eyes. The room seemed especially silent, not just because she was gone, but because my mind wasn’t racing from trying to guess at what awful thing she might say.

That’s when Carter Junior began to cry.

“Hey, perfect buddy,” I called over to him as I hopped up and went to his doggy bed. I picked him up and held him tightly and he quieted down. “When am I gonna have a good day?” I asked. He looked up into my face and smiled. Suddenly I could feel my special gift working in a good way and a smile spread across my face.

“Come on, you bucket of pee,” I said in a silly pirate voice. “Let’s get you a fresh diaper before somebody swabs the deck with you.”