Baggage

“Mom, do you know where my green sweater is?” I asked, rummaging through my closet. My room was in a state of disarray, clothes and hangers thrown haphazardly on the unmade bed, papers and pens strewn over the desk, sunglasses and coins and random knick-knacks stockpiled on the bedside dresser. My red suitcase with the black lining sat empty in the corner, starving for clothes.

“I don’t know sweetie, did you check your… Jesus, Astrid!” My mother entered my room and saw the mess. “This place is a pigsty!”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, mom, I’m packing. This is the packing process.”

“Watch the attitude.” I could feel my mother’s glare on my back as I continued sorting through my closet.

“Do you really need to tear the whole room apart just to spend a weekend at your sister’s place? It’s two days, Astrid, you don’t need to pack your whole wardrobe.”

I tilted my head, considering a red top with a low cut neckline. I turned and tossed it into the suitcase, to be folded later. “We’re planning to do lots of stuff, mom. We’re going into the city on Saturday night. I just want to give myself options.”

Now it was my mother’s turn to roll her eyes. “You’re really too much, Astrid.”

“Mom. The green sweater. Do you know where it is, or not?”

She let out a slow exhale. “I might have washed it. Let me check the dryer.”

In her absence, I continued to fill the suitcase, pressing my books and cosmetics in so that the sides bulged outwards.

“Honey, here it is.” My mother said, reentering the doorframe and tossing me the sweater. As I turned to catch it, I took in my mother’s image for the first time since she’d entered the room. Unsurprisingly, I saw that she was still wrapped in her fluffy white robe from the morning. It was five o’clock at night.

“Didn’t bother getting dressed today, huh?” I muttered into my shoulder as I turned away.

“It’s not like those baggy t-shirts and shorts you wear all day are much different from pajamas.”

I didn’t bother to proceed with this line of discussion. No sense starting a tiff now, not when I was so close to being out.

I turned to toss the green sweater into the suitcase, then paused. The loosely knit wool felt constricted, more tightly woven. Sizing it up, it was obvious that something was wrong. “Mom, did you put this in the dryer?”

“Yeah, Astrid, I just said I was going to get it from the dryer.”

I felt my shoulders tighten. “Mom, this is knit. It can’t go in the dryer. Or, at least, it needs to be dried cold. It’s shrunk now.” My tone was edged, but controlled.

“Oh,” My mother said flippantly. She might as well have been examining her cuticles.

“Mom, you know this is my favorite sweater. I wear it all the time. It’s ruined now.” Maybe just this once she would apologize.

“My God, Astrid, you can be so dramatic. It’s just a cheap sweater made in Taiwan. You can buy another one for twenty-five bucks at Forever21. And if you’re so concerned about my laundry capabilities, you know something, you can do your own damn laundry.” She crossed her arms in satisfaction after her concluding words, feeling vindicated.

I could tell her that I had been doing my own laundry for years. I could tell her that I had, in fact, intended to wash the sweater myself. I could have reminded her that, after she had left the house barren of food for two weeks in a row, leaving me to take care of all the family’s groceries, she had offered to wash my dirty clothes as a service to me. But she wouldn’t acknowledge any of this. “Got it,” I said instead, bruskly. I balled up the shrunken sweater and tossed it towards the bottom of my closet, the direction opposite the suitcase.

“And you had better clean this place up before you go. I want it the way you found it when you got here two months ago. Clothes away, bed made, surfaces wiped. And clean your bathroom, too. Your sink is disgusting.”

Maybe it was because of the sweater mishap but she was being sure to assert her dominance now. I could tell she was enjoying it, this power she had over me. Internally, I felt the dormant volcano that lived in the pit of my stomach start to reawaken, I felt the lava start to bubble. “Yes, mom, I was planning on doing that anyway. You don’t need to nag me about it.” A jean jacket was folded and placed in the suitcase.

“Nag?” She asked, incredulous. “You think this is nagging, Astrid?”

I’d misstepped, and now the landmine was about to blow up in my face. Sighing, I did my best to disarm the explosive. “I will clean, okay? So just leave me to pack, please.” My mother made no movement. “Please,” I repeated, seeing that she’d taken up permanent residence in the doorway. I kneeled beside the suitcase, placing in some socks and underwear. It was now three-quarters full.

“Isn’t your train leaving in an hour? You said you were taking the six o’clock train.”

“Mom, please. I’m on time. I have it handled. Everything will be clean by the time I go. Just leave me alone now!” I was attempting to temper the fire growing inside me. My voice was climbing to a dangerous pitch, on the verge of breaking.

“Do not take that tone with me, Astrid Foster! I am your mother and I-”

“Yeah, some load of a mother you are,” I spit.

“What did you just say to me?”

The lava bubbled to the surface, and I rose from my knees, throwing the scarf in my hand down forcefully into the suitcase. “Mom, look at yourself. What have you done today? Actually, I can tell you what you did today because it’s what you do every day. You watched dad leave for work at four in the morning and then rolled over and went right back to bed. You got up late and didn’t get dressed because you had no intentions to leave the house. You watched the news for hours and regurgitated it word-for-word over the phone to anyone who would listen because you’re too brain dead to have a single original thought. You shopped around online for picture frames or bookcases or vacation home rentals, and then you’ll pacify dad when he gets home distressed over yet another unjustifiable purchase on the credit card bill. Tonight, you’ll fill up on chocolate and wine, before you pass out on the couch with two empty bottles by the sink.”

My words were venomous. My face felt hot, I’m sure it was bright red. I could feel a pulse in the vein in my neck, like I always do when I let myself explode. If there’s one thing I inherited from the woman standing before me, it was a useless and volatile temper.

“Astrid, you brat. You bitch. I am your mother and you are to respect me.”

“Respect you? Respect you? What’s there to respect, mom? Huh?” I smiled through my seething anger, practically laughing at the impossibility of my fury. I stepped closer to my mother, eager to scale the mountain of grudges I’d been collecting against her since arriving home from college two months prior. “What do you do that’s so respectable? Because I’ll tell you, I’ve been trying to think, and I can’t come up with one fucking thing.”

“Shut up!” My mother cried with equal and opposite fury, Newton’s law. “You know what you can respect? The fact that you’re living under my roof. How about that? And as long as you’re here, I’m the boss. And you’re going to listen to me.”

My frenzied merriment only grew. My smile widened across my face, pinned by my ears. I planted myself right in front of my mother, enjoying my four-inch height advantage as I looked down into her face. “Well, I’m glad you say that, mom, because I’ve been meaning to tell you… I’m not going to Catherine’s house for the weekend. I’m going indefinitely. I’m bringing the blow-up mattress and I’m taking my car, not the train. And I’ll stay there until I can afford someplace else, because I’m sure as shit not staying here even one minute long-”

The slap jerked my head to the side and knocked the words from my mouth. My hand went up to cover where hers had printed itself on my cheek, certain to rise into a swollen red mark in the coming seconds.

I looked at my mother wordlessly. It was not the first time and yet always it was shocking. She looked back with a glare determined to hold her anger, though her lip trembled with blossoming doubt. Regret was written across the wrinkle of her forehead.

I broke our gaze to gather up a final handful of indistinguishable clothes, whatever my eyes landed on throughout the room, and shoved it into my suitcase until it was filled to the brim. I nearly broke the zipper tugging it shut over the jumbled mess inside. Standing it upright, I made for the doorway, where my mother stood motionless. Her eyes were wide and her lips parted to form a small gap, a deep inhale. “Astrid…” She breathed.

“Get out of my way, Mom. Don’t make me push by.” The look in my eyes was an iron branding rod, burning, scarring. We would both be marked by this exchange. She ambled forward into the disastrous room, still decorated chaotically, as if a bomb had gone off. In some ways, it had.

I made my way through the door and down the stairs, lugging my suitcase alongside me. I grabbed my keys from the hook by the door and opened the door to the garage. Just before I let it slam shut behind me, I caught a glimpse of my mother standing at the top of the stairs. Her white robe made her seem like a ghost of a human, empty and distant and sorrowful. My hateful resolve softened ever so slightly at the sight of her there, so pathetic. “I’ll call you when I get there.”

She nodded her silent ascent, her eyes on the stairs before her.

“Bye, Mom.”

“Drive safe.”

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