Remember Me (On Hold)

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I’m just a few steps off campus when Mom pulls over in her Volvo station wagon.

She leans out the window and yells, “Ella!” as if I might not have noticed my own mother pulling over, like the car she’s been driving all my life and the PEACE IS PATRIOTIC bumper sticker didn’t tip me off. I do this awkward skip-walk to the car while all the other kids drive past me to meet up at Starbucks or the mall.

“Why aren’t you at work?” I ask, slouching so I won’t be so conspicuous.

Mom has the most presidential name ever – Margaret Carter Madison – and even though all she runs is a small elementary school, people are always clamouring for her time. It’s amazing the things she has to deal with – parents who are obsessed with their six-year-olds’ social development; Mrs. Smith, who’s this warped fifth-grade teacher who insists dinosaurs never existed occasional lice epidemics – sometimes I don’t understand how she can handle the pressure of it all. Somehow, though, she always manages to stay calm. She has a voice that’s a little quieter than most people’s, so you have to pay closer attention when you listen to her.

She’s not answering my question, so I say,” I thought if you left the Riverbank Elementary before 7:00 P.M. the result would be disastrous.”

“Well, it’s your first day back,” she says, sounding a little too cheerful.

“And that means what exactly?”

“I thought we’d go to our Japanese place. You’ve just begun the second half of your high school career. We should celebrate.”

I get kind of squirmy when she says that. I don’t know why she’s trying too hard. I mean our Japanese place? We haven’t been there since I was kid. We used to go sometimes back before she became a principal and working all the time, when I could still order the children’s special bento box. I don’t I know how to respond, so I open up the glove compartment and dig around in it, just for something to do. Tic Tacs. A pair of old glasses. The car manual.

I pop a Tic Tac in my mouth and offer her one which she accepts. I keep eating them, one by one, crushing them to minty dust between my teeth. By the time we pull up to the restaurant, I’ve finished them. I toss the empty see-through box back into the glove compartment before I get out.

It’s that slow, in-between time – too late for lunch, too early for dinner. Mom and I are the only customers, which is something I hate. Whenever there are no customers in a restaurant, I can’t stop thinking that if we weren’t here, the waiters would probably be eating or talking on the phone or turning the music up, so I feel like we’re ruining what should be their downtime. I especially hate it when they hover you in a corner, waiting to refill the water glasses. The really depresses me.

The whole time we’re looking at our menus, and ordering, and pouring green tea form a hot pot into tiny cups, I can feel Mom preparing to say something. I don’t know how I know exactly, it’s just this feeling I get. She keeps looking at me and smiling.

“Who did you eat lunch with at school?”

I pick up the tiny cup and start to take a sip, too hot. I set it down and stare at the wet circle it made on the paper place mat.

“Guess,” I say.

She doesn’t.

I trace the circle with my finger,” Come on. It’s obvious.”

“Not to me.”

I roll my eyes. “Obviously, I ate with no one.”

Mom’s cheery mood disintegrates.