Page 7 of The Intruder

BEFORE

ELLA

There’s a fish tank on my desk.

I wish I could say that I am exaggerating, although I don’t know how you exaggerate something like this. Anyway, I’m not. There is a freaking aquarium on the desk in my room where I need to do my homework. Except I can’t do it because of the aforementioned tank.

Also, it’s not just a fish tank. It’s filled with stuff. A bunch of pans. A tin for baking muffins. And then a whole bunch of serving spoons.

The terrible part is that I’m not even surprised.

I mean, the fish tank part is a little surprising.

But my mom is always putting stuff on my desk.

Usually when I leave in the morning, I spread out my books, sometimes lying open, just so she doesn’t look at it as storage space, but this time, she shoved over my American history book to make room for this huge-ass fish tank.

I want to get it off the desk so I can do my homework, but I don’t know where I would put it. Also, I’m not even sure I could lift it—it looks like it weighs more than I do. I need my mother’s help.

I throw my backpack on my twin bed, which is the only place in the entire room that is relatively free of junk; then I make my way down the stairs to the living room.

My mother and I rent out a small town house in Medford.

It’s part of a housing community, and because they have a certain number of properties, they are required to rent out some of them to low-income families.

Otherwise, we would never be able to live here. It’s way too nice.

Not that there’s anything nice about this particular house. Not anymore anyway.

The stairs of our house are dangerous. I’m always careful when I’m walking down them, because like my desk, the stairs are fair storage space.

You can’t even hold on to the red metal banister because every inch of it has clothing hung on it with plastic hangers.

And then pushed to the side are stacks of paper.

There’s maybe a foot of walkable space between the papers and the banister for me to squeeze through.

So it feels like kind of a miracle when I make it downstairs to the living room, even though I do this every day.

“Mom,” I say.

My mother is watching television on the couch.

Well, it’s not so much a couch as a mattress on the floor and then another mattress propped up behind it so you can lean back.

It’s basically a couch. My mom has got a cigarette in her hand—the whole first floor of our house smells really strongly of Lucky Strikes all the time.

I don’t even notice it that much anymore, except when I first come home after being out all day.

My mom must smoke, like, fifty cigarettes a day or more.

“Mom,” I say again.

Her sooty black eyelashes flutter. My mom is super pretty.

Like, everybody says so. She colors her hair this really golden color, and she’s practically a professional at applying makeup, although I think she’s pretty even when she’s not wearing any makeup.

I don’t look like her. I must look like my father, but I wouldn’t know because I’ve never met him or even seen a picture.

“I’m watching something,” she says distantly.

That’s what my mom does every day. She comes home from her job at the grocery store, usually with a couple of shopping bags full of stuff either from work or maybe the thrift shop right next door.

Then she watches TV most of the night. Unless she has a date, although she hasn’t had one of those in a while.

When I was little, back before I was in school, we used to watch TV together.

I would cuddle next to her on the couch, and we would watch program after program, and she would tell me what she thought of what all the actresses were wearing and the gossip about what movie star was dating which other movie star.

My mom knows everything about stuff like that.

I squeeze my hands together, trying to figure out how to tell her about this without upsetting her. “There’s a fish tank on my desk,” I finally say.

“Oh.” She brightens slightly, even looking away from the TV. “I got that for you at the thrift store. I thought you could do something with it. Plus they had a bunch of baking supplies that were practically new looking.”

What on earth am I supposed to do with a stupid fish tank? Or baking supplies when there’s no room in the kitchen to bake? Except I don’t know how to say that to her without making her upset. “I need the space to do my homework,” I explain.

“Why can’t you do your homework on your bed? Why do you need a desk?”

It’s hard enough to focus on my schoolwork without having to do it while lying in my uncomfortable bed. “I like my desk.”

“It’s not like you even care about school,” she goes on. “You’re no better at school than I was.”

“Actually,” I say, “I got an A on my math test yesterday.”

I can’t keep the note of pride out of my voice. I studied all night and aced that test. When I was a little kid, my mother used to praise the drawings I made and even hang them up on the fridge, but now she just seems angry about my A.

“What do you want?” she grunts. “A medal?”

“I just want to clear off my desk. Please, Mom?”

“Wow.” Mom takes a drag on her cigarette. “You know, when I was a kid, we had practically nothing. My parents never bought me stuff. I would have been thrilled to get a cool fish tank.”

She talks about this a lot. She was really poor growing up, and she never got new clothes like I do—she always had to wear hand-me-downs.

“Our kitchen was always empty when I was growing up,” she reminds me. “I would have killed to have a refrigerator filled with food the way ours is.”

I don’t even want to talk about our refrigerator right now. It will just make her angry. “Mom…”

“And I do it all without your father supporting us,” she continues. “And here you are, complaining about it. How about a little thanks for thinking about you?”

I grit my teeth. My mother wasn’t thinking about me when she bought that fish tank. She never is. She sees something she likes, and then she buys it. And when she gets home and there’s nowhere to put it, all of a sudden, my desk is storage space, and it is a “present” for me that I never wanted.

“Well?” she presses me, an edge to her voice. “Are you going to thank me or not?”

She looks at me, the smoke wafting from the cigarette between her fingers. She’s waiting for me to thank her for ruining my desk. And I know the consequences if I don’t do it.

“Thank you, Mommy,” I say softly.

I almost wish I hadn’t said something about it, because now I’ve gotten her attention, which isn’t what I want. Her brown eyes rake over me as her lips curl in disgust. “Where did you get that shirt?”

I tug at the white top I’m wearing, which I got from the depths of one of the drawers in my bedroom. “I don’t know. My room?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass, Ella,” she snaps at me. “That shirt makes you look like a whore. Everyone will make fun of you, and the boys won’t respect you. Is that what you want?”

I recognize the shirt is a couple of sizes too small, but all the clothes that are my size are lying in a dirty pile in the basement. I can either wear clothes that don’t fit me, wear clothes that are visibly dirty, or go to school naked. But this isn’t an argument that will sway my mother.

“I won’t wear it again,” I promise.

My mother nods, satisfied. She doesn’t ask me to join her on the couch to watch TV together like we used to when I was little, but it’s just as well.

There’s only room on the couch for one person now, because the other half has paper stacked on it.

I recognize the top paper as an email that the school sent my mother.

She likes to print out her emails, because she feels like she won’t lose them that way, even though she loses everything.

“Can you at least help me move the fish tank?” I ask her.

“Later.” Her attention is back on the television screen. “Just store it there for now. I’ll find a use for it.”

Finally, I give up and go back upstairs to my room.

I don’t know what to do about the stupid fish tank.

It would be one thing if she offered to buy me a fish.

That might be cool. But she didn’t do that.

And if I asked for one, she probably wouldn’t get it for me.

Plus, the tank is full of junk. What would I do with a muffin tin?

Back in my room, I try to lift the fish tank, but it’s really heavy.

Even when I take all the junk out of it, it’s still too much for me to lift.

I don’t even know how my mom got it up here.

She probably got that guy she works with, Wally, to do it for her, because he has a big crush on her.

And now neither of us can lift it. This dumb aquarium is going to be on my desk probably until I graduate from high school.

I can’t wait for that day. The second I turn eighteen and have my diploma, I will never come back here.