She looked so beautiful. And I was mad that my eyes were wet, because I wanted to see her perfectly, to remember little things. I tried to say “Hi,” but all I could get out was the H in a hot breath. Mom covered her nose and mouth with her hands, but you could see she was smiling.
“I…I still have your Christmas stocking,” she said.
I started pushing my way through the people, and I think they tried to move aside, but there wasn’t much of an aside to move to. Mom was coming down the stairs, and we met in front of the stage.
So what do you want to know? Do you want to know that she squeezed me and lifted me up so that only my toes touched the ground, and that I hugged her back? Do you want to know if I felt her wet eyelashes against my cheek, and if she stood back and held my face in her hands and laughed? And I laughed? You want to know how it felt?
None of your business.
The meeting let out a little early, as you might expect. People were so happy for Mom. They all applauded. When we left the tent, Mom held my hand, so J.Lo sidled up and took her other hand in his mitten.
“Oh, uh, hi,” Mom said. “Have you gotten away from your—”
“Hold his hand,” I whispered, smiling at everyone we passed, “until we get home. Please. I’ll explain everything, but it’s really important.”
“’Kay…” said Mom.
“Hey, who are these two?” asked a dark, curly-headed man with glasses.
“Hi, Joachim,” said Mom. “This is my daughter, Gratuity—”
“And her son and my brother, JayJay,” I finished.
“That’s a real cute ghost costume,” Joachim said, and while he turned his attention to J.Lo, Mom gave me this look like she was trying to see through my head.
“Doesn’t talk much, does he?” asked Joachim.
“He’s…shy,” said Mom. “And so the costume.”
“He’ll grow out of it. They all do. ’Night, now!”
Mom and I said our good nights.
“That was good,” I said as we continued home. “‘He’s shy.’ Much better than what I was going to say.”
We went into the pink cake-box building. It used to be the casino itself, and was mostly one big room full of slot machines and fake plants. Except now the slot machines were pushed together and stacked on one another to make walls. Other walls were made of folding tables or hanging sheets or just scrap wood and tin. It was dim. Only some of the overhead lights were working. When my eyes adjusted I could see that the carpet had a pattern of playing cards and poker chips.
There were more people in the casino who wanted to say hello, and introductions were made. Mom called J.Lo JoJo instead of JayJay once, but otherwise it went fine.
Eventually we made it to our new home—another room made from stacked tables and slot machines. Our door was a door, but it was just leaned up against a space in the wall.
“We’re…going to get real hinges soon,” Mom said as we stepped inside. “So…what do you think, Turtlebear?”
I thought it was great. Loads bigger than the car I’d been living in. There were two mattresses on the floor, and stacks of books next to an emergency exit. There was an old chrome dinette set with two chairs, and a tiny fridge underneath that wasn’t plugged into anything. There was a kitchen counter made from part of a restaurant buffet, sneezeguard and all. Under the guard were two clean metal buffet trays to serve as sinks. And in the middle of everything was my mom. And next to her a space alien in a sheet.
“You’re gonna want to sit down,” I told her.
“Is this about your friend?” said Mom, keeping an eye on J.Lo.
“I’ll tell you as soon as you’re sitting.”
She sat, and I stood at her shoulder. J.Lo stepped right in front of us.
“Okay,” I told him. “Go ahead.”
“He’s been a big, big help! I owe him! We sort of owe each other. When I tried to drive our car here, it broke and he fixed it! Oh! We should probably go get the car and put it somewhere safe. And Pig is still inside it!”
“P-Pig…Boov…” said Mom. “Wait. Pig? You have Pig?”
The way she said “Pig,” she might as well have said “rabies.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Pig. She’s fine. J.Lo here saved her life once.”
J.Lo’s head puffed up a little, but Mom didn’t even look at him.
“Oh, baby, I’ll be so glad to see Pig, but…”
“I know. The Gorg, right?”
“You know?”
“I know.”
We retrieved Slushious late that night when everyone was asleep, and parked it beside the fire exit next to our apartment. Mom was concerned someone might try to steal it, but I told her if any thief figured out how to drive Slushious away, he deserved to have it. Mom picked Pig up and kissed her purring face, and rubbed her nose in Pig’s tummy, and sneezed, and petted Pig’s head as she spoke.
“It’s common knowledge the Gorg love hunting cats. With those guns that make things vanish,” said Mom.
J.Lo clapped his hands to his mouth.
“Boov guns?” he asked. I hadn’t told him.
Mom looked at him sideways. Until now, you could tell she was trying not to look at him at all.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Don’t Gorg have those guns, too?”
“No no. The Gorg, they like the guns for making noise and pain. For scariness. They reject the Boov guns.”
“Well,” said Mom, looking back at me, “they got their hands on some Boov guns for cat hunting. I dunno. And now they’ve made it illegal to have any cats in Arizona. They said so when I met with them.”
“Whoa,” I said. “You met with the Gorg? When? Why?”
“About a week ago. Daniel Landry set it up. He’s kind of a local leader, but he has the whole state behind him now. All kinds of big shots came—congressmen, the president…I sat right next to Chelsea Clinton.”
I didn’t know who that was, but Mom seemed sort of proud so I let it go.
“Daniel asked me to come and take notes for him,” she said. “Here, I’ll get them.”
With Pig in one hand, she grabbed a notepad from a stack of books with the other. The books were odd—Mom never read anything besides magazines before.
“Let’s see. The Gorg said they’d shortly be sending the Boov away…It would just be them and us…That we should not try to resist them…That we could stay safe if we met the Gorg’s demands.”