Visit

“Visit” -- A Peggy Scribble
By Michael Kroetch

We went to visit Mom on Mother’s Day. I brought a card from school that I’d made with glitter and bits of uncooked macaroni. Peggy said it looked retarded. I said she was just jealous. She said ha, she didn’t need a card. And anyways, if she’d had one that ugly she’d have flushed it down the toilet. I said to knock it off or I’d tell Mom. No, you won’t, she said, you’re too much of a sissycat. After that she made a big sigh, turned away from me, pulled out a crossword puzzle and worked on it the rest of the way until she got so bored she held her head out the window like dog.
The bus let us off at an enormous white gate. A smiling man stood beneath it. His coat had the word Doodles printed on it in red above the pocket. He asked our names, then shook our hands. His was sweaty. Once we were inside the gate he again held out his hand. A couple dozen sticks of gum lay in it. He said to take as many as we wanted. Did we want ten? We could have ten. Or fifteen. How many did we want?
We said no thank you.
We had instructions from Dad: on this visit we could accept no gifts. None. Not even if the person looked nice—and Doodles didn’t. He had stains on his pants and his shoes didn’t match, but I liked the way he whistled as he walked us through the guards, past the sign-in desk and down the several echoing halls to where they kept Mom.
The door he stopped in front of had only one window. It was tiny. Peggy and I weren’t tall enough to look into it but I told Peggy it must be how the doctors made sure Mom was okay. She said I should just shut up because she already knew that, so there!
Doodles pulled the door open and then left without saying anything. This room wasn’t like the others in the hall. I had no curtains, plants, posters, magazines, or anything. Not even any furniture. Just a bed. Mom was on it. She was sitting across from us, staring at us. Her head never moved. Neither did her eyes. All that moved were her lips and her tongue. She kept licking at them. And it made a quiet little noise, almost like rain.
I didn’t remember about the card until we were back on the bus. Give to me, Peggy said. She slipped it out the window. We lost sight of it in the twilight long before it stopped getting jostled about by the wind.