Exceptional A young girl with a story Short : Cleaning Up by Bill Schott This Sentence Starts The Story contest entry

The room was empty. Nothing left but impressions on the carpet of the removed bed and dressers, a latex glove that one of the officers might have left behind, and my uncle's brains on the wall. The red, blackening stain looked like a sad sunrise I had painted as a child in school. There hadn't been any orange watercolor so I had to use red, and it had lumps in it. The stain on the wall was glossy and chunky with a flat bottom where the bed board had blocked the lower parts of the blood blast from reaching the wall. Mom was a nurse's aide and took us to my uncle's apartment to clean up after his suicide. "No one pays for this!" she had told me, when I had been initially hesitant to go there and clean it up. "If we don't do it we'll have to pay someone else -- and that ain't cheap!" I was fifteen at the time and had aspirations of becoming a nurse some day. My uncle had always encouraged me to stay in school and do my best. He'd say aphorisms like, "A brain is a terrible thing to waste." and "Quitters never win and winners never quit." Those sayings seemed ironic at that point. We started with the blood, and what I supposed was brain and skull bits on the wall. I drenched the 'sunrise' with ammonia and water and scrubbed at it with the same scrub brush I had used the day before to clean the urine stains out of my grandfather's favorite tan trousers. There were chips in the plaster, and the blood was leeching into the tiny crannies. Mom had erected a step-ladder and was sponging down the entire wall across from me. She had completed that wall in the time I took to finish off my uncle's brains. I continued cleaning the general area as far up as I could reach until I'd finished the lower wall. The other two walls were done comparatively faster. "The landlord will be here tonight to inspect the cleaning job," my mom had told me. "We need Buddy's - - we need your uncle's deposit back to help pay for his funeral and all." "How much does it cost to do the funeral and all?" I asked, not looking at her, but at the part of the wall that needed emergency spackling. "Darlin'," she began, "it's gunna take some of your grampa's pension check, some of my next four checks, anything your uncle had that we can sell, and probably some of your college fund." "My - -" She stopped me before I could fully express my surprise. "I'm sorry honey - really. But we're all gonna have to pitch in to get your Uncle Bud decently buried." "Can't Grampa pay for it?" I asked, reasoning the immediate responsibility. "Uncle Bud was his son." She seemed a little pensive before her reply. "Darlin' - - we have - - I have been dipping into your grampa's savings quite a bit this last year. He really don't got a pot of money and I feel like a thief now." "Won't they send him more money?" I questioned. She stared just off to my right, as if telling the other me across the room, "Yes, they will send him more money." Her voice began rising. "But it won't be soon - - and it won't be a lot and he is not goin' be around much longer for you to leech money off!" I was speechless. I looked around for my scrub brush as my eyes filled with tears. My mouth was half open as I headed slowly to the spackle-needy portion of the wall I had earlier cleaned. I began lightly whisking at the area for no apparent reason. My mind was flooding with memories of my father leaving, years ago, and my mother screaming after him that he was just a leech. I remembered my almost step-dad, driving off in our old rusty pick up truck with my mom yelling after him that he was nothing but a leech. "Hon," she began, as she approached me from across the room. "You know I ..." She talked on, but all I could hear was her screaming on the phone last week. She had been talking to my uncle and she was cursing and gesturing, as though he could see through the phone lines, and calling him all kinds of unkind names. She called him pathetic. She called him the worst specimen of a man she'd ever seen. She said he was an embarrassment and a loser. Then, before slamming the phone down, she called him a filthy - - rotten - - leech. I remember my uncle telling me that his dad had given him the .45 when he turned sixteen. He kept it under his mattress with one round in the magazine in case of an emergency. An emergency exit, I guess. My mom got back half of the deposit, since we hadn't spackled. Additionally, the three days my uncle had lain in bed, after clearing his mind with a round from a .45, had apparently been cause to prorate the next month's rent to compensate the landlord for his loss. We ended up cremating my uncle and having his ashes placed in a sealed cardboard box. His name had been printed nicely across the top with a marker by someone from the crematorium. My mom gave it to me and I keep it in my trunk next to the .45 I also ended up with. My grandfather was removed from our home after a social worker reported that he had excessive sores from not being cared for properly. His checks were rerouted to the state facility where he now resides. Mom left her job as a nurse's aide and now lives with an older man that treats her well. I don't hear from her much and I never call. I had been living with the man who was once my 'almost stepfather' since I moved into the city. He left a while ago though, leaving me with this apartment, rent past due, which I clean, along with four or five others on this block. I don't have much money, but I've managed to buy a couple of nice looking urns. I got them at a two-for-one sale. One is for Uncle Buddy's ashes. I also bought a .45 round from a kid on the street who'd found it in an alley down town. He said it was a hollow point, whatever that means. All I know is that it fit in the magazine and loaded into the chamber. Now I'm ready for an emergency. My life - - this room - - seems empty. The night is very long. It is dark now -- but there'll be a sunrise tomorrow.   Recognized Author Notes I had a student whose mother had her help clean up after her uncle's suicide.

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