The True Meaning of Smekday (Smek 1)

There was something strange about Mom’s voice just then. Something kind of flat and dull. “Okay,” I said. “Sorry.

“So…what do you mean ‘aliens’?”

Mom got up and walked around the room. Her voice sounded normal now, if not a little overwrought. She explained that they woke her up last night, two of them, and gave her a shot of something in the arm. She showed me, and there was definitely some kind of red dot on the inside of her right elbow. She knew they’d taken her outside, but she’d drifted off to sleep for a minute, and woke up in a large, shimmering room.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You fell asleep? How could you fall asleep in the middle of this?”

“I don’t know,” Mom answered, shaking her head. “I wasn’t afraid, Turtlebear. I just wasn’t. I was full of calm.”

I had my own ideas about what she was full of, but I kept them to myself.

Mom went on to explain that the aliens, a lot of them now, had brought her aboard their ship to fold some laundry. They related, not with words but with complicated hand gestures, that they were really impressed with her laundry folding skills. She was guided to a table piled with bright, rubbery suits with tiny sleeves and too many legs. So she got to work. As she folded, she happened to notice another human, a Hispanic man, she said, far off at the other end of the room. They had him opening pickle jars. She thought she ought to say something, say hello, but there was so much folding to do, and then suddenly she felt a hot pain on the back of her neck, and she blacked out. When she woke it was morning.

“They put it on my neck. With some kind of mole gun,” Mom said, nodding to herself.

“But…why?” I asked. “Why would a race of…of intelligent beings travel across the galaxy just to give people moles?”

Mom looked a little hurt. “I don’t know. How should I know? But it wasn’t there yesterday! You have to admit it wasn’t there yesterday.”

I looked at it, trying to remember. But who remembers a mole?

“Oh, Turtlebear, you believe me, don’t you?”

Let me tell you what I didn’t say. I didn’t say it was all a bad dream. I didn’t say she’s been working too hard and eating too much cheese right before bed. I didn’t tell her for the fiftieth time that I wished she didn’t take those pills to help her sleep.

What I did say was I believed her, because that was how things worked in our house. When she’d return from the grocer’s where she worked with a bundle of spoiled meat she’d saved from the Dumpster, I’d tell her it looked delicious. Then I’d throw it away. When I’d get home from school and find she’d blown our savings on an eight-hundred-dollar vacuum she’d bought from a door-to-door salesman, I’d tell her how great it was. Then I’d get on the phone and get our money back. I said I believed her about the aliens.

“Thank you, Turtlebear. Sweet girl,” she said, hugging me tight. “I knew you would.”

Maybe I should explain about the whole “Turtlebear” thing. It’s a family nickname, apparently, going way back. My birth certificate says “Gratuity Tucci,” but Mom’s called me Turtlebear ever since she learned that “gratuity” didn’t mean what she thought it did. My friends call me Tip.

I guess I’m telling you all this as a way of explaining about my mom. When people ask me about her, I say she’s very pretty. When they ask if she’s smart like me, I say she’s very pretty.

“Sweet girl,” Mom whispered, rocking back and forth. I hugged her back, my face inches from that mole.

There are companies that claim to make a greeting card for every occasion. If any of them are reading this, I couldn’t find a “Sorry all your friends deserted you after your alien abduction” card when I needed one.

And poor Mom, she just couldn’t keep her mouth shut. She told everyone at the grocery store about the whole thing. Even the laundry folding. Especially the laundry folding, like it was a really important detail. I wonder now if the aliens didn’t do things like that on purpose, to make abductees sound more crazy.

I was kidnapped by aliens and they made me fold laundry.

I was abducted and the aliens made me clean their rain gutters.

You see what I mean?

So people stopped talking to her. Mom and the other ladies at the store usually went out together on Wednesdays for enormous margaritas served in ceramic sombreros. But one by one they made their excuses, and Mom suddenly had her Wednesdays free. One week she made me her spy, and I crept outside the Wall Street Taco Exchange and peeped through the windows. Sure enough, the grocery store ladies were there, swilling out of Mexican hats and laughing together. And I swear I could tell they were laughing about Mom.

“Were they there?” she asked when I returned to the car. “You didn’t see them, right?”

I slumped in my seat. “Right,” I said.

It was another Wednesday, actually, when I noticed that the mole had changed. I know it was a Wednesday because it was Brownies-and-Movies-Wherein-Guys-Take-Their-Shirts-Off Night, which had replaced Margarita Night when it became clear that the grocery ladies would either have evening dentist appointments or unexplained family emergencies every Wednesday from now until the End of the World.

The End of the World, of course, was only a few months away at this point. Even so that’s still a lot of dentist appointments.

Anyway.

So the brownies were made, and the leading man had just removed his shirt to go swimming, and I was playing with Mom’s hair when I saw it. The mole. It was easily twice as large, and a weird sort of purply color.

I held my breath. “When…did this happen?” I asked.

“Hmm?”

“When did it get…like this?”

Mom turned her head to look at me. “When did what get like what, Turtlebear?”

“Your mole. It’s bigger,” I said, and I pressed my fingertip into it.

Mom shot up from the floor, her face all tight and pinched.

“You shouldn’t touch it,” she said flatly. “It’s not a toy.”

I was a little offended. “I know it’s not a toy. Of course it isn’t. It’s gross. Who would want a gross toy? Well, maybe boys would, but that’s none of my business—”

“Just don’t touch it,” Mom snapped, and tore off into the kitchen. And this is when, as she was walking away, I saw the mole glow. Just for a second. It was bright red, like a Christmas light.