FIFTY DOLLARS

My  mom called, “Christina!”

My sister came out of her room and stood outside the kitchen. “What?” Christina’s eyes squinted under the light. The rectangular kitchen was drenched in this nauseating phosphorescence. It created a high contrast, the kind you see in a poorly filmed 70’s movie that makes the walls look grainy.

My mother was biologically our mother, both mine and my sister’s. While growing up we developed this habit of referring her as my mother rather than our mother. We liked to keep her separate from each other. We kept her for ourselves.

My mother had always been a tiny woman, four foot eleven. I attributed her stature to what she said put stys in her eyes, “il fungo dal’ mare”. I always thought her hair was dark brown. I couldn’t see that it was the same color as mine, mousey with streaks of strawberry and blonde hidden in it.

I remember her that night, standing next to the wooden table, her brow furrowed. The surface of the table was damp and small splinters of wood curled back like ribbons off its top. She pointed a trembling finger at the empty table top, while she stared down my sister with her grey eyes.

“I had fifty dollars on the table, where is it?” The skin below her eyes were puffy yellow-ish bags. Under that light she took on a sickly yellow green hue. Her face seemed to be riddled with these wide brown pores. The wrinkles of her knuckles were deep, the creases of them dark.

She wore a loose tank top with a low neckline. There were blotches of red from pimples that she couldn’t pop strewn across her chest. They were the kind of pimples that grow under the skin and hurt the harder you squeeze them. My mother’s pimples never reached the surface because she would always try to pop them before they could make it to head. They instead grew larger and more irritated each time she tried to push out white puss. At the time it was enough to make me believe that her skin was made up entirely of these bumpy red mounds.

I had climbed up in the archway between the kitchen and the hall and used the pressure from my back and feet pushing against the walls to keep my body in a suspended seated position over the threshold. It was my perch. I could look down on the entire kitchen from that spot. I was eye level with Ari, our red tabby Persian, who was on top of the refrigerator behind my mother. One of his paws hung over the edge. His body, mostly made up of fur, covered various bills and paperwork for my mother’s photography studio. He liked to make his cat’s nest up there.

My sister ducked beneath me into the kitchen. The stained linoleum sighed under her feet. The tiles had a green ivy motif. I never questioned the pattern. It should have been a seamless design from one square to another, but was instead choppy and unevenly matched.

“I didn’t take your mon-,” but she didn’t get a chance to finish. My mother, a foot shorter than her, had already grabbed a fist full of my sister’s bathtub blond hair. I could see Christina’s brown roots on the nape of her neck when mom shoved her face over the table. Christina held the edge of the table to stop her forehead from being slammed into a wet splinter.

Ari jumped at the sound of the wood table smacking into the kitchen wall. My mother’s voice was a low a horse whisper, “But Christina,” she paused and looked at the table, “it was here an hour ago.”

My sister’s opened mouth wasn't pretty. In it was a retainer with two canines attached to it. It didn’t match the rest of her teeth and left awkward gaps. Fake teeth. The story goes that her father knocked them out, but stories in our house can never be fully trusted.

I was glad I wasn’t standing in the room. I’d have to see her retainer up close. The metal bar across the roof of her mouth always bothered me. I could see it when she yelled at my mother. I’ve memorized both their mouths.

“I didn’t touch it!” Christina pounded the table, “Get off me, I didn’t touch it!”

For a tiny woman my mother was strong. Maybe not strong, more adaptable and agile. Her little fingers could take hold and squeeze and you couldn't find your way out from them.

“Did you ask Kat?”

I could feel the color is my face melt away as I thought, “OH NO! I’m a spectator today, this is your game day!”

My back slipped, I had to slap my hands under my butt to catch myself from falling. “ Mah, I didn’t do it. Chris wanted that North something jacket, I heard her on the phone with Jen!”

“I wasn’t even talking to Jen!”

“Yes you…”

“ENOUGH!” Parts my mother’s face shook, “Kat, get down. Now!”

I hesitated, “Why?” I wanted to be a spectator. I didn't want to be down there with with them.

“GET DOWN!”

I could see my sister's spit and tears mixing in her mouth. “I didn’t steal anything!” She cried and it echoed through the room. It bounced off the wet walls without sticking and out then flew out window.

From on top of the refrigerator Ari had had enough. I watched him stretch his paws over the edge of the fridge sticking his butt into the air as he yawned. I memorized his mouth too. He stood on all fours then balanced on the lip of the fridge. His back legs wobbled before he pounced down onto the formica counter top.

I saw something fall to the square tiles from under his natty stomach. Something green. Before it got tangled in the vines of the floor it I let my feet drop and I landed. I rushed past my mother who was still holding my sister’s hair in her hand.

I picked up a ten dollar bill that was on the floor then climbed onto the counter. I had to hold onto the cabinet handles to pull myself up. I looked on top of the fridge.

My mother screamed over her shoulder at me, “KAT! WHAT DID I SAY? NO CLIMBING!” They were facing the other direction. Neither of them could see what I found.

I grabbed two twenties from where Ari had put them in his nest on the fridge. I didn’t tell them and I walked out of the kitchen. In my mother’s room I found her purse and I slipped the money into it, but I left some of it sticking out of the top so she would find it.