our last goodnight

by Honor Teoudoussia

We will wake up tomorrow at 4:30AM and fly 1,755 miles to Los Angeles where my daughter will be a college student. I want this night to be like all the other nights when we ordered food and watched a show. On those nights, we ate late after her brother went to bed. He works the 3AM shift at UPS, so he goes to bed at 8PM … on good nights.

This is not a good night.

I order sushi for us and Cane’s for him. He stands in front of the refrigerator, his arms spread like wings holding the doors open, white light silhouetting his tall body. He stands there until the door-ajar alarm starts thrumming over and over. It’s way past 8PM. Angry energy sparks off him. “Bro. This is all the milk we have?”

The TV is paused. We wait it out like every other night. He’s always needed extra time to wind down. Good Night Moon at least three times when he was a boy. Goodnight house. Goodnight mouse.

He spends his days sketching on scraps of paper, scavenging, building, leaving trails of tools, pieces of wood, metal, tape, nails. At night, he sleeps deep, as if he has traveled from miles away. He had night terrors as a boy. Goodnight nobody. Goodnight mush.

Soon, he will go down to his room, eat in his bed, drink milk. He drinks three gallons a week, always leaving enough in the cups to solidify into pucks that easily slide out into the garbage.

But tonight, he is wired. Maybe churning thoughts about his sister leaving home. He has just peeled the slick paper off sticky glue mouse traps and lined them along the cabinet on the floor—the whole box of twenty-five.

“I was hoping we’d do that in the morning, so the mice would die while we were gone.”

“What the fuck? I just set them all up. You never like the way I do things.”

“It’s fine.”

“Well, you can stick all the papers back on. Fuck man.”

Everything will be different after this night. No more making her a quick breakfast so she’s not late to school. No more being asked if she can stay out past curfew. No more chores, allowance, driving lessons. No more watching her make slime with gallons of white glue and contact solution. No more loose teeth, tracing letters, drawing people with big circle belly buttons.

I can never again feel her little baby body sleeping on my belly as we breathe in unison. Never hold her tiny hand, delicate as a scallop. Never see her follow her big brother around, trying to get his attention. Now, she is tired of his attention. And his crises, and his ADHD, and his PTSD, and his weed smoking. Tired of all the attention on him.

He has gone downstairs. We start the show and eat our sushi. Just as I bite into fish flesh, we hear skittering in the kitchen then scuffing of paper then tiny squealing, squirming.

I stare at the sushi box, at the plastic green leaf, at the wisps of ginger like baby fingernails. I won’t look at her. I know I’ll cry. We turn up the TV.

The first signs of mice were in the bottom kitchen drawer where I kept Christmas stuff. They had chewed through a plastic bag and the cellophane wrappers of red and white swirled candies. They had eaten the votive candles and left thin tin disks with just wicks. I could hear them at night in the walls, building, gnawing, making little piles, leaving trails of tiny, black droppings like seeds.

The glue traps were his idea. At first, if the mouse was still alive, he used tongs to pick up the edge of the trap and take it outside. He poured vegetable oil on it until the mouse dropped off and scurried away. Some of them got off on their own, leaving a gray smear of body and blood.

I sip my miso soup, a soft chunk of tofu slipping into my mouth. I gag slightly when it touches the back of my throat and the mouse on the glue trap makes a tender sound, tender and frantic. We turn the TV up again and nibble our food.

I stare at the three overstuffed duffle bags and the roller suitcase large enough to fit two small children if they hugged their knees and were positioned feet to face with each other.

Photo of Honor Teoudoussia

BIO: Honor Teoudoussia loves to write to-do lists that she never does and blather on in her journal every morning. What a waste of time she thought … until she saw that those words were the blood, salt, and meat of life. She has one published piece about living in Cameroon in Wanderlust. Honor lives in the Chicago area with her grown son who is a snowboarding content creator and without her daughter who is pursuing a degree in African American Studies in California.