Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives

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THE MOTHER TOLD THE BOYS THAT SHE WAS MUCH unappreciated in this house. She was just like a slave. She pushed the vacuum cleaner back and forth on the floor at their feet where they sat on the sofa. They had been trying to watch a western show on the black-and-white television before she had turned on the vacuum and begun to shout her words over its howling motor. I am the only person who does anything around here, she shouted, yanking the vacuum cleaner back and forth. I cook, I clean, I wash, I go to work and bring home what little money we have and nobody helps. I am just like a slave but I’ll tell you one thing — and she turned off the vacuum cleaner over whose howl the boys had heard nothing but had sat there watching her bewildering expressions, her wide eyes and wide-open mouth — ONE OF THESE DAYS I AM GOING TO WALK OUT OF THIS HOUSE AND NEVER COME BACK.

The mother let the vacuum cleaner handle fall to the floor with a bang and she stomped into the kitchen where she had been frying a chicken. The boys really wanted to see what was going to happen in the western show, but now they had missed it because they had been watching their mother make faces and then yell that one day she would walk out of the house and never come back. And then they stopped watching the commercial that was coming on because they heard a banging and a clatter and a loud hissing sound in the kitchen, and saw a large cloud of steam and smoke, because the mother had burned her chicken and tumped her pan into the sink and now she came stomping past them toward the back of the house saying that they could Eat What They Wanted, She Didn’t Care.

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