Tax Auctions.

The sign in the yard read PUBLIC AUCTION, NOVEMBER 29, 9AM.

“What the fuck is this?” I barked at him.

“Tax auctions,” he said, and shrugged. “You must owe something.”

I looked at the flyer. Ours wasn’t the only address listed.

“What am I supposed to do?” I yelped.

“I don’t know, son,” he said. “Call the number. I’m just putting up the signs.”

When he pulled out, I took the ugly black-and-yellow sign from the dirt and tucked it behind the house.

My mother had heard me, and she was up inside, making coffee, and Birdie all at once had like eleven Barbie dolls out on the floor, in various states of undress. She had one Ken doll that she called the angel. She would sometimes fly him around the room.

“Who was here?” my mother asked.

“The county?” I said.

She paled so hard she looked green. She clicked the stove on and set the percolator to boil.

I hated conversations about money. I just wanted to make enough to cover everything and never have to talk about it.

“Do we owe money?” I said.

“Oh fuck,” she said, and pinched the bridge of her nose.

I stepped past Birdie into the kitchen so she wouldn’t hear. My mother rooted around in drawers, in the cupboard, looking for old mail. I paid the bills usually. But everything I paid was utilities. There was no mortgage. My grandparents had owned the house outright.

“Fuck,” she said again, digging into the junk drawer that overflowed with matchbooks and balls of string, markers, marbles, seashells and rocks. “Here,” she said, pulling out a rat-edged white paper that had the sides ripped off. Behind it were similar notices that hadn’t even been opened, letters from the county, letters from real estate companies, hand-addressed to Mrs. Pearl Jenkins.

The notice listed our address, my mother’s name, and the auction date, and stated fifty-seven thousand dollars in back taxes.

I didn’t know anyone who made fifty-seven thousand dollars a year, let alone owed it all at once.

I watched my mother reach in the side cupboard for a pill and take it without water.

“Have you ever paid the taxes?” I asked.

She only sort of twitched her head.

“I mean, since Grandma left?” Never mind, I said, and left the paper on the counter and walked away from her. Birdie was singing in the living room, above her the giant screen of security cameras from outside: trees, the path to the parking lot, the side yard, and a hiker going by with a dog.

“Shan,” my mother called from the kitchen doorway. “We’ll figure it out.”

“No, we won’t,” I answered. “I might, but you won’t.” And I understood all at once what she meant by running, that she’d be gone, with her precious Bird, and I’d be left to figure all this shit out on my own, homeless if I couldn’t do it. I watched Birdie trip across the living room floor on her toes, the angel doll flying high and then swooping in to pick up one of the scattered girls and carry her off.