Hide Your Fires

9: Probably

“Why are you doing that?” Jude asks me on Sunday morning.

“Why am I doing what?” I return, looking up at him from where I’m sitting on my hands and knees on the bathroom’s tiled floor with a scrub brush in my right hand and a spray bottle of linoleum soap in my left.

“Cleaning the bathroom. It stinks now,” He tells me with a scrunched up nose just to prove his point.

“Matt got sick last night,” I respond, continuing to scrub the floor around the toilet. “And I’m getting rid of the smell. Do you want breakfast?”

“Just cereal,” He shrugs. “Do you want help?”

I offer him a tired smile. “No thanks, sweetheart. I’m actually almost done so go watch some cartoons for a minute and I’ll be right there to get you a bowl of cereal, okay?”

“Okay,” He chirps before he starts taking off down the hallway.

“Walk, Jude!” I call after him quickly before he can slip on the slippery floor of the hallway and hurt himself. “Don’t run.”

He calls back a quiet apology and then continues into the living room where I hear SpongeBob turn on moments later. I have already scrubbed the toilet completely clean inside and out and then the sink and now I’m just finishing the floor where a lot of the vomit from last night has crusted onto the floor and needed scraped off. I would have made Matt clean it himself as part of a punishment but I know that he’d never do that. Even if somebody was holding a gun to his head, he would still refuse to clean this bathroom.

I was hoping that I’d finish the whole thing before Jude woke up since I only got like, two hours of sleep last night because I couldn’t sleep at all so I started cleaning pretty early. Obviously, Jude beat me so I hurriedly finish cleaning the floor and then spray a lot of air freshener in the small bathroom to clean up the stench of vomit and cleaning supplies before I pack up all of the scrub brushes and mops.

I stash the supplies in the hallway closet and then walk through the living room into the kitchen where I quickly make a bowl of cereal for Jude.

“Jude, come eat breakfast,” I say as I grab a spoon from the silverware drawer and push it into the bowl before placing the whole thing onto the table where Jude hurriedly abandons his cartoons to come sit at the table for breakfast.

“Is Matt still sick?” Jude wonders as he shovels his first bite into his mouth.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” I remind him, sitting down in the chair beside his without any breakfast. The stench of all of the cleaning chemicals has upset my stomach so I don’t really feel like eating right now. “But yeah, he’s still pretty sick. He’ll feel better later today though.”

“Good,” He chirps, obviously relieved about his brother’s future wellbeing.  “I don’t want him to be sick forever.”

“Matt’s going to be fine,” I assure him. “I’m actually going to go check on him now, okay? Eat your breakfast and I’ll be right back.”

He just nods as he’s chewing another bite, actually listening to me for once and not talking with his mouth full of food.

I let out a soft laugh and stand up from the chair, walking out of the kitchen and down the hallway to Matt’s room. Just to be safe, I knock on his door but there’s no answer, just like I expected. I slowly ease the door open to find a mountainous lump of blankets and a comforter piled on top of Matt’s bed. The only sign of life being the sound of deep snoring and every once in a while, if I look really closely, I can see the heap of fabric moving up and down with his snoring breaths.