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P arrot leans back slowly through the soft curtain of clothes until she feels the wall against the small bumps of her spine, then lowers herself against it, wiggling her bum slightly, until it finds the place she made before, between the shoe boxes piled against the back wall. She sits on the wooden floor, legs bent, her palms flat against her pajamaed thighs, her bare feet feeling grit underneath them.

Parrot knows the whole closet by heart. By smell and by touch.

Next to her own feet are shoes, lined up in front of the shoe boxes. On the right, her small fingers find Mommys ankle boots. Black. These are the ones that stink the most. Parrot determined this ages ago during an especially long confinement during which she sniffed everything on the floor individually, as well as the hems of most of the dresses and coats. The blouses don't hang low enough to sniff without standing up, and if she stands up she starts to feel a bit suffocated, so she doesn't do it often.

The rank smell of the ankle boots is the first thing that gets into her nose when she is thrust in here, or when she slips in by herself. After a while, as her eyes get used to seeing by the thin light that wafts in under the door, her nose gets used to smelling, and she begins to detect other odors underneath the sharp animal reek of the ankle boots. On the other side of her pressed-together feet, there is a pair of beige cloth boots. They have pointyish toes and stacked brown heels, and they start to fall over halfway up the calf, their open tops looking resigned as they fold toward the floor. The cloth of these doesn't have much of a smell, although there is a nice subtle earthy undertone to the heels if Parrot puts her nose right there and pays attention. Mommy doesn't wear these boots anymore. There is the remnant of a small drop of Hay's blood along the seam of the right boot's toe. There was a big smear but Mommy got it cleaned right away and it all came out except that one darker line above the dark sole. Even though Parrot knows no one else would ever see it, Mommy knows it is there. She refers to these boots as "the ones Hayward ruined." She'd watched the slick blood ooze slowly downward toward her boot, and then when it hit the beige cloth and started to soak in, she'd turned to Hay and screamed You are so stupid! Parrot knows that even though Mommy doesn't realize it herself, what keeps her from wearing these boots is not the actual stain, but rather the memory that it is there. The image of Hayward's little cracked face, white as paper, with the long rope of blood a suspended, viscous pendulum stretching from his poor broken gristle bridge, nostrils blocked by the red gush. Parrot remembers Hay's eyes, startled, yet without resentment. They only showed pain and a little bit of fear, his neck extended oddly forward so the blood wouldn't stick to his face and clothes. Hot red animal glue.

On the other side of the black ankle boots is a pair of sharp curved pumps, dull peacock blue with pointed toes and little silver buckles. One of Parrot's calm things is to close her eyes against the dull, diffuse light, and run her fingers along the graceful Cuban heel, down to the tiny little U-shaped sole just the size of Parrot's pinky nail. This curve seems somehow related to a woman's body. Not Parrot's, which is little, flat and square. And not Mommy's, which is too round, stomach flowing out at the waist, which Mommy hates. But some idea of a woman's body which Parrot holds in her mind without even really knowing it. If Parrot picks up these shoes and holds the open part to her face she can smell old sweat and vague dirt. The sides of them yawn out, gapped by overuse. She remembers the first time she cried herself to sleep in here; when she woke up she had a small red and white impression on the side of her face from lying on the silver buckle.

Just like a rat a goddamn rat a goddamn cock-a-roach an in-seck.

The words come dribbling out of Mommy's mouth with her breath. Mommy doesn't even think about them anymore, they just keep her company. They're familiar. They chitter out from between her lips and over her slack chest and her belly - which is the powerful part of her sometimes and also sometimes disgusts her, Parrot knows - and down her thighs and legs to the floor. It sounds sort of like she's growling. Mommy would like to be a growling dog. Parrot thinks this because sometimes after Mommy's been growly she snorts, then she tells Parrot the story her own Mama used to tell her. About Uncle Henry, who acted like a dog until he got old enough to go to school. Everybody else in the house got beat but little Hen noticed Gampa never beat on the dog, a light-colored dog with thick black fur on its back who lived under the kitchen table. Somewhere between crawling and walking Hen got the idea to stay down low, sleep under the table, bark instead of talk.

Mommy describes to Parrot and Hayward how her Mama used to laugh at this story, smoke shooting out of her nostrils in little puffs, her foot in its blue heel bobbing hard. Never did learn to talk good or walk good, she'd say. Stupid Hen. Mommy thinks maybe it wasn't so stupid if it worked. She never said that to her Mama though - it would have earned her a good smack, she tells them, maybe gotten her thrown in the closet. Mama would shake her head, still smiling. Just like a goddamn cock-a-roach, she'd say. Then she'd rub the side of her face right under the hair where there was a little red dent Gampa gave her when she was small. Just about Parrot's age now, Mommy tells them, looking straight at Parrot. Mama never admitted what she did to deserve that. Gampa didn't put Mama in the closet, just gave her a smack or a kick. It was Mama who figured out that particular punishment, Mommy explains. Mommy learned it from her.

Sometimes Mommy thinks she should just throw Parrot and Hayward in the closet for good. Move all those old clothes out so she never has to open the door. She guesses she'd let them out once in a while to do their business, she says, seeing their wide eyes, their pale faces watching her. She likes them out of her sight. That's what she usually says: Get out of my sight.

Parrot's getting good, Mommy says, addressing Hayward. Sometimes I don't see her for a day. Sneaky little piece of shit. Just like a rat a goddamn rat.

Mommy stretches her lips so she can roll her lipstick on, looks at her own heavy face in the mirror with a fermenting mix of hatred and admiration. She doesn't like her thickly padded chin, her cheeks that hang lower every year. She says she still has Mama's sharp blue eyes, though, Mama's good bones. She learned a few things from the old bitch before she took off, Mommy tells them with another snort. How to keep a man around as long as I want him there, she says. Parrot doesn't really understand what Mommy is talking about. How to drive him off when he becomes a nuisance. How to raise children. She snorts. How I ended up with two such stupid children, I don't know, she says, brushing her cheeks with pink powder. Maybe all children are stupid. Parrot sees herself as Mommy looks at her; she is a ghostly pale birdlike little thing. With her thin white arms Parrot is barely able to lift a cast iron frying pan out of the sink without sloshing soapy greasewater everywhere. She feels pathetic, standing up on her little stool, one of Adele's aprons wrapped three times around her skinny hips.

In-seck.

Parrot has touched all the shoes lined up on either side of her bare feet. In order: ankle boots, high heels, low black heels with a big square buckle on the front, then the wall. In the other direction, beige boots, boots the color of old blood that feel crinkly the way an old person's skin looks. Shoe box, wall.

Now she will take an inventory of the clothes that hang around her. Starting at the wall on one side: heavy coarse black wool coat. It is rough to the touch and smells like dust and old tobacco; Parrot likes to think about it anyway because she knows it has fancy buttons that sparkle. There is the hem of a rubbery coat the same dull purple as a fading bruise. This one smells like a pot that dried out and started to burn on the stove, but Parrot likes to think about it too, because it has a strange wide belt as big across as her whole hand stretched out, with a buckle made of shiny purple plastic. Next to this is the most beautiful one, a silky one the watery color of the sky when the sun is just starting to come up, its light leaking all over; the inside of the coat is an even lighter blue, pearly swirly pale. Even though it is so beautiful, Parrot doesn't like to touch this one; she skips over it by habit and holds the next garment, a plain brown cotton dress, between her fingers for an extra minute to make up for skipping. The blue coat is the one she was smelling the time Hay's nose got bloody. They were littler then, she remembers Hay was still chubby, still taking a baby bottle of water to bed with him at night. Not the long nervous boy he is now, his eyes always darting over his slightly displaced nose, his breath coming noisy out of his slightly open mouth.

After the brown cotton dress there are two thin cotton housecoats that Mommy wears occasionally for housecleaning. Parrot knows that in the front pocket of one there are two pennies and a dime stuck in the corner beside the crumpled used tissue. Although she's sure Mommy has forgotten about the money, Parrot has never taken it, just in case. She regularly returns Mommy's bottles to the store, so she knows twelve cents is not enough to buy anything. It still feels like treasure though, maybe just because it's secret. Once she took the coins out to smell them, but all she smelled were her thumb and finger which still had the slight fragrance of tomato sauce left over from her lunch, a cold can of Spaghetti-O's she'd opened for her and Hayward to eat. She likes to wipe the sauce off the inside of the bowl with her fingers when they've eaten all the noodles. She loves Spaghetti-O's - the sweet sauce, the slippery slide of the soft Os in her mouth. Mommy buys them every week. She doesn't like them herself - here's your shitty-O's, she says to Parrot as she puts the cans in the cupboard. She buys them because she knows Parrot will feed herself and Hayward if the cans are there. Parrot looks forward to her Spaghetti-O's every day.

Next to the housecoats there is a strange dress. The top is grey velvet the color of smoke. The skirt is in two parts, stiff smoke-grey fabric inside and rough paler gray lace on the outside. Mommy has a picture in her bedroom of herself wearing this dress, her hair piled in a fat roll on top of her head. Parrot wouldn't have known it was Mommy if Mommy hadn't told her - that's me, stupid - she looks so young and fresh. In the picture she is standing next to her mama, who is wearing the beautiful blue coat and smiling, holding a cigarette in her long elegant fingers sticking off to the side, her thumb folded in on her open palm. This dress has a number of smells, all faded; an old stink of sweat under the arms, an indistinct floral aura at the lacy wrists. A microscopic whiff of something burnt when Parrot puts her nose right to the little brown-edged hole in the skirt. It goes right through both layers - Parrot wonders whether Mommy's mama's cigarette in the picture did this. She imagines the older woman accidentally holding the burning tip of her cigarette too close to Mommy, and Mommy jumping away with a cry as she felt the fire touch her skin. Parrot tries to think what expression would have been on Mommy's mama's face. Instead, she can only bring up the twisted set that always appears on Mommy's mouth when she talks about her mama. Parrot used to think Mommy hated her mama. One time she said so and Mommy grabbed her chin so hard it hurt, brought her face down close to Parrot's and said, I loved my mother, her teeth gritted so hard Parrot heard them grind.

Next to the grey smoke dress hangs the last long piece of clothing in the closet. It is Mommy's mama's wedding dress, a pale shiny yellowed curtain of folds. It is completely zipped up inside a plastic bag. Parrot has never been allowed to touch the actual fabric. She likes to lay her cheek against the cool plastic and smell the faintly chemical odor that comes off it. She closes her eyes and directs her mind to the long flat plane of plastic lying along her face, and begins her game. Slowly, so she is aware of every nuance of movement, every change in the arrangement of the surface of the garment bag, she presses her face into the plastic. She listens to every separate little crinkling sound it makes. She likes to think of the sounds as round black pebbles rolling into her ear. She likes to think that this way she can keep them, clean little bits, inside her head. Sometimes when she doesn't have time to get to the closet and she has to listen to Mommy being mad, she holds her head down and imagines the pebbles rolling around inside, the clatter shutting out Mommy's angry voice. She moves her head around in the tiniest invisible slow circles, to make the pebbles go all over - like the balls inside those little plastic toys where you have to tilt them to make the balls go in the holes.

That's what she did the day Hay's nose got squashed. Hay had been following Parrot everywhere and it was making her feel mad at him. She'd gone and hidden in the closet then to get away from him. Mommy liked to put them in there as punishment, but the truth was Parrot kind of liked the dark and quiet. It wasn't even really dark anyway once her eyes got used to it. She was supposed to have been taking care of Hay, but she was sick of him. She knew she'd get in trouble; she told herself she didn't care. She waited until he was absorbed in the different color plastic cups that fit inside each other, then she sneaked away and went inside the closet. She was sniffing and feeling the beautiful blue coat; when Hay opened the door and found her she was startled, and, goaded by sudden fear into anger, she pulled the door out of his little hand and then slammed it back, hard, the knob catching Hay smack in the middle of his face. Parrot remembers the strange suspended moment - she and Hay looking straight at each other, Hay's pale shocked eyes like ice chips, his nose strangely red, askew - before his whole face crumpled and he let out a single very long drawn-out wail. And then Parrot looked up and saw Mommy standing there, and she briefly wondered whether Mommy would really hurt her now. She saw the blood begin to flow out of Hay's crushed nose toward Mommy's boot, but Mommy didn't. She was eyeing Parrot with her eyebrows raised. And it frightened Parrot. Because she couldn't help feeling that, for the first time ever, Mommy saw her.