The Weight of Unwashed Dishes

“Oh, come on, Wika—can’t you at least do the dishes? You’re home all day,” Mom snapped, barely through the kitchen door. Her voice cut through the air, sharp as cracked glass, and I flinched.

My fingers trembled as I hugged a bundle of damp sheets to my chest. The laundry basket was still in the hallway—I’d run out of strength halfway there. My back ached from scrubbing the bathtub, my knees stung from crawling under the crib to retrieve a lost pacifier. In the next room, my little brother Timmy—barely three years old—let out a wail that split the silence. The sound of his crying, raw and desperate, made my heart clench.

“Wika! You hear me?” Mom’s voice rose again. I looked at her, her face flushed from the cold outside, her eyes narrowed. She shrugged off her coat and let it fall on the nearest chair, right on top of my laptop and the stack of job rejection letters I’d been ignoring all morning.

“Sorry,” I whispered, barely audible. “I was just—”

“Always an excuse. Always something half-done.” She flicked her hand at the sink, overflowing with plates crusted with last night’s casserole and this morning’s cereal bowls. “If you’re not working, the least you could do is keep the house livable.”

My mind screamed, but my mouth stayed shut. I wanted to say, “I am working. I’m holding everything together with my bare hands.” I wanted to say, “It’s not just dishes—it’s Timmy’s appointments, Dad’s old medical bills, your pills, the food stamps. It’s the million things you don’t see.”

But I didn’t. I just let the sheets slide from my arms onto the tile, and the cold seeped through my socks as I shuffled toward the sink. Timmy’s crying grew louder. I saw Mom tense, biting her lip, about to snap again.

“Can you get him?” I asked. My voice wobbled, and I hated how small I sounded.

She hesitated, then grabbed a mug from the table and disappeared down the hallway. I heard her voice, softer now, trying to soothe Timmy. The apartment felt like it was shrinking, walls closing in, air too thick to breathe.

The tap ran hot, steaming up my glasses. I scrubbed at a pan, letting the scalding water bite my skin. Maybe if I worked fast enough, hard enough, I’d finally be enough. Maybe if I got every crumb, every streak of grease, Mom would look at me and see not a disappointment but a daughter again.

I’d been back here for six months now. Six months since I lost my marketing job. Six months since the layoffs swept through the agency downtown. Six months of applying, of interviews that went nowhere, of “Sorry, we chose another candidate.” Six months since I’d last felt like myself.

At first, Mom had been supportive. She’d said, “We’ll get through this. Families stick together.” But as the weeks ticked by, the tone shifted. She worked double shifts at the hospital, came home exhausted, and saw me as another mouth to feed, another burden to manage.

I didn’t blame her—not really. She had her own scars. Dad had left when I was sixteen, and she’d never forgiven the world or herself. She’d tried to fill the silence with work, with caring for Timmy, with keeping the house spotless. Now, with me home, everything was messier, louder, rawer.

I glanced out the window. A neighbor’s American flag fluttered against the gray sky. Somewhere, a dog barked. I remembered when we used to have a dog, before Dad left, before the world tilted sideways.

Mom came back, Timmy on her hip, his cheeks blotchy and wet. He reached for me, and I set the pan down, drying my hands on my jeans to take him. He clung to me, his little fists tight in my sweater. For a moment, the kitchen felt warmer.

“Why’s he always crying?” Mom muttered, more to herself. “He never used to be like this.”

“He misses you,” I said softly. “He just wants you.”

She snorted. “He’s got you all day. I barely pay the bills, and I come home to this…” She waved her hand at the chaos—the dishes, the toys on the floor, the laundry, me.

I bit my lip. “I’m doing my best, Mom.”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she reached for a cigarette, lighting it by the stove, even though she’d promised to quit. The smoke curled around us, stinging my eyes. I tried to swallow the knot in my throat. Timmy pressed his forehead to mine, hiccuping quietly.

That night, I lay awake, staring at the cracks in the ceiling. Timmy was asleep beside me, his breathing soft. I heard Mom in her room, pacing, the TV murmuring some late-night talk show. My phone glowed with another rejection email—a nonprofit in the city, “We regret to inform you…”

I thought about leaving. About packing my things, crashing on a friend’s couch, finding a way to start over. But where would I go? My savings were gone. The world outside felt colder than ever.

In the morning, Mom was gone before sunrise. She left a note on the counter: “Milk’s low. Don’t forget Timmy’s meds. Try to vacuum.”

I stared at the paper until my eyes blurred. I wanted to call her, to say, “I love you. I need you. I know you’re tired.” But words failed me, as they always did.

The day blurred by in a haze of small chores and job applications. I took Timmy to the park, pushed him on the swings, tried to pretend we were a normal family. I watched other moms laugh with their kids, their hair shiny, their smiles bright. I felt invisible, a ghost moving through someone else’s life.

When we got home, Mom was in the kitchen, sorting through bills. I braced myself for another lecture, but she just looked at me, her eyes rimmed red.

“I got a call from the hospital,” she said quietly. “They’re cutting hours.”

I sat down across from her, Timmy squirming in my lap. For a moment, we just sat in silence, the weight of everything pressing down.

“I’m scared, Wika,” she whispered. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

Something inside me cracked. I reached across the table, took her hand. “Me too, Mom. But we have to try. For Timmy. For us.”

She squeezed my hand back, her grip fierce. For the first time in months, I felt something like hope flicker.

That night, after Timmy was asleep, I wrote in my journal: “What does it mean to be enough for the people you love, when you barely feel like you’re enough for yourself?”

Do any of you ever feel like you’re just surviving, not living? How do you keep going when the world feels too heavy to carry alone?