“Oh, stop making that face, baby. It doesn’t look pretty on you.” She tapped my cheek as if to knock the doubt away. I knew to play ball, thinking of my classmate’s puppy that met her at the school gates last week, and her promise to bring him back on Monday. The thought soon brightened my face.
I kept my gaze fixed down on my cup while Mother started to tend to Claire. She was littler than I was, still needed help drinking without getting sticky chocolate all over herself. I say “sticky chocolate”—hers was more milk than anything else, but that didn’t stop it from being a nightmare when soaked through her clothes.
“I was thinking we might have an adventure today,” Mother said. “How would you like to go to the big park near Grandma’s? We can go on the big slide as much as you want and finally explore those woods.”
Claire let out a squeal, screaming, “BEE PAAA!”
Mother’s eyes widened, managing not to look at the rickety stairs, but also not able to stop her body from involuntarily twitching toward them. “Hush, darling.” She turned to me, smile manic. “Now, Mommy was thinking, seeing as we’re going all that way, we might as well stayat Grandma’s house for the night. If you’re good, she might even make her peanut soup. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Yawning slides, cavernous sandpits, salty-sweet soup with tender chicken floating in it. I’d like it a lot. I kicked my dangling feet, fixed my brown eyes on hers, and nodded.
“Good girl. Mommy’s just going to go upstairs and get our explorers’ packs together.” My heart lifted. “Mommy also needs to tell Daddy we’ll be gone, but it won’t take long.” And there was the catch. I was young, but not too young to know that this wouldn’t be as easy as Mother made it seem. Dad knew how to behave better when other people were around—it’s part of what made me miss having Aunty Dev and her daughter, Joy, around even more. Without witnesses, he was unpredictable.
That thing that always lived with me in that house, buried in my chest, reared its head just then. Fear.
One bubble, two bubbles, three…I stared down into my hot chocolate, watching the little spheres on the surface pop one by one.
Mother watched me turn in on myself and withdrew her warm touch. If I was looking at her in that moment, her mouth would have been twisted up, I know it. One thing my mother hated was weakness, and that was what she saw in me. Weakness undercut by a wrongness that made her wary. Hard not to absorb that feeling. Hard not to fixate on what inside me was broken enough to make me so unlovable.
“It won’t take long,” she said again, retreating toward the staircase.
The echo of house sandals on wood started and then came to an abrupt stop. This piece always stays in my mind—it felt eerie, like she’d suddenly vanished. I realized years later that she’d just taken her sandals off so that she wouldn’t be heard. And she was successful, in that sense, for a time.
As I stared down at my safe circle of brown, blowing ripples into thesurface, ignoring the dwindling babbling of my sister, that’s what began to fill the house—an absence of sound. It’s not quite the same as silence. It’s like the moon slowly drawing its way over the sun and drowning out its rays; it’s not just darkness but the absence of light where it was, where it should be.
The quiet made me think, and what I was thinking was of our big adventure, and what I was thinking was that it was too good to be true, and what I was thinking was I didn’t like it when our mother and father were alone for too long because sometimes when Mother came back—
A thud.
I looked to Claire, who looked to me. She didn’t worry like I did. She was still a little too young for fear, still too well shielded from it. It was clear that Mother tried to keep Claire in a bubble of peace and safety. She didn’t want her to turn out like I did. I’m not sure if it was this protection or something else that made Claire’s eventual fear grow differently than mine. Smaller. Quieter.
Our house was without sound again. Everything was peaceful. Too peaceful.
I slid out of my chair, feet dropping to the ground. I made my way toward the stairs, but before I came close, a terrible shriek, crash, and thud filled our home. Instead of rushing over, I found myself frozen, tiny feet with big ambition planted firmly on the wooden floor. Claire was wriggling out of her seat now, slowly learning to be afraid.
Perhaps that was what motivated me to move, the sight of her usually joyful eyes big and scared, her little sticky fist pushed into her mouth, ringlets bouncing as she looked to the stairs, then to me, then to the stairs again.
“Mommy okay?” she asked.
Another crash echoed through the house. This place wasn’t bigenough for the four of us. I couldn’t bring myself to lie to Claire, so I only said “wait” as I found the will to move again. When I reached the mouth of the staircase, narrow walls astride uneven wood, it looked yawning, ready to swallow me whole. My father’s voice could now be heard, bellowing from the bowels of our home. I took the first step, heaving my legs up what seemed like a mammoth climb. I was big. I was a big girl going to sort everything out and make sure that Claire wasn’t scared and that Mother wasn’t hurt and that we would still have time to go on the big slide before it got dark outside.
More shouting, and our mother’s voice was joining the chorus of crashes and barks to build the sound into a spectacular din. My short legs marched forward, eyes fixed on the blank wall ahead. That wall represented my next feat of bravery. It was at this point that the staircase made an abrupt turn to the left, continuing a few steps up into the upper house proper. Something about making that turn terrified me, as if once I was in the belly of the house, like Jonah in his whale, I wouldn’t be able to get back out. They’d been talking a lot about Jonah in Sunday school. I didn’t think I could manage three days and three nights trapped in the storm of my parents’ anger.
My progress came to a halt. The landing where I’d have to make a turn was just a few steps away, and the feeling that I might never come back was stronger than ever. The din had grown into a cacophony of screams, and the screams were overwhelming. I could feel them building to a crescendo, cresting into a wave that would crash and leave my lifeless body in its wake, small bones strewn among the wreckage of my family.
And as if I’d somehow dreamed it into existence, suddenly the pandemonium was upon me. My mother, wailing, hurtled into view. She crashed onto the landing. There was a gash on her head, blood on her face, terror in her eyes.
“Natty, go!” she screamed. And even as she screamed, she scrabbled to her feet. The heavy thud of danger was on the stairs behind her, descending. She turned and yelled, “Stay back!” I turned and ran back the way I came, eager to be away from the horror behind me, eager to be anywhere else at all.
I took the stairs down as fast as my legs could carry me.
“Natty!” Claire.
“Wait!”
A horrible crash. More yelling. I think maybe I smelled her before I felt her. The sweetness of that old, faded glory. But when I felt her, it was too late to do anything about it. Her large, hard body, pinballing down the stairway, collided with me. I was helpless, a soft pin beneath her leaden bowling ball. We both landed at the bottom of the stairs, pain exploding across my body, pain exploding out of her mouth as she screamed my name.
And that was when my fear monster cloned itself, slithered out of my chest, and made a home in my sister. There, it raged. There, she screamed.
