This House is Ours - 5 (Patreon)

Sunday -

It was two months ago. It was two months ago that we stood naked with our mother in that field, watching the creatures under the surface of the forest darkness. It feels like last night. It feels like right now. If I close my eyes, the fish in deep water swim over my head.

But today we woke up and we got dressed for her funeral. Constantly reaching out and touching hands as we dressed. Simon is still here. I am still here. Simon are you still here? Because I am still here. The fish in deep water swim over our heads.

There is a wildness to Simon's eyes that looks like my body feels. It is time to go. I want to climb out the window and just fall to the gravel. I want them to take me to her funeral with my bone sticking out of my leg. But we leave our bedroom through the door. Just like every other day from now on. This will be normal now. She's dead.

The field out there is empty. There is music coming from the barn and the sky. My head is like a cathedral of pines, where the sun don't ever shine. I shiver.

Simon starts to walk down the driveway, away from the car. Toward the church. He stops and looks back at me, to see if I'll follow. When we first came here, to Malagash. When our father was alive, and our mother was alive, and we were just pulled out of school, I didn't see Simon. Not really. He was just "the waif" to me. A quiet, small thing. An annoyance. But now?.

Now we are both the quiet ones. Now he is Simon and I am Sunday. We are everything. I watch him walking down the driveway toward the red road, and toward the church and our mother's funeral. Waiting for nobody. He's still small, but he's not so delicate now. He's my only friend.

I follow. They won't be happy, but they don't get to "let" us do anything anymore. Our grandmother and our uncles. They might not agree to it, they might argue against it, they might even drive slowly beside us the whole way. But they can't stop us. They can't tell us to come out of our rooms anymore. To pull it together. To come back to the world. We're changed.

Imagine. Uncle Jonah. Or Frank, my big bear of an uncle trying to force me into the back seat of the car, like wrangling a wild cat. That will not happen. I will scream and thrash. I can feel it. There's violence in me today. It is our mother's funeral, and nobody else exists. Nobody is real anymore. The only person in the world today is Simon.

There's violence in both of us. I can see it in every small movement my brother makes. Deliberate. Careful. Like ferocity waits just behind the curtain. His face is calm but I can hear the snarl of his teeth. I can feel it behind my eyes, too. We are going to bury our mother. A head will be found in a drivers wheel. But the body will never be found.

Our father is dead. Our mother is dead. Our heads are filled with thrashing waves and I don't know what. A song? I can't escape the feeling that the sky and the lightning will raise us, now. The clay red dirt of Malagash itself will be our father. The crashing Atlantic Ocean will be our mother. We are wild and free.

I'm wearing one of my black shirts, and my black jeans. Simon is in his grandmother-starched white button up. Funeral clothes. Behind us, the tire swing is creaking in wind that's too gentle to notice. Gentleness has no place here.

Or maybe there is no wind at all. It is cold out, but very still. The long blonde grass of the empty field is still. The weather vane on the roof of our peeling old house is still. But something is moving that tire swing slowly. It creaks and aches and creaks and aches. A long pause, and then creak. A long pause and then ache. A pitiful sound.

Maybe this is why the driveway feels like it is slowly spinning. I've caught up to him now. Simon squeezes my hand, looking up at me. His eyes holding back that violence the same as mine. But there's no pity or sadness in him. The spinning slows even more in his cold hand. Today we are burying our mother. I squeeze back.

Now I can feel the wind. Now the long grass in the field is moving gently. Now the weather vane on the house drags itself in a different direction. There's a flash of orange between the trees and the grass. The fox. I nudge Simon gently and point with my eyes. We watch the fox together, until she disappears into the long grass again. They are so small.

"Where are you going?" our grandmother says out the window of the parked car. She's dressed in black, the same dress she wore to our father's funeral, and the back seat shadows hide the already hidden parts of her face. Storm warning today. Maybe there will be thunder and lightning. Maybe that's why I thought of it before. Maybe that's why the air tastes like this. Like blood.

"Your uncles will be out soon," she says.

I lift my hand in a small wave, and then we go.

"It's going to rain." she says.

I look up at the cloud cover and think about rain for a moment. Of course it's going to rain. It doesn't matter if it rains or not.

"Your clothes will be soaked."

We'll live.

Will they bar us from our mother's funeral for wet clothes? Our mother died in the water, and they're all attending her funeral alive and dry? We should all walk out into the ocean. We should attend the funeral soaked with salt, trailing sand and seaweed from our caked dress shoes. We should all drag chains behind us.

I can hear my uncles now, talking in the doorway. We're halfway up the drive. We can't hear what they're saying. But we can hear their voices. Maybe asking our grandmother. Maybe calling our names. Come back to us. But we are walking. We reach the end of the driveway, where the mailbox has its flag down, and we turn right. This is the long red road that cuts through Malagash. The church is on this road. Not far, but always farther than I remember. It doesn't matter. They won't start the funeral without us.

I can hear the car on the gravel driveway. I tense for an argument, but they don't stop. They give a little toot of the horn, and a small, serious nod as they pass. It is unexpectedly ridiculous. You can make a wave solemn, or a nod, but nothing can stifle the absurdity of a car horn. Toot. See you at the funeral. Toot toot.

-

Letter

Dear Simon,

Dear Sunday,

I managed to stay hidden for three weeks. The phantom of the farm house. Nobody saw me. Not your grandmother. Not your uncles. Not you. I was the only one who saw me, and the me that I saw was being spiderwebbed like a slowly breaking mirror. One half of her face. Playing beautiful piano deep in the hidden cellar.

Her forehead and cheek. Her jawline. One jagged slash down through your mother's eyebrow. Fast knife slashes make straight lines, but they were not changing her face. They faded into scratches so quickly. I felt childish and empty.

So I cut deeper. I burst into pain and light and sat throbbing, night after night. And then every night I stood up and held that bleeding cut open to slash deeper. To get through the gristle. And then, one night, I passed out on the bathroom floor with the sun coming up.

I understand why your uncles took me to the hospital. I understand why they kept me there. And at first I thought maybe it was true. Maybe it would all be okay. If I just got help.

But God helps those who help themselves, and my themself was my enemy. Maybe that's dramatic. She was in pain. But she still had to die.

She wasn't strong enough to choose herself. Suicide? Good god, think of the children. Think of everyone who counts on you. Are you lying there empty and aching and empty again? Won't anyone think of the children?

So, now she was the phantom of the short term psych ward. Everyone was jealous of my face, I could tell. But the doctors pretended not to be impressed.

Doctors spend their whole lives half-assing their way through junior high. It's even worse with Psychiatrists. They're all trained with tests. Match the symptom to the "disorder." Same as other doctors. The whole time they are talking to you, they are sitting in an auditorium somewhere, trying to get the correct answer on the test before the time runs out.

And the time was running out. There are only so many beds, so they have to get you out the door. They have to pass the test, so they can go home and show their parents.

They asked me questions every day at 10am. Fifteen minutes of questions, every day. After three days they found an answer. Correct? Dunno. Good enough? Sure. They checked one of the boxes. Gave me some pills. Got me out the door. Then they ran home with their report cards. I was sent home with mine.

The cutting hadn't helped. I was still me. The bursts of light weren't the answer. They weren't a way to get free of myself. To get free of the pain. But I tried. It did more harm than good, but that makes me a better mother, right? Ask anyone. Ask that idiot in every mirror I see.

Suffering makes her a better mother. She tried.

But it didn't work. And I get to make the decisions now. Not her. Pills down the toilet and suicide.

Sorry.

But suicide will be an end to the pain.

And you're going to hear some nasty things. At my funeral. At my wake. In kitchens and through closed doors. Someone, at some point, is going to say I took the easy way out.

Suicide is not the easy way out.

I mean, unless you live in a tall building.

-

Frank and Jonah

Simon and Sunday were walking down the driveway, holding hands. Frank watched as they got further and further away. He looked scared. So Jonah put his hand on Frank's shoulder, and he kissed him.

In the back seat, Frank's mother had stopped calling after the children.

"They'll be okay," she said. "It's just a little rain."

Jonah started the car, and they drove. He was careful not to stop, not to interfere with Simon and Sunday, with their choice to walk to the funeral together. They needed space and respect. He tapped the horn, and immediately regretted it. It sounded so stupid.

At the church, it took Jonah a minute to realize Frank hadn't gotten out of the car with them. He opened the door and climbed back into the driver's seat. Frank's face was a mess. He was sobbing so hard it shook his whole body. He tried to say something, but no words came out.

"Frank," Jonah, said. But it wasn't clear if Frank even heard him. He was crying so hard. Now Jonah was going to cry. "Oh, love," Jonah said. "It's okay."

And it was. It was okay in the way that still being here is okay. It was okay because it had to be.

-

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