There is a beast in the house my mother and siblings occupy.
Every time I am there, I sense its presence. It needs to be addressed but it does not have tusks. The beast is a poisonous blend of my father’s absence and my family’s collective debt. The debt is all the words we do not say to each other. All the hurt we do not admit to. It piles up in our throats.
Every silence in the house is a punishing one. Ever since I moved out, married, built my own life, I have learned to work toward healing. My family has not. They scream at each other but say nothing useful. My nervous system can no longer hold that much anger. I learn to sit gingerly, to make everyone laugh. Everything is a strategy. I wait to exhale when someone says something that cuts the air. There is always a hidden grenade.
My mother’s way of dealing with the beast is to make sure everyone eats. She always comes to the dining table last. There is somehow always one last thing to do in the kitchen. This is avoidance. She mumbles prayers and takes her blood pressure medication. The beast rumbles. Anxiety churns in my stomach like acid.
Sometimes the beast takes shape as my brother’s explosive, irrational rage. He is easily triggered. I want to leave every room he comes into. My sisters do not back down from his fury; they are eager to prove they are not afraid. The house swells with their egos. I do not judge but I wonder when they will grow out of this phase. Is it the house or is it them? Whose inferno is more ravenous?
I thank God that I am only a visitor in this house. I no longer feel a responsibility to be a harbor for everyone’s fragility. They have learned to stop coming to me to mediate their issues. I set my boundaries. I am proud of myself for it. I feel guilt, anyway. Is it my fault that the house is a pressure cooker, that the top will fly off any day now?
My father’s absence; no, his leaving; no, his dying is a factor. It fed the beast, but didn’t create it. It has always been there. We have never gotten along with each other all that well. My mother has always fed us through our insolence. My brother has always raged. My sisters and I have always had unyielding tongues. But then our father died, and everyone kept their grief in a safety deposit box. In the event that the house goes up in flames, the grief will remain, tucked away nice and tight.
We tried once to talk about it. His death. Its onslaught. Its suffocating force. The decision not to resuscitate. Everything was a blur and also a sharp knife. The beast must have been lingering then, waiting for someone to slip. Someone cried. Someone left the room. Someone got up to make tea. No one learned anything except that we all grieved better in solitude.
It has been years. It does not matter how many. We have laughed in these years. We have photographic evidence of our joy. The beast does not take all the joy from its victims; it leaves just enough happiness to keep things volatile.
I am in the house again, visiting. My mother wants to rip the carpets, to fix the bathrooms. We are going to sell this place, she says. She is convinced the house has demons. I know that selling the structure will not rid us of the monster. It will simply find another host. I do not have the heart to say this out loud.
I take inventory of the brokenness. The roof is bruised with hail damage. The foundation is sinking. There are strange sounds coming from the attic. If houses can be haunted, can they also carry the weight of too much life? I think the house holds a grudge. It is looking for an excuse to oust us.
My mother believes moving cities will fix everyone, will drain the poison. I do not have the heart or will to tell her anything different. She needs the illusion of escape.
It is a bitter fact that my father was an architect, that he was in charge of overseeing the construction of homes. We still don’t talk about him. We talk around him. Someone mentions him and we move on quickly, as if we are afraid the safety deposit box will implode. Maybe we’re afraid the beast will devour our father’s memory.
It does not matter who or what the beast is. It could be the devil or just the sum of our worst parts. The point is that it will not stop feeding.
My mother asks my opinion on what to do about the house. I tell her: good riddance. I only lived here for a few months. For me, it has no value. My siblings argue that they grew up here, but if it were up to me, I would take an ax to it. I would gladly watch it crumble to the ground. What has this house given us except just enough space to hold a funeral gathering, except abundant room for my siblings’ fury and my mother’s misery?
I wonder if my family feels the presence of the beast or if only I can feel its existence. I am an outsider, after all. They are in the belly.
This is not the story of Jonah. There is no reward for surviving the darkest place you enter. There is only more darkness. This beast is not sent by God. It strips you of everything until you forget who or what or when or how you are.
In the end, you are swallowed whole.
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Thank you, Nihal, for sharing “This House Will Kill Us Dead” with Eckleburg. We are grateful to have you and your work with us.