Behold, the intricately carved fireplace, roses in the reddish wood, a painted frame of stones, a dead gas heater that could scorch the mantel. Behold the moldings above, the lofty framework of grand doors, shadows flung hither and thither by the gliding traffic.
Filthy house. It was then, who could deny it? It was before vacuum cleaners or washing machines, and the dust was always in the corner. The iceman lugged his shining magical load up the steps each morning, a man always on the run. The milk in the icebox stank. Roaches crisscrossed the white enameled metal of the kitchen table. Knock, knock before you sat down, to make them flee. Always a glass was rinsed before it was used.
Barefoot, we were dirty all summer long. Dust hung in the window screens that rusted to a dark black color after a while. And when the window fan was turned on in summer, it brought the dirt itself right into the house. The filth flew through the night, hung safe from every curlicue and brace as natural as moss from the oaks outside.
But these were normal things; after all, how could she keep such huge rooms clean? And she with all her dreams of reading poetry to us, and that we must not be troubled with chores, her girls, her geniuses, her perfectly healthy children; she would leave the mounds of dirty laundry on the bathroom floor, reading to us, laughing. She had a beautiful laugh.
The scope of things was overwhelming. Such was life. I remember my Father atop the ladder reaching all the way with his arm to paint the fourteen-foot ceilings. Talk of plaster falling. Rotted beams in the attic; a house sinking, sinking year after year ever deeper into the earth, an image that strangled my heart.
It was never all clean or finished, the house, never all straight; flies crawled on dirty plates in the pantry, and something had burnt on the stove. Sour, dank, that was the motionless night air through which I moved, barefoot, disobedient, out of bed, downstairs, terrified.
Yes, terrified.
What if a roach came, or a rat? Or what if the doors were unlocked and someone had broken in, and there she was, drunk in there, and I couldn't wake her? Couldn't lift her? What if the fire came, oh, yes, that terrible, terrible fire of which I was in some delirious fear that I could never stop thinking of it, fire like the fire that had burned that old Victorian house on Philip and St. Charles, fire that had seemed in my earlier mind, earlier than this memory, born of the very darkness and wrongness of the burned house itself, our world itself, our teetering world in which kind words were followed by stupor and coldness, and rank neglect; where things accumulated eternally and made for a universe of disorder--oh, that any place should be so shadowy and cheerless as that old Victorian house, a hunkering monster on the corner of that block, which went up into the greatest flames I'd ever seen.
But what was to stop such a thing from happening here, in these more spacious rooms, behind white columns and iron railings? Look, her heater burned. Her fat-legged gas heater burned, a little blazing flame of ornamented iron squatting at the end of its gas pipe, too near the wall. Too near. I knew. I knew the walls got too hot from all the heaters in this house. I knew already.
It couldn't have been summer then, and it wasn't winter, or was it? It was knowledge that made my teeth chatter.
In the memory and now, as Stefan played and I let this old childhood misery unfold, my teeth chattered.
Stefan played a slow, walking music, like the music of the Second Movement of Beethoven's Ninth, only more somber than that, as if he walked with me over this parquet which had no shine then and was thought to be hopeless, given the chemical and mechanical possibilities of that era--was it 1950 yet? No.
I saw the gas heater in her room, even the sight of the orange flames making me wince and cover my eyes, though I stood a full room and alcove away; think of fire, fire and trying to get Katrinka out, and her drunk, and Rosalind, where was she? She didn't figure in memory or in phobia. I was alone there, and I knew how old the wiring was; they spoke of it carelessly enough at dinner tables:
"This place is so dried out," my Father said once. "It would burn like kindling."
"What did you say?" I had asked.
She had come with the lying reassurances. But every dull 60-watt bulb of those days blinked when she ironed, and when she was drunk, she could drop her cigarette, or forget a hot iron, cords were frayed, sparks flew from old plugs, and what if the fire burned and burned and I couldn't get Katrinka out of the baby bed, and Mother would be coughing, coughing in the smoke but unable to help, coughing as Mother was now.
And eventually, as we both know, I did murder her.
That night, I heard her struggling with that endless, hacking smoker's cough that never stopped for too long, but it meant to me that she was awake beyond the dark length of this room, awake enough to clear her throat, to cough, perhaps to let me under the covers to curl up beside her, even though all day she'd slept in her drunken trance, yes, now I knew it had been that way, that she had--because she had never dressed--merely lain there under the covers in her underwear, pink panties, and braless, her breasts small and empty, though she had nursed Katrinka for a year, and her naked legs down over which I'd pulled the covers were so ropy with swollen veins in back that I couldn't dare look at them. It looked like pain, calves that were clusters of swollen veins, from "carrying three children," she'd said to her sister Alicia on the phone long distance once, once....
Walking across this floor, I feared disintegration, that something so terrible would come out of the dark that I would scream and scream. I had to get to her. I had to ignore the orange flames and the constant thump thump thump fear of fire, the images that recurred and went round and round, the house filled with smoke as I'd seen it when she'd set the mattress on fire and put it out herself, once, and I had to get to her. Her coughing was the only sound in the house, the house rendered all the more empty by its immense black oak furniture--the table with its five bulbous legs--this grand old buffet with its thick lower carved doors and high spotted mirror.
Rosalind and I had crawled inside the buffet when we were small, amongst the china left and even a glass or two from her wedding. That was when she let us write or draw on the walls, and break everything. She wanted her children to be free. We pasted our paper dolls to the wall with glue from the five-and-dime on Canal. We had a dream world of many characters, Mary, Madene, Betty Headquarters, and later came Katrinka's favorite, Doan the Stone, over whom we laughed and laughed for the sheer tickle of the sound, but that was later.
There was no one in this memory but Mother and I ... and she coughed in the bedroom and I came tiptoeing towards her, frightened that she might be so drunk, her head would swing and smack the wood of the door, and her eyes would swim like cow's eyes in pictures, big and dumb, and it would be ugly, but I didn't really care that much, I mean it would be worth it, if I could just reach her, and sneak into the bed beside her. I didn't mind her body, with the potbelly and the varicose veins and the sagging breasts.
She often wore nothing but her underpants and a man's shirt around the house; she liked to be free. There are things you never, never, never tell anyone.
Just ugly awful things, like that when she sat on the toilet to have a bowel movement, she kept the bathroom door wide open, and her legs wide apart and liked us to be there with her as she read, a display of pubic hair, white thighs, and Rosalind would say, "Mother, the smell, the smell," as this defecating went on and on, and Mother with the Reader's Digest in one hand and the cigarette in the other, our beautiful Mother of the high domed forehead and the big brown eyes would laugh at Rosalind, who wanted to bolt, and then our Mother would read us one more funny story from the magazine, and we would all laugh.
All my life I knew people had their favorite comfort modes for the working of their bowels--that all doors be locked, that no one be near; or that there be no windows to the small room; and some like her, that wanted someone to be near, someone to be talking. Why?
I didn't care. If I could just get to her I could take any ugly sight. Never in the midst of any stat
e had she herself seemed anything but clean and warm, her shining hair growing from a white, white scalp, through which I'd run my fingers, her skin smooth. Perhaps the filth accumulating around her could smother her but never corrupt her.
I crept to the door of the alcove. Her bedroom, which was now mine, had only an iron bed then with a naked coiled spring beneath the striped mattress, and she would put a thin white spread over it now and then, but mostly only sheets and blankets. It seemed the normal course of life, big thick white cups for coffee, always chipped; frayed towels; shoes with holes; the green scum on our teeth, until our Father said, "Don't any of you ever brush your teeth?"
And there might be a toothbrush for a while or even two or three and even some powder with which we could brush our teeth, but then those things would fall on the floor, or get lost or go away, and on went the pace of life, covered with a thick gray cloud. In the kitchen tubs, my Mother washed by hand as our grandmother had done till she died.
Nineteen forty-seven. Nineteen forty-eight. We carried the sheets out into the yard in a big wicker basket; her hands were swollen from wringing them out. I liked to play with the washboard in the tub. We hung the sheets on the line, and I carried the end so it didn't fall in the mud, I love it, running through clean sheets.
She had said once to me right before she died, and mark, I'm jumping now ahead some seven years, she said that she had seen a strange creature in the sheets in the yard, two small black feet, she hinted of a demonic thing, her eyes wide. I knew she was going crazy. She'd die soon. And she did.
But this was long before I thought she could die, even though our grandmother had. At eight, I thought people came back; death hadn't struck the deep fear in me. It was she who struck the fear, perhaps, or my Father gone on his nighttime jobs, delivering telegrams on a motorbike after his regular hours at the post office, or sorting mail at the American Bank. I never fully understood the extra things he did, only that they kept him away, only that he had two jobs, and on Sunday, he went with the Holy Name Men who went through the parish and gave to poor children, and I remember that because one Sunday he took my crayons, my only crayons, and gave them to a "poor child" and was so bitterly disappointed in me for my selfishness that he sneered as he turned and left the house.
Where was the certain source of crayons in such a world? Way way off over the stony field of lassitude and sloth, in a dime store to which I might never drag anybody for years and years again, to get more crayons!
But he wasn't there. The heater was the light. I stood in the door of her room. I could see the heater. I could see something by it, something white, indistinct, white and dark, and glittering. I knew what it was but not why it was glittering.
I stepped into the room; the warm air hung there imprisoned by the door and the transom shut above it, and on the bed to my left, its head to the wall nearest me, she lay; the bed was where it was now, only it was old and iron and sagged and creaked and when you hid under it, you could see such dust in the coils of springs; it seemed quite fascinating.
Her head was raised, her hair, not yet shorn or sold, was long and dark all over her naked back and she shook with the cough, the light of the heater showing the thick ropy veins collected on her legs, and the pink panties over her small bottom.
What was that lying by the heater, dangerously, oh, God, it would catch fire like the legs of the chairs that were charred black when someone pushed them up against the heater and forgot about them and there was that smell of gas in the room, and the flames burnt orange, and I shrank up against the door.
I didn't care now if she was angry that I'd come down, if she told me to go back to bed, I wouldn't go, I couldn't go, I couldn't move.
Why did it glitter?
It was what they called a Kotex, a pad of soft white cotton fibers that she wore in her panties with a safety pin when she bled, and it was pinched in the middle from being worn and all dark with blood, of course, yet the glitter, why the glitter?
I stood at the head of her bed, and saw her, in the corner of my eye, sit up. Her coughing was now so bad, she had to sit up.
"Turn on the light," she said in her drunk voice. "Pull the shade, Triana, turn on the light."
"But that," I said, "but that." I moved closer to it, pointing, the Kotex white cotton pad creased in the middle and clotted with blood. It was swarming with ants! That's why it glittered! Oh, God, look at it, Mother! Ants, ants everywhere over it, ants, you know, the way they could come and take over a plate left outdoors, swarming, devouring, tiny, impossible to kill.
"Mother, look, it's covered with ants, the Kotex!"
Now if Katrinka saw that, if Katrinka crawled and found something like that, if anyone saw--I went closer and closer. "Look," I said to her.
She coughed and coughed. She waved her right arm as if to say, Leave it alone, but you couldn't leave something like this alone, it was a Kotex covered with ants, just thrown in the corner. It was near the heater. It could catch fire, and the ants, you stop ants. Ants could get all over everything. You locked up the old world of 1948 or '49 tight from ants, you never let them get a head start; they ate the dead birds as soon as they fell in the grass; they made a line creeping under the door and up the kitchen counter to find the one spill of molasses.
"Ah," I made some noise of disgust. "Look at it, Mother." Oh, I didn't want to touch it.
She stood up, wobbling, coming behind me. I bent down pointing at it, crinching up the features of my face.
Behind me she struggled to speak, to say, Stop, Stop. She said, "Leave it alone," and then coughed so hard she seemed to strangle. She grabbed my hair, slapped me.
"But Mother," I said. I pointed at it.
Again, she slapped, and again, so that I cowered, arms up, slap after slap coming down on my arm. "Stop it, Mother!"
I went down on my knees on the floor, where the heater made a flaming reflection even in the dusty boards with their old shellac, and I smelled the gas and saw the blood, the thick collection of blood covered with ants.
She slapped me again. I put out my right hand. I screamed. I broke my fall, but my hand almost touched it, and the ants swarmed, the ants went into a frenzy, racing at ant speed over the thick blood. "Mamma, stop!"
I turned around; I didn't want to pick it up, but somebody had to pick it up.
She stood looming over me, unsteady, the thin pink panties stretched high over her little belly, her breasts sagging and brown-nippled, and her hair a big tangle over her face, coughing and waving furiously for me to get away, to go out, and then she lifted her knee and her naked foot and she kicked me, hard in the stomach. Hard.
Hard, hard.
Never in all my living life had I known this!
This wasn't pain. This was the end of everything.
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe. I wasn't alive. I couldn't reach or find my breath. I felt the pain in my stomach and chest and I had no voice to scream and I thought I will die, I would die, I would die. Oh, God, that she did that, you kicked me, I wanted to say, you kicked me, you didn't mean to do it, you couldn't mean it, Mother! But I couldn't breathe, let alone speak, I was going to die and my arm brushed the hot heater, the burning iron of the heater.
She grabbed for my shoulder. I did scream. I did. I panted and panted and screamed and screamed--and I screamed now, as I had then, but now--that Kotex glittering with the swarming ants and the pain in my stomach and the vomit coming up in my scream, that was all there was, You didn't mean, you didn't ... I couldn't get up.
No. Put an end to it!
Stefan.
His voice. Ethereal and loud.
The cold house of present time. Any less haunted?
He stood crumpled beside the four-poster bed. It was now, forty-six years later after that moment, and all of them gone to the grave, but me and the baby upstairs who grew up to be so full of dread, and so full of hatred of me that I couldn't save her from these things, and didn't--and he, our guest, my ghost--bent double, grabbing
the fancy carved post of the mahogany bed.
Yes, please let it all come back, my counterpanes of lace, my curtains, my silk, I never, my Mother, she didn't mean, she couldn't ... that pain, absolutely unable to breathe, then hurt, hurt, hurt and nausea, can't move!
Vomit.
No! No more, he said.
And he hooked his right arm around the post of the bed, and let go of the violin safely on the big soft mattress of the bed, atop the feathered counterpane. With both hands, he held the bedpost and he cried.
"Such a little thing," I said, "She didn't cut me with a knife!"
"I know, I know," he cried.
"And think of her," I said, "naked like that, how ugly she looked, and she kicked me, she kicked hard with her naked foot, she was drunk, and my arm got burned on the heater!"
"Stop it!" he pleaded with me. "Triana, stop." He lifted both hands to his face.
"Can't you make music of that," I said drawing near. "Can't you make high art of something so private and shameful and vulgar as that, as that!"
He cried. Just like I must have cried.
The violin and the bow lay on the counterpane.
I rushed at the bed, grabbed both of them--violin and bow--and stepped back away from him.
He was astonished.
His face was wet and white. He stared at me. For a moment, he couldn't grasp what I'd done, and then his eyes fixed on the violin and he saw it and he understood.
I lifted the violin to my chin; I knew how; I lifted the bow and I began to play. I didn't think on it or plan or dread to fail; I began to play, to let the bow, barely grasped between two fingers, fly against the strings. I smelled the horsehair and the resin of the bow, I felt my left fingers stomping up and down the neck of it, damping down the throbbing strings, and I tore at the strings wildly with the bow, and in the stroking and in the pound of my fingers, it was a song, a coherent song, a dance, a drunken frenzied dance, with note following too fast upon note for the mind to direct, a devil's dance, like that long ago drunken picnic, when Lev had danced and I'd played and played, and could let the bow and my fingers move without stopping. It was like that, and more, and it was a song, a crazed, plunging discordant rural song, wild, wild, like the songs of the Highlands and the dark mountain places, and grim weird dances in memory and in dreams.