Nothing in the house actually belonged to them, they bought it from a hysterical widow named Olivia Hensel who refused to take anything with her but her cat and some clothes.. So my grandparents were left with more than they bargained for. A huge, drafty old house full of Victorian curiosities and heavy, musty smelling furniture. A hair wreathe was my favorite thing. It was kept under a thick panel of glass, and you would never give it a second look if you didn’t know what it was. And most people didn’t. It just looked like a decoupage of dried flowers. In actuality, it was a mourning ritual. Something women did in the 1800’s when their husbands died. They would chop off their hair and his, weave it together into a pattern and keep it on their bedroom walls. When they died, their children would weave their hair into it, and so on. The house came with this, a box of a whole dead family’s hair. There were some archaic educational videos played in health classes in the 1950’s, scratchy film which one could still play on a projector warning against the dangers of homosexuality and rock music. This was when my father dropped me off there one day in July, I had just turned twelve and had seen his side of the family only once before, years ago. Now I would live with them for the summer. On our drive my father appeared agitated, his ears were turning red which was something reserved for real atrocities.
“This is some genuine horseshit, Justine.”
He would exclaim this, his hands firmly gripping the wheel, his teeth clenched.
“What state are we in?”
“Pennsylvania, god dammit.”
“This is where they live now?” I was amazed by the flat landscape and over abundance of Waffle Houses.
He shook his head, becoming more aggrieved by the second.
“Your mother, godammit. Thinks it’ll be good for you to stay with them. Thinks its no good you haven’t seen them in six years.”
“What do I call them?”
“Eugene, that slimy bastard. You call him by his name if he ever comes out of that office of his.”
He didn’t mention his mother, whose name was Darla but back at home was more commonly referred to as ‘that backstabbing cunt’. I understood my father’s grudge against them both. I had pieced together the story from eavesdropping, snooping through desks and sometimes from things I had been informed of directly, usually by way of large doses of painkillers, something which my family dispensed liberally. I understood the constant abandonment from his mother and the abuse from the steady string of “stepdads” and boyfriends who came and went. I understood it was her fault.
“Are you going to get out of the car?”
We were parked outside of their house, my father was hunched over in the front seat. Breathing heavily and nodding slowly.
“You can just drop me off. I get why you don’t want to see her.”
He looked at me very seriously.
“It isn’t easy for me to leave you with her.”
“She feels too guilty about what she did to you to hurt me.” I answered, surprising myself.
He counted out three little blue triangles from his alligator skin pill box and swallowed them dry.
“God dammit, I drove all the way up here and I will go into that house. Make sure there’s no fire hazards in there.”
I find myself sitting under the dining room table with the cocker spaniel while Darla the backstabbing cunt and my father scream obscenities at each other above my head. Someone slams their fist and makes the table shake, I trace circles into the damp orange carpet with the toe of my shoe.
“YOU HEINOUS BITCH, YOU RUINED MY LIFE!”
“I WAS A CHILD, RODGER.”
“DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO ME WHEN YOU LEFT ME THERE?”
The screaming stopped for a moment, the air swelled and blistered with tension.
“Do you know what was happening to us when your father was still around? You were too young to remember any of it. Be grateful.”
Now they both sob. They cry until the sound has run out and their body has no more tears to give them, so they just heave their chests and gasp for air.
When I wake up in the morning my father is gone.
I don’t know what to do so I climb out the bedroom window and sit out on the roof until Darla finds me and tells me we’ve got to go visit someone called Catie. I have no idea who she’s talking about. I follow her through the house, every room we pass through has a radio playing full volume in it. Each tuned to a different station, the effect is unsettling as we pass through each of the four stories. Darla looks exactly as I remember her, pale and startlingly thin with a torrent of wiry black hair brushed into a puff on top of her head. She wears a threadbare t-shirt with a basket of kittens emblazoned on the front and highwaisted jeans. I can see her long, yellow toenails curling over the edge of her grimy flipflops. Without eating breakfast we climb into her burgundy Cadillac, the springs have collapsed under the seats and I cannot see above the dashboard which is festooned with stacks of receipts, taped down in groups of eight. I look around the car, there are eight gallons of water in the back. Eight cans of soup, eight family sized ketchup bottles and eight road maps, carefully folded into neat squares. She is an erratic driver, throwing her weight into the steering wheel at random and executing sharp turns onto the wrong streets. She uses the horn liberally and reacts with utter shock and offense when someone honks back. I clutch the sides of the seat and say silent prayers as she careens down winding roads and tries to make it through train tracks before the gates snap shut. Suddenly she stops,
“Okay now we’re at Catie’s,”
I look around and see nothing but grass and an enormous hill in front of us. We are a long way from town, the place is desolate and lousy with mosquitoes and rag weed.
“Where is the house?”
“Catie doesn’t want anybody coming up the drive way, makes everyone walk up there. Up this godamn hill, can’t hack it with my arthritis anymore.”
We ascend the hill and I finally ask her,
“Who is Catie?”
She appears crestfallen, and her wrinkles crease deeper into her face.
“Catie is your Uncle Cal.”
“What? How?”
“Your Uncle decided he didn’t want to be an Uncle anymore. And now he is an Aunt.”
“Did he get a sex change?”
Darla looks shocked that I am aware of such an operation, but nothing really surprises me anymore.
“No. He just wears dresses.”
“Okay. What should I call him.”
“Catie.”
Uncle Catie’s house looks tired. The roof has slouched into itself, the windows and doors look exhausted. The paint has peeled off in long strips, revealing a dusty yellow underneath the dirty white. There is a pile of old bicycles in the front yard that has been there so long the surrounding grass has turned a rusty color, too. There is a bathtub collecting rainwater next to the doorstep, a drowned black bird stares placidly up from the bottom. From inside the house I hear a person’s voice and a scratchy record. The person, who I assume to be my Uncle, croons along with the music, his pitch fluctuating violently. His voice reaches a horrific crescendo before dropping down to a low bellow. The words are totally incoherent. My grandmother knocks on the window. The record screeches, then stops and I hear a patter of footsteps rush down stairs. The door is swung open dramatically, Uncle Catie is wearing a moth eaten wedding dress and thick makeup, garish against his ghostly complexion. He has some stubble, and his Lee press-on nails have begun to pop off his fingers. His body is delicate and hungry looking
“Well Hello….” His voice is breathy and low, but tinged with suspicion.
“You’ve caught me at a very special time…I’ve been practicing my opera.”
Darla pushes past him into the house, nearly knocking him over.
“Well, continue your practice later. Your niece is here and I’ve come to collect the things you took from me.”
She disappears into the living room, Catie stares vacantly into the endless expanse of open fields in the distance and says
“I’ve taken nothing of yours…I haven’t left this house in months, Darla!”
“Stop it now, I know you’ve got my Dutch oven.”
He looks at me.
“You must be amazed by my sudden change in appearance.”
Catie arches a crooked, penciled eyebrow.
“I have undergone a transformation.”
“Yeah, I can tell. Did you divorce your wife?”
“Tanya! Heaven’s no. She is in Iowa, on a spiritual journey with her lover. We write letters to each other.”
“Oh. Do you have a lover now, too?”
Catie’s eyes soften, he brings his hand to his throat and speaks softly,
“Yes. Arthur. He is an artist, a grafitti artist. A wonderful man. I would love for you to meet him, his theories on the spacetime continuum will astound you.”
There is a moment of silence
“How old are you, Justine.”
“I just turned twelve.”
“Darla thought you may be too young to understand about me. But what nonsense, your practically an adult. Come inside, now. I made sweet tea.”
The kitchen is yellowed with nicotine. A time capsule, holding it’s breath somewhere around 1963. I am wary of the cloudy jam jar brimming with amber liquid that has been set in front of me. Catie drinks several glasses, and eats crumbs off the table top.
“My son has been kind of enough to bring Justine to see us this summer.” Darla says curtly.
“Yes, yes. Must be quite a shock for you, coming from the city. As you can see, there is not very much out here.” Catie motions out the window to the barren landscape littered with rusted trucks and dead trees.
“I like the quiet.” I tell him.
Darla clears her throat,
“I trust you’ve gotten rid of your jars, Catie.”
“No. I’ve told you, the jars will stay there. They belong to mother.”
“Mother has been dead for years.”
Catie’s body stiffens,
“Excuse me…” He stands slowly, then goes upstairs. I hear his record come back on.
“Well, that’s the last we’ll be seeing of him for today.”
“What jars are you talking about?”
“When Mother died, Catie locked himself up in this house. He kept all of her things, even the food of hers that was still in the fridge. It’s been in there for years. He won’t get rid of anything she ever touched. That dress he’s wearing? Yeah, it was her wedding gown. I’d bet my life the lipstick on his face was hers too. Anyway, she used to make fruit preserves when she was still alive. She made her last batch about a month before she died and stacked them up in the basement. The thing about jarred fruit, you can only keep it for so long. After a while, it starts to produce a poisonous gas, which builds up in the jar and finally the pressure of the gas makes them explode. The gas will make you sick, it could even kill a person. Catie’s got hundreds of them down there, we’re just waiting for them to blow.”
I stare at my grandmother in amazement.
“Let’s go home.” We drive away, no one has seen Catie since then.
“WHERE YOU BEEN?? WHERE YOU BEEN??”
Eugene is standing on the doorstep, flailing his arms dramatically and stamping his feet.
He is even shorter than I remember, but he is wearing the same green sweater that I have always seen him in, which is no surprise. Eugene is my step-grandfather, the fourth and final one to join our family. He only moved here from China ten years ago after spending his entire life in Bejing, so his accent is heavy and the American food still makes him sick.
“I WAKE UP AND THERE IS NO ONE HOME, YOU NEVER TELL ME WHERE YOU GO!!!!”
Eugene is delusional and has severe obsessive compulsive disorder. That is why there is eight of everything in the car. That is why he taps the doorknob eight times before turning it, taps each key eight times before pressing down, blinks eight times and never washes or takes off his green sweater which he believes will extend his lifetime indefinitely. He often wears a gas mask and has eight orange cats which he keeps in a special room painted green, for good luck. Eugene plucks out eight strands of his hair every night and keeps it in a special box under his bed, he believes that they will one day be of great use to him. He makes his living through the stock market, like my father. Also, like my father he is controlled by the fluctuating numbers and prone to bouts of ecstasy and dysphoria at their whim. Unlike my father, however, he is utterly mentally ill.
“Put a lid on it, Eugene. We just went to go see Catie.”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”
He storms back inside. I see my bike helmet sitting on the swinging porch seat where I left it, but now it is cracked in half. Completely destroyed.
“Oh my god, what happened to my helmet??”
Darla purses her lips,
“Eugene did that last night. He was worried you may have an accident and he would get in trouble. Besides, he told me to tell you not to go outside anyway, the bees will kill you.”
“I’m not allergic to bees.”
“You don’t know that.”
I feel my chest folding up inside itself
“My helmet would keep me from getting hurt in the first place. This isn’t fair.”
I follow her inside the house, through the piano room with the potted plant which reeks of urine and alcohol. She picks up a newspaper and fans herself with it, we reach the dining room and sit down across from each other at the table. It is late afternoon and the yellowed lace curtains flutter indecisively in the breeze.
“You know, I used to have a job at the animal shelter.”
“Yeah?” I respond, still irked about my ruined helmet.
“Yeah. You know what my job was?”
I am wary of her answer, my youthful naivety has been irrevocably tainted by adult’s propensity to tell me all the sordid and grim details about their pasts.
“My job was to euthanise the animals. It was very relaxing.”
I dig my nails into my palms, leaving pale nervous half moons indented in my flesh.
“We’d drop them into these jars. Sometimes, if it was a kitten we would just use a plastic pretzel barrel. I would pump the gas through, and they would get so peaceful. Their bodies would just melt and sometimes I could hear them purr very softly as they floated out of themselves and went wherever it is you go when your time is up. You know, I would like to die that way.”
At that moment, I hear the loudest sound I have ever heard in my life. It is louder than the most violent thunder, and heavier too. The sound has a weight to it, a supernatural boom. The furniture is pulsing, the chandelier shakes. I am sure it can be heard over the entire planet. I know my grandmother has heard it too, her eyes are enormous and her knuckles have turned white. She clutches the table. Her mouth is moving but I can’t hear anything, only a dull ringing followed by a dim static. The crash was so powerful it’s temporarily deafened me. I see Eugene run from his office, a cat in each hand. He, too, is screaming but the sound gets lost somewhere inside the sonic crash. Everything is eerily quiet and I feel like I’m underwater. Out the window on main street I can see people running from restaurants and gas stations, Bishop is brewing with panic and confusion. Ambulances and police cars whiz by, their lights are on and my hearing is slowly beginning to come back to me. I can make out the faint sounds of a siren blaring, in time I can hear the hysterical din outside. Eventually, I can hear my grandmother. She speaks slowly, but her eyes look wild and there is a white light in them that makes me nervous.
“A meteor has fallen outside of town on the Carson’s farm. That was the sound you heard.”
Eugene is running to and from the house and garage, bringing back eight light bulbs, eight gallons of water, eight transistor radios.
“Your grandfather will be out of sorts for days after this. I wonder what he’ll do…” Her voice trails off, I know she is thinking of the irrational measures he has taken after incidents in the past. A fire in the old apartment building, he ran into the blaze and took my father with him claiming it was their fate. He once bought eight satellite dishes and placed them in a special formation out in the yard, claiming he would be in contact with extra-terrestrials.
Now Eugene appears in front of us, his green sweater is spotted with grease stains and cat hair. His comb over is especially oily, and he too has that formidable white glint in his eye. I have a sixth sense for psychotic breaks, I can feel them coming like birds sense an earth quake.
“We are under siege.”
He is holding a hammer and a bucket of nails.
“The meteor men have arrived.”
There are planks of plywood propped up against the dining room wall.
“We must secure the house.”
Eugene begins boarding up the windows and doors, tapping the head of each nail eight times. There are five windows in the room, in half an hour each one is covered and the house is getting darker as Eugene boards them up. Darla and I struggle in the dark to find lamps, we hear Eugene's voice booming from the parlor,
“”NO LIGHT. NO LIGHT! We must not give them any sign of our location.”
After all of the exits have been boarded, Eugene gathers every electronic in the house and stacks them up in his office. There are walls of radios and TVs and prehistoric computers on top of each other, he plugs in the televisions and tunes them to a static station. He sits in front of the wall, staring at the eight screens showing nothing but black and white snow, we hear nothing but the eerie electric hum and the occasional siren outside.
We live like this for three days, hearing Eugene preach about the apocolypse and how this is the end. We eat oyster crackers and drink tap water, I steal food from the refrigerator in the night even though it is forbidden. And after three days, I almost start to believe him. I almost believe that we are all going to return to the earth, that it is only a matter of time. On the morning of the fourth day I am in the kitchen, relegated to the task of making an egg salad sandwich for Eugene. I have a festering mass of dread growing in my chest, my hands feel heavy and I miss the sun more than I could ever imagine. The static from the wall of televisions is grating on me, and it dawns on me that I need to get out. It occurs to me that outside of the stale air contained in this house, the world is still turning and the sun is out there, too. I feel empowered, like I’m on a plane and about to hijack it and not a soul knows. I take the finished sandwich on a plate into Eugene’s office, he is sitting at his desk, pulling out his hair and arranging it in the box. I hurl the plate at the wall above his head, it splinters into a million little pieces and the egg salad plops tiredly onto the shoulder of his sweater. His mouth drops open, his eyes grow wide and turn into spinning black saucers. I am grabbing his hammer and turning on all the lights, I am prying the nails off the front door and I don’t care at all that he is screaming at me. I am pulling back the plywood plank with strength I didn’t know I had.
I step outside:
The world is still turning.
