part one.
A taxidermied zebra was the first thing you saw upon entering the Bellflower’s mansion. It was situated in a corner of the always dim, cold foyer between a potted palm and a portrait of the family. Before he died, Father Bellflower wouldn’t let anyone walk past the thing without relaying the tale of it’s capture and kill,
“Africa,”
He would stammer, his voice rattling with age
“Damn hot place. Went there on safari, nearly died of heat exhaustion. Shot the bastard from my jeep, in those days no one at the airport gave you shit for having a dead animal.”
The zebra was not the most unusual thing about 77 Gregory Avenue, nor was the ancient swimming pool caked with green sludge being used as a pet cemetery, or the bedroom on the third floor which contained thousands of toothbrushes, so a new one could be used every time. The residents of the house were what made you look twice. The Bellflower family. They weren’t always this way, their toenails weren’t always curling over the lips of their sandals, their eyes weren’t always glazed over and blood shot. It’s hard to say when they all went over the cliff, these things usually happen when we aren’t paying attention. They bred dogs, Greyhounds specifically, and this is how I came to know them. When you buy an animal from a good breeder, they usually want to keep in touch. When you buy one from the Bellflower’s, they want you to move in. They insist upon it. I was thirteen and there was nobody to tell me not to.
I consider this as I pretend to examine a stack of filmy x-rays Susan Bellflower, the middle daughter, has dropped into my lap. At just forty years old she has accumulated a mysterious assortment of ailments, including selective sight and hearing, debilitating joint pain and multiple personalities.
“This is where the growths are,” Susan nods slowly, with a sage wisdom that I almost believe.
“They aren’t showing up in the x-ray, but their right here.”
She jabs her bony index finger into the pale flesh of her neck.
“What growths, like a tumor?” I ask, distracted by her eye twitching.
“No, like a twin.”
“You don’t have a twin.”
“Exactly. But I was meant to, she just didn’t get to finish growing. But I can feel her hands under my skin, you know? I keep telling the white coats.”
I look back at the x-rays, Susan’s bones are ghostly and brittle looking, but there are no extra limbs or rogue fetuses. I could never tell her this.
“Well, sometimes it takes a while to find the right doctor.”
She wrings her hands together, each finger is covered in rings. Some wildly expensive pieces with diamonds like ice cubes and strawberry rubies are mixed with a couple of gaudy plastic things and the occasional rubber band wrapped around twice. Gold bangles encase her scrawny, freckled arms up to the elbow. She wears no shoes, but has a band-aid stuck on each toe. Her dress is white, I thought the hem was lace from far away, but can now see it is just moth-eaten. She has her nicotine yellow hair wrapped in a turban, the teal fabric is worn and has a wilting sunflower stuck in the center. Susan’s false eyelashes are slightly crooked and give the appearance of being either half-asleep or drunk. She has, as usual, given herself a beauty mark with eyeliner and painted her lips with concealer so they blend into the rest of her gaunt face. Her mouth spreads into a slow, medicine-sweet smile,
“You know, when I was young I looked a lot like you.”
“Really?”
I wonder to myself if that means I will look like her in thirty years.
“Jesus lord, my neck hurts…so about my twin, I haven’t told the family about it..”
At that moment a blood rattling screech erupts from the kitchen, which is adjacent to the dining room we are sitting in.
“FOURTH OF JOO-LIE, EVERYBODY!!!”
Susan’s face hardens, her knuckles tighten.
“That’s mother.”
“GET YOUR FIRE CRACKERS OUT OF THE ATTIC!!!”
A small, round woman tumbles in through the swinging door. She wears a white hospital gown festooned with red, white and blue ribbons and blinking American flag pins. She wears a red and white striped party hat, and waves a paper Israeli flag on a wooden stick.
“Mother, I’ve told you to stay in your chair.”
Mother Bellflower stares directly at me,
“Susan doesn’t believe in the fourth of July.”
“Mother, get back into your chair.”
I study the old woman, her bare feet are bulging with purple veins and her yellow toenails are thick, wavy and dangerously jagged. Her face is mottled with sun spots and metallic star stickers. She turns slowly and hobbles into the kitchen, muttering. Susan turns to me,
“Let me show you something.”
I follow her past the zebra, then through a narrow corridor cluttered with hospital supplies. She touches the walls as she walks, as if feeling for a pulse, then stops at a crudely painted green door.
“This is where I keep them.” She swings it open casually, we are flooded with a cacophony of hysterical barks and howls. She switches on a light, at least fifty grey hounds are clustered at the bottom of the basement steps. Susan shouts over the din,
“I told my sister, if she ever comes back here to take anything from me, I’ll shoot each of these dogs and THEN myself!”
She slams the door shut, I say
“What’s wrong with your sister?” Which really means, what’s wrong with you?
“Oh…Vivica…”
“That’s her name?”
Susan sighs and stops in front of a mirror propped up against the wall in the corridor, she adjusts her eyelashes,
“She was always sour, I hated her even when we were little girls. Mother told me she was sick with jealously over me when I was born so she tried to smother me in my crib one night! Can you imagine! Then when I was just a toddler she left me outside in a snow drift, then went off to school. I think there must be lemon seeds in her heart, that’s how sour she is. I’ve warned her, if she comes back here I’ll shoot myself. She always comes at night, looking for things to take, trying to smother me in my sleep.”
She smoothes the front of her dress and looks at me for a long time,
“Excuse me. I need some air.”
She disappears into the gut of the house and I know she won’t be coming back. When I wake up in the morning there is a gaunt, sallow-skinned man sitting on the edge of my bed. I am more disturbed by the fact that I am not even surprised by his presence than the idea that he has probably been watching me sleep.
“Hi.” He says flatly
“Who the fuck are you?” I say, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and pulling the quilt around my shoulders. His eyes, spinning and dark like uncontrollable saucers, widen.
“Raphael.”
“Do you live here.”
“I’m Susan’s brother.”
“I thought you never leave your room.”
“Did Susan tell you that?” I nod and pull on a pair of shorts under the sheets.
“Well, I am writing a book. It consumes a lot of my time.”
“What’s it about?”
I pull my hair up into a bun and reach into the drawer for my toothbrush, Raphael smiles slightly,
“I disposed of your toothbrush for you.”
“Why would you do that?" He appears alarmed, even slightly offended.
“We adhere strictly to a one use policy concerning oral hygiene.”
He produces a new toothbrush from his pocket and hands it to me, “Use this one. I have hundreds.” He sits cross-legged on the foot of the bed while I get ready.
“It’s a memoir. My book.”
“Really?”
“It can only be published after I die, or after they die. Suppose Vivica read it. Do you know about Vivica? She’s our sister, she’s mad. She would slaughter me if she read it. I write my transcripts in invisible ink.”
“Bullshit.”
“I must take every precaution.”
“Susan said Vivica tried to kill her.”
Raphael nods, “Several times.” He squints his eyes and really looks at me, “Are you Yvonne’s daughter?” I nod “You look just like she used to.”
“You know my mother?”
“Oh, she bought dogs from us before you were born. How old are you now?”
“Thirteen.”
“How did you end up here?”
“I didn’t really feel like being home.”
“You can stay until you feel like leaving. You can read my transcripts.”
“I thought they were written in invisible ink.”
Raphael stares at the wall behind my head for what seems like hours, there is an ambulance siren in the distance, there is a fly crawling on his hand and he doesn’t notice.
“We lost one.”
Out by the pool Susan is lying on a rusty deck chair in a zebra striped bikini, even though it is overcast and the clouds are pregnant with rain. A small white box rests at her feet,
“Will you help us with the burial?”
“Is that a dog in there?”
She nods, flipping up the brim of her white sunhat and staring at me through smudged Jackie O glasses, “That was Uncle Houlihan, right there. We found him this morning. He was old.”
Raphael and Mother Bellflower appear at my side holding a leather bound book and a bundle of red poppies.
“Let’s get started.”
Raphael and Susan lift a green tarp off of the pool, Mother Bellflower grips my hand and we walk to the edge. It has been drained of water but there is a thick layer of green sludge caked to the sides, nine white boxes identical to the one I just saw are arranged in rows at the bottom.
“Justine, would you like to read from our book of blessings.”
“Sure.”
Raphael hands me the journal and I open to the first page,
“Just say Uncle Houlihan’s name where it says ‘the deceased’”
I clear my throat and squint to read the sloppy letters scrawled across the tattered page,
“Uncle Houlihan left us today. Even though his earthly body is gone, his spirit will never leave the walls of this home. Today, he will begin his next journey through heaven’s poppy fields and we must rejoice in knowing that Uncle Houlihan will return to us one day, in another lifetime.”
Susan, Raphael and Mother Bellflower nod solemnly. Without speaking we each take a corner of the box and lower it into the pool, I throw the poppies into the pit and it occurs to me that all of the other thirteen year old girls are at camp, and ballet and the mall. They do not wake up with strange men in their rooms, they do not bury dead animals or deal with the mentally ill. The thought blows through me like a torpedo, the sky splits open and the rain pours down.
