Mumma's House

by Ike Hamill

  Once he had a good idea of the location, Jules shut off the flashlight and sat alone in the dark. When Tommy came out, his light would be visible, or the light from the interior of the truck.

  After a few minutes, Jules could actually see the falling snow. There was enough light spilling from the upstairs windows. Maybe GUT was reading, waiting for the second ceremony. Maybe one of the kids slept with a light on.

  The snow was getting deep.

  Jules decided that, as hard as it was falling, the snow must be slowing down. When he had gone out earlier, he had barely been able to see from the porch to the tree in the front yard.

  He blinked and propped his chin up with his hand.

  The drawing room was cold. It was good—the shivering was keeping him awake.

  He replayed his conversation with Auggie over in his head. No matter what he did, it always came out the same. Instead of telling Auggie that his plan was stupid, he had gone along with it. The sentiment was fine—he wanted to support his brother. Eventually, supporting him would have to mean telling him the hard truth.

  Auggie would be much better off if he stopped trying to get his fair share of everything. The family didn’t owe them anything. The three of them had turned out fine. They had all their fingers and toes and they had all graduated high school. Compared to a lot of people they had grown up around, they were significantly ahead of the game.

  Sure, they had lost their mother young and never known their father. Maybe it was more difficult for Auggie because he still had memories of Mumma Claire. To Jules, Mumma Claire was simply a name and a blurry, warm image that he kept in the back of his head. Jules had grown up with tons of parents—Auggie, Trudy, and Allison. Even June had been like a mother to him on more than one occasion. Auggie didn’t see things that way. To him, all the substitutes paled in comparison to his real mother.

  An idea occurred to Jules—Auggie would never accept June as Mumma Jay. To do so would be to put the final nail in Mumma Claire’s coffin. If, on the other hand, June’s attempt to take the title failed, Auggie might never forgive June for messing up their opportunity to overthrow Uncle Tommy’s claim.

  The third option, requiring Auggie to find the codicil, was only slightly better. If they could find legal footing to dismiss the inheritance ceremony altogether, Auggie and June would still be angry with each other.

  It was possible that none of the possible outcomes would leave the three siblings on speaking terms.

  Jules shook his head. He was being overly dramatic. They had been through tough times before and they always found a way to reconcile. When Auggie had gone through that scandal with June’s best friend in high school, June had eventually forgiven him. When June had found herself with nowhere to live, Auggie had been the one to facilitate her return to the house.

  Family, at least their family, found a way to forgive and move on.

  In the dark, Jules laughed quietly at himself.

  Almost none of what he had been thinking was accurate when he considered the larger family. Nobody trusted Uncle Tommy. Nobody had ever forgiven him, and the old man had never shown any desire to seek their approval. The three siblings had good relationships with Allison and Deidra, but a lot of the other relatives had faded away. Their generosity for family only went so far.

  Jules pressed the flashlight to the window and turned it on again. The beam bounced off of hundreds of falling snowflakes. When they were kids, Auggie would have cursed this snow. He always claimed that the snow waited for holidays and weekends. It rarely snowed enough on a school night to give them a reprieve from walking down to the bus stop in the morning. If they wanted a day off from school, they had to skip and deal with the consequences.

  He clicked off the light again.

  Everything outside went black and then started to fade to blue as his eyes adjusted again.

  Uncle Tommy was never coming out. There was no way that the old man would tromp through all that snow to take some document out to his truck. If it was that important for him to get the paper out of the house, Uncle Tommy would have done it years ago. With June’s inability to leave the front room of the house, Uncle Tommy could have taken every single thing out of his room at any point in time. Auggie was crazy to assume that the codicil was still in the house, or that Uncle Tommy would attempt to move it before the second ceremony. If anyone knew the dangers of missing the second ceremony, it was Tommy.

  A new thought dawned on Jules. This mission that Auggie had given him was useless, unless the point of the mission was simply to get Jules out of the way. If Auggie were doing something sneaky, something that he didn’t want Jules to know about, then getting him sequestered in some first floor room, looking out into the snow on the north side of the house, was a perfect way to dispose of him.

  Jules stood up.

  Chapter 18 : June

  IT HAD ALREADY BEEN a long day for Gus. He had been playing with his cousins all day and then dealt with the adrenaline dump of the ceremony. It was no wonder he was conked out. Gus had curled up in one of the big chairs, put on his headphones, and fallen asleep in under a minute.

  June went to the far side of the room and settled on the floor with her back against the wall. She was right near the doorway. Even if she nodded off, she would wake up if someone came through.

  She blew away the steam and then sipped her tea.

  Behind her, in the hall, the door to one of the bedrooms opened. June heard someone lean against the wall and slide down. The floor creaked as the person settled. When Kate sighed, June smiled as she recognized the sound of her sister-in-law’s tired voice.

  June reached up and turned the doorknob. She let the door swing open and craned her head around to nod to Kate.

  “Hey,” June whispered.

  “Hey.”

  Kate sipped from a flask and then offered it in June’s direction.

  Sitting on the floor, Kate in the hall and June in her front room, they traded drinks. June took a burning sip of whiskey and Kate took a tiny sip of the hot tea. They traded back.

  “Girls asleep?” June asked.

  “Barely,” Kate said. Every time I look at her, Isla opens her eyes. It’s creepy. I had to get out of there.

  June smiled and let out a tiny laugh.

  “Gus is wearing headphones. That usually puts him out.”

  Kate nodded. “I hope you don’t take offense, but you guys have one crazy fucking family.”

  June was taking another sip of tea when the laugh burst from her. She chuckled as she wiped hot tea from her mouth.

  “You’re not wrong,” June said. “I remember the first time I tried to have one of my best friends sleep over. Her name was Michelle Watson. She lived down on Watson Pond Road. She really thought that she was the shit—living on the pond named after her family. She used to talk about how her family had lived there since the colonists and then Mr. Hansen informed her that Watson Pond Road had only been named that since they implemented the 911 system in this county.”

  Kate offered the flask again. June turned it down with a wave.

  “I thought she would appreciate this house, since it had been handed down and handed down. It never occurred to me how freaky this place would be to an outsider. The aunts, uncles, and cousins all living in different factions of the house, people moving around like ghosts in the night, and back then half of the house was all freshly painted and the rest looked like it was about to fall down.”

  “This house makes an indelible impression,” Kate said.

  June nodded. “And, at the time, I thought that all family houses probably did. I had no idea how unique this place is, and how horrifying it would be to one of my friends. Her mother didn’t even want to let her stay over when she dropped her off. No adults came out to greet them when they pulled up. It was just me, barefoot, hanging upside-down from one of the trees. It was pure luck that Aunt Allison spotted them before Mrs. Watson could turn around in the driveway and get out of there. Allison smoothed thin
gs over. It probably would have been better if she hadn’t. After that night, Michelle and I weren’t friends anymore, and she spoiled my chances of really being friends with anyone from that clique.”

  “What happened?” Kate asked.

  June waved the question away. “It’s a long story. Another time.”

  Kate was quiet for a moment. She took another sip from the flask and then capped it tight before setting it on the floor next to her.

  “Speaking of long stories,” Kate said. “What’s with this ceremony? Auggie will never tell me anything about it.”

  “He’s not supposed to,” June said. “None of us are—it’s written in the rules of the ceremony.”

  “I figured you would say that.”

  June sipped her tea.

  “But if anyone deserves to know, it’s you. I honestly would have guessed that Auggie already told you about it,” June said.

  Kate shook her head.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” June said, “the thing is over as of tonight. I’m either out for good, or I’m going to take the title. To really explain it though, I have to go back quite a ways. You have to bear in mind that some of this information comes to you filtered through my memory from when I was little. It’s bound to be mostly wrong.”

  Kate didn’t say a word.

  # # # #

  “Supposedly,” June said, “if you go back far enough, my ancestors had a lot of money. What do they say? Family wealth can only last three generations? That’s about right. Before they came to this country, a set of sisters had accumulated a great fortune. When their husbands all died in some minor war, they pooled their money and bought a big estate. One of the sisters died and her adult son came back from his travels. He intended to claim his birthright. The other sisters fought him. They had lots of children and they weren’t going to break up their estate just to appease their nephew. After all, he hadn’t grown up in the estate or contributed to its prosperity. They offered him tons of money to get rid of him, but he rejected their offer and tried to claim their land because he was the eldest son of the eldest sister.”

  “Typical,” Kate said.

  “At that time, when women were basically property, the nephew won his appeal and the state ordered that the sisters give him the land of their estate. The sisters weren’t having any of it. They conspired and their nephew turned up dead.”

  “What?” Kate asked.

  June nodded.

  “When the judge, or magistrate, or whatever, ordered that the next nephew should be located, they found out that he had been murdered as well. It wasn’t long before the judge was murdered too. That’s when people stopped asking questions about who should inherit the estate. The sisters were left alone.”

  “Crazy,” Kate said.

  “Yup. That’s when the first ceremony was conceived. The sisters came up with this plan to ensure that nobody could come back and threaten to break up the estate again. Every New Year’s Eve, there’s a ceremony at midnight. To stake a claim to the family fortune, all the legitimate heirs have to appear in person and take part. If you miss a year, you’re out. If you die, then your claim is handed down to your kids. Boys and girls are all treated equally. Any legitimate heir can take part in the ceremony as long as they always show up each New Year’s Eve.”

  “Huh. I thought it was a matriarchy,” Kate said.

  “That’s where the amendment comes in,” June said. “There’s a Mumma.”

  Kate pushed away from the wall as she leaned forward to listen. Her hand knocked over her flask. She uncapped it and took another swig before she set it upright again.

  “One by one, the sisters died out. Eventually, there was only one sister left. Everyone called her Mumma Jo. Being the only original signatory, she had the right to amend the document at will. She recognized that a family matriarch, once properly vetted, could guide the family through troubled times in a way that an annual committee wouldn’t be able. Imagine the turmoil back then in the eighteenth and nineteenth century as alliances were changing and systems of government were springing up and then being torn down. Between one New Year’s Day and the next, the world could look very different. The estate needed a decisive leader, and Mumma Jo took over.”

  Kate nodded, considering the idea.

  “And she was a strong, competent woman. She increased the estate’s holdings and everyone prospered. Mumma Jo realized that she wouldn’t live forever, so she wrote an amendment to the original ceremony. If a woman passed the tests, she could become Mumma of the house and make decisions for the estate, regardless of the wishes of the heirs at the New Year’s ceremony. In the absence of a Mumma, the heirs would take over.”

  “Oh,” Kate said. “The second ceremony.”

  “Exactly,” June said. “If there is no Mumma and an heir claims the title, then they have to pass all the tests in the second ceremony. If they fail, then the committee remains in power.”

  “What’s the downside? Why wouldn’t every female heiress try to claim the title?” Kate asked.

  June looked down as she tried to control her reaction to the question. It was the same question that she had been trying to not ask herself ever since midnight.

  “I’m sorry,” Kate said.

  “No, it’s okay,” June said. “It’s a legitimate question. Unfortunately, the answer is cloaked in rumors and hearsay.”

  “Oh?”

  “I asked the same thing of Aunt Allison years and years ago, when I was just a kid. She said that it was rumored that if you tried to take the title and failed, you would lose what you loved the most and then you would live a long, long life so that you could properly regret it. What she loved most was her son, Andrew. After she tried to take the title and failed, she lost him forever.”

  Kate put a hand over her mouth and shook her head. “Coincidence, right? Andrew ran away.”

  June shrugged. She couldn’t help but look over at the back of the chair were Gus was sleeping. The house was so quiet that she could almost hear the music that was leaking out from his headphones.

  “It’s not all good news if you do take the title, also,” June said. “With the exception of Mumma Jo, it seems like the life expectancy of Mummas is much lower than that of the other members of our family. Maybe that’s because of the stress, or maybe it’s another coincidence.”

  Kate nodded.

  “So, back to the original question, the ceremony is like a board meeting for the family. You guys get together once a year to vote on how to proceed or something?”

  June smiled.

  “Not really.”

  # # # #

  “Maybe in its original form, that’s what the ceremony was. But, like I said, a Mumma has the power to amend the documents, and throughout the years they have done a lot of that. It has been a while since I sat through one, so I won’t be able to tell you the specific language, but this is how it goes.”

  Kate leaned forward again.

  “There is some language at the top, talking about the importance of family. Someone reads that aloud. It doesn’t matter who reads it, but someone has to read every word and if they get anything wrong, they have to start over. Auggie and Jules are both good at reading it. Deidra, as far as I know, has never made it all the way through without having to start again. After that preamble, everyone has to state their greatest wish.”

  Kate’s brow was wrinkled like she was going to ask a question. June clarified before Kate could get it out.

  “For example, let’s say that I wanted to move away and start a new life, away from all this craziness. If that’s the secret dream that I was harboring in my heart, I would have to say it, aloud, in front of everyone. I couldn’t say anything else.”

  “You mean, like, you’re not allowed, or you would somehow be compelled to state your wish?” Kate asked.

  “Both. It’s mandatory and somehow the ceremony seems to make people do it. I’ve heard some crazy things in that ceremony, some of which I would never hope to rep
eat. Things that a person would never even tell a priest will blurt out of someone’s mouth before they can shut it.”

  “Like what?” Kate asked.

  June shook her head. “She’s dead now, but there’s a reason why nobody ever let Aunt Sophia do their laundry. If you caught her alone with any of your dirty clothes, you would just throw them away.”

  Kate tilted her head.

  “Anyway, after each person states their greatest wish, everyone joins hands and calls the imp. I read in Vivian’s diary that the imp was once a real person. It was supposed to be a kid—they knew that the kid was an heir, but nobody seemed to know who his parents were—and he would always try to sabotage the ceremony. They say that he would try to burn the place down or flood the room with chlorine gas, or whatever. Somehow this imp would show up at the ceremony and attempt to kill everyone involved. He had a weakness though, if they all joined hands and called him, then he would have to abandon his plans and behave until next year. That’s why he is called every year.”

  “Wouldn’t he be dead by now?”

  “Sure,” June said. “But it was only the old-timers who thought that the imp was a real person. I’m sure if you got Allison to talk about it, she would say that it’s a malevolent spirit or something. Symbolically, the group is calling the imp so that they can all pledge to each other that the ceremony is important and valid, you know? When you call the imp, you’re really saying that anyone who doesn’t fully believe in the ceremony should state their issue or keep their mouth shut, you know?”

  Kate shrugged. “I guess. That’s pretty weird though.”

  “Oh, we haven’t even gotten to the weird part.”

  Kate turned as she heard something through the door to her room. She was up on her feet in an instant.

  “Give me a sec,” she said to June before she slipped inside her room.

  # # # #

  June sat alone for a minute in the quiet house. On the other side of the door, Kate’s voice was soothing the girls. Everyone else in the house was silent. It wasn’t the kind of silence that fell when everyone was asleep. June loved those moments in the middle of the night when she knew the house was full but all she could hear was the rhythmic breathing of Gus. To her, that peace was as soothing as listening to waves crash on the beach.