by Paul Pen
“There’s a good boy,” said Grandma. “Lips locked and the key in your tummy. You can’t tell anyone. Not even your sister. Especially not your sister.”
Earnest gravity darkened the boy’s face. “She doesn’t love me,” he said. Then he repeated something he’d heard many times in that house. “It was her fault I fell down the stairs.”
Moved, Grandma hugged her grandson, naked in the bathtub.
“My sister doesn’t love me. But I love her very much.”
If his mother had heard that sentence, she would have remembered the remains, the blood and hair that came from the boy’s love for the hamster. But Grandma just kissed her grandson’s head. She smelled the salt in the child’s hair.
“Shower time now, you stink,” she said. “And afterward we’ll put some talc on you, so you smell as nice as I do.”
When he’d finished his shower, the boy laughed when he saw his face covered in white powder. Grandma kissed the cowlick of dry hair that formed in the middle of his head. An image of his fractured skull flashed somewhere in her mind.
“And now to bed,” she said.
They went out onto the first-floor landing. Grandma pricked her ears. The silence told her that neither her son nor her daughter-in-law had yet returned from the septic tank. Seeing the gate at the bottom of the spiral staircase open, she clicked her tongue, incredulous that her son still sometimes forgot to lock it. She went across to the painting of a naval battle on a stormy night. On tiptoes, she ran her fingers along the top of the golden picture frame, making channels in the accumulated dust. She found the mermaid figure that acted as a key ring and locked the gate they’d fitted after the accident to stop the boy going back up to the top of the lighthouse. Lamenting as she always did that they hadn’t installed it before, even if just a day earlier. She returned the keys to their hiding place.
They went past the daughter’s bedroom without stopping. Without suspecting what was happening inside. When Grandma went to close the shutter and leaned out of the boy’s window, which was just along the wall from his sister’s, she stopped breathing.
“What’s wrong?” the boy asked. Grandma didn’t respond. Her hands went white squeezing the shutter’s cord. Outside, in the rain, two silhouettes lingered around the septic tank. And she sensed what was happening in the bedroom next door.
Sure enough, her granddaughter had watched the man and woman’s every movement through the glass. A circle of condensation grew with each breath from her mouth, her nose pressed against the window, unable to believe what was happening in front of her house. The daughter had seen her father carrying something. A bolt of lightning showed her the blond hair that hung from his arm. She held her hand to her heart. A second bolt allowed her to make out a fleeting, pinkish flash over the septic tank as her father let the bundle drop. It was enough for her to recognize the piece of clothing. An unusual movement of muscles contorted her features. She covered her face, but kept watching through the cracks between her fingers. Her father and mother made a dozen or so trips to the path that crossed the plot. They picked up the rocks that marked it out and threw them to the bottom of the tank. Until they’d filled it. They kept the biggest one to weigh down the sheet of metal that had come through the window.
Then she saw them go back to the house, which was when she sprinted down to the living room.
From the boy’s room, Grandma glimpsed her granddaughter crossing the landing. She let the shutter fall like a guillotine of gray plastic that blocked out the window. She rescued the rosary she’d earlier forsworn from her pocket and hung it on her neck, welcoming the weight of the crucifix.
“By the sign of the holy cross,” she recited, plotting three crosses, on her forehead, mouth, and chest. “Amen.”
“What is it?” asked the boy from under the sheets.
Grandma went to the door. She softly closed it to protect her grandson from what he might hear.
“It’s nothing,” she answered.
She sat on the bed’s edge, adjusting the bedspread. Thinking it could be the last time she’d do so, a tear appeared in each eye. She dried them before the boy could see.
“Show me that thing you can do with your mouth,” she said to distract his attention. “The cricket thing.”
The grimace he had for a smile lit up the boy’s face. Then he positioned his lips in a certain way, whistling through them while the air that he pushed out made them vibrate. A perfect imitation of the chirping sound made by the crickets on the plot. Grandma listened to her grandson, trying to detach herself from what was happening in the living room.
Outside, the daughter found her parents soaked through in the middle of the room. She held the banister to stop the trembling in her hands. She spoke from the second-to-last step on the stairway.
“What have you done?” she asked.
“What is it you’ve seen?” her father asked back.
“I saw everything.”
“Then you know,” said the man.
Their words were serious. Heavy. Thrown between them like the rocks had been thrown onto the girl’s body.
“Was it her?” She gestured with her chin at the roll of posters in the middle of the living room. Her parents exchanged a look, not knowing how to respond.
“Was it my brother?”
The air that came in through the window made the gray pajamas hug her body.
“Kind of,” answered the woman. “He’s not responsible for his actions.”
“What did he do to her?”
“You don’t want to know,” the father said.
“And you haven’t called anyone?” she asked.
“What do you think?” The woman wrung out her braid as if it were a dishcloth. “You know why we’re so wet.”
“Dad?”
“The girl was already dead,” he explained. “We’re protecting the life that’s still alive. Your brother’s life.”
“That girl has a family, too. If my brother has done something to her, I don’t care what happens to him.”
“We’ve known for a long time how much you care about your brother,” her mother cut in.
The daughter clenched her fists, setting off an intense pain in the palms of her hands. “The entire town’s looking for her,” she said.
“But people are already guessing what could’ve happened,” her father replied. “And it’s what actually happened. The girl fell on the rocks.”
“So why are you hiding the body? What has my brother done to her?”
“You don’t want to know,” the father said again. “In a few days’ time they’ll start to give her up for dead. She’s not the first child on this island to get herself killed on the cliffs.”
“Her family won’t give her up for dead.”
“Well . . .” Her father paused. “But she is.”
“Because of my brother.”
“That’s not true,” her mother corrected her.
“Oh, no?” She eased the tension in her fists. “Let’s leave that decision to the people who are meant to decide.”
She came down the last step. Pieces of glass crunched under the rubber soles of the slippers she’d just put on. Her father guessed her intentions and reached the telephone before her. He held the device behind his back.
“You’re not going to do it,” he said.
“Give it to me.” His daughter grabbed at the air.
“Do you really want to destroy this entire family?” her mother asked.
“It was my brother. Not the rest of you.”
“And how’re we going to explain the fact that the girl’s in the septic tank? Under a pile of rocks.” The woman’s soggy shoes squelched with each step she took toward her daughter.
The girl opened her mouth to respond. She found no words.
“What will happen to you when they find out what we’ve done?” her mother added. “You’ll be left alone.”
“I’m already alone.”
“I mean really alone.”
“Look at yourself.” Her mother gestured at her with an open hand. “It’s you who wants to call to give us all away. If this family’s destroyed because of this, it’ll be your fault again. What a coincidence.”
The daughter pulled her hair away from her face, holding it with both hands in two ponytails. “Are Grandma and Grandpa in on this as well?”
“We’re all together in this. Like we always are.” She paused to emphasize what she said next. “All of us, except you.”
“Tell me you want to rob your grandparents of the last years of their lives,” the father added.
The daughter pulled on her ponytails so that the pain would override her thoughts. It was something that had worked before. She was comforted by the pinpricks on her scalp. And in her mind, she repeated every word of the conversation they’d just had, one by one. She thought of Grandma. Of Grandpa. Life without her family seemed appealing for a few moments. Then she imagined the house empty. Tears sprang from her eyes, but they had nothing to do with the roots of her hair. A heartbroken sigh issued from her belly. She felt as if she could have vomited her soul. She eased the tension in her hair. The tears blurred the image of her parents in a perfect symbol of what they meant to her.
“I hate you,” she said to them. “I hate you for doing this to me.”
“We’re grateful to you,” said the father.
“I can still talk whenever I want.”
“But you won’t.”
“Don’t test me.”
“You’re doing the right thing,” her mother cut in. “Standing by your family.”
“I’m doing it for myself.”
“You know that’s not true.” When she went to squeeze her daughter’s arm, the girl snatched it away.
“Don’t even think about it!” she yelled. “I don’t want any of you to touch me.”
For a few seconds she took deep, painful breaths. When she was calmer, her father asked, “So can I leave the telephone on the table?”
The daughter didn’t answer. She just turned around to escape as quickly as possible. On the way to the stairs, something crackled underfoot. She knew what it was before she looked down. The missing girl’s blue eyes, printed on the stack of posters, crumpled under her slipper. Damp after rolling through the puddles that flooded the living room. Torn by the broken glass scattered across the floor. She looked away, ashamed. Full of guilt.
“I hate you!” she screamed at her parents. She set off up the stairs. A hand stopped her when she reached the landing.
“Take back what you just said,” Grandma told her. “You don’t hate your parents.”
“Let go of me.”
“Say sorry to them.”
“Let me go.”
“Say sorry to your father,” Grandma insisted.
The girl grabbed the crucifix that hung from her grandmother’s neck. She held it in front of the old woman’s face. She turned it so that the Christ looked at her head-on.
“You say sorry to your father for what you’ve done to that little girl,” she said. The force with which she threw down the chain unbalanced Grandma, who had to support herself on the wall to stop herself from falling.
25
The light from the evening’s orange sun accentuated every curve in the metal sheet that covered the septic tank. They had left it there despite having filled the tank with concrete. No measure seemed sufficient to block off that memory. From the living room, peering through the window that the same metal sheet had broken two months earlier, the woman watched night fall. Nervous from the waiting, she twisted the end of her braid in front of her chest. She untied some of the knots. She braided them again. A blanket of purple light covered the plot at that moment. She had to look away when the tone taken on by the corrugated iron reminded her of the girl’s body. The landscape blurred in the background as she focused on the remnants of silicone around the edges of the glass, Grandpa’s imperfect repair work on the shattered window.
The kitchen’s swing door opened behind her.
“Come on,” her husband said. “It’s done.”
She turned around and slung the braid onto her shoulders. “How does it look?” she asked.
“You’ll see.”
A voice came from among the shadows that the banister cast onto the staircase.
“You make me sick.” The daughter spoke sitting on the same step from which she’d discovered her parents soaked through in the middle of the living room the night of the storm. She was wearing a brown ankle-length skirt. The neck of her blouse buttoned up to the top. The sleeves covered her arms to the wrists. Her hair covered her face, forming a dark curtain in front of it. With her usual movement of the head, she sent it to one side.
“Anyone would’ve thought you were enjoying yourselves,” she added.
The man, lifting a finger, signaled to his wife not to respond. “Don’t give her the satisfaction,” he said. “She’s just trying to provoke us.”
She gave her father a false smile. “You don’t say!” she replied. “What a bad girl I am.”
The man beckoned to his wife.
“So, are you really going to do it?” the daughter asked.
“You know we have no other option,” her mother answered on her way to the kitchen.
“Poor things, you never have any options but your own. Tell me at least that my brother knows about it.”
“Not yet.”
The daughter feigned a laughing fit. “And when do you plan to tell him? After he’s down there?”
The man shushed his wife to stop her answering more questions. The swinging door hit the frame several times as a final reply. The daughter snorted, alone in the shadows.
In the kitchen, two pots bubbled on the stove. The smell of carrot soup filled the room. Grandma stirred the contents of both with the same wooden spoon. She stepped back to adjust the heat, bending over to see the controls. As she straightened her back she held a hand against her kidneys. With a finger she rubbed the windowpane, which had misted up with the steam from the pots.
“The sun’s nearly gone,” she said as she discovered the dusk outside. “Are you going down now?”
“You should come down, too,” the man broke in.
Instead of answering, Grandma made an unnecessary knot in her apron strings. She set to work with the spoon, remarking how thick the soup had gotten.
“It’s going to be your grandson’s home,” the man said to cut through her feigned indifference.
Grandma sighed. She leaned with both hands on the edge of the counter. She looked outside through the streak she’d drawn in the condensation.
“My grandson’s home is still this one,” she said. Her voice faltered as she said the last word.
“But you know we’re going to have to keep him down there.”
“Of course I know. I’m not senile. And I also know that it makes no difference what I think.”
“Don’t say—”
“Sometimes I think only God listens to me,” Grandma interrupted him, stroking her rosary. “And I don’t know if He still will after this. Any punishment He has ready for me will be deserved.”
The steam from the pots completely covered the glass she was looking through, clouding her view. She turned around. “Do we really have to send him down there?”
“I’m not going over this again,” the man answered with his hands in the air. “We’re doing it to protect his life. And ours.”
“And what life are we going to give him?” asked Grandma. “A life of darkness, locked away underground? Visited by us once a day?”
The man puffed his cheeks and blew out a large quantity of air. He looked down at the floor. Then at his mother. “And what do you suggest?”
Grandma opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say.
“We’re risking everything every time the b
oy leaves this house,” the man went on. “And every time someone comes here. He doesn’t understand that he can’t talk about the girl. Do we keep sending him to school until he blabbers everything? Shall we do that? Until he gives us a fright like he did the other day with his teacher?”
The woman gauged her husband’s growing anger from the speed at which his ears reddened. She tried to calm him down by stroking his shoulder.
“And this family can just go to hell like it should have two months ago?” he added. “Shall we do that?”
Grandma barely dared to blink.
“Or we could wait for the boy to run off, do the same thing again, and show up with another dead girl in the living room.”
“That’s enough!” cried the woman. She pressed her hands against her husband’s mouth so he wouldn’t say another word to Grandma. “We don’t need this.”
The man spat away the mass of fingers that were meant to silence him. “It’s the only way we can give the boy a future,” he added. “And give ourselves one. Don’t forget that.”
Grandma finally blinked. She breathed before speaking again. “I’m not sure this is a future I want to have.”
“Then think of it as the future of some girl who won’t show up broken on our rug.”
“My grandson won’t do anything like that again.”
“Did you think he could’ve done it the first time?”
Grandma didn’t say another word. She turned off the stove. The kitchen door then opened.
“I can hear you from upstairs,” said Grandpa.
“Take her away,” the man suggested. “And explain everything to her again. She doesn’t seem to want to understand us.”
Grandma untied her apron, threw it on the floor, and left the kitchen, sobbing.
The man led his wife to the stairs that went down from the kitchen to the basement. He positioned himself behind her and covered her eyes with both hands. Just as he’d done the first time he showed her the lighthouse, so long ago. The memory made a tiny smile appear on her face. Anyone would’ve thought you were enjoying yourselves. The words her daughter had just uttered resounded in her head. She pulled off the blindfold made by her husband’s hands. The boards that formed the stairway creaked underfoot.