Home Is Where the Bodies Are

by Jeneva Rose

I thought I knew everything about my mother until I started reading her journals. You can know a person your whole life but never really know them. Because they only have to show you what they want you to see. I didn’t know she felt insecure as a mother. I didn’t know she was afraid she’d raise us wrong, make a mistake that would permanently damage us in some way or another. I didn’t know she blamed herself for my addiction. And I didn’t know how much she truly loved us. She doesn’t write about the night of June 15, 1999. She alludes to it, but the entry is hieroglyphically cryptic. She refers to it as the night everything changed, the night that made her question every moment of her life that led up to it, the night that shook her faith, and, most terrifying of all, the night she realized monsters walk among us.