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by Rivers Solomon

Conflict makes me feel suicidal, in no uncertain terms. I want to shrink away and die and never have the experience of a negative emotion again.

The words seethe under my tongue. Mama’s words and Pop’s. History repeats and repeats because history is people, and we can reproduce only what we know, and we get what we know from our elders. The same mechanisms that facilitate language facilitate the passing on of pain.

I twitch—slightly startled that Eve would ask such a thing—given that Mama is not okay, and when she is not okay, it is best to leave her to herself when she has made the decision to retreat inward, lest she recall that instead of retreating inward, a withdrawn animal, she can attack.

Emotions are little curses, spells. They come over us and take us away, outside ourselves. There is no predictability. At times, one spell trumps another, or multiple spells war at once, and the body becomes a shell in those moments, a shell that does not belong to you.

the malaise of the house having infected us like a mold.

maybe it was knowing that what was on the other side of life at the house did not offer anything that much different than life in the house.

I should speak of my father. I should speak of him lest he be spared the ire rightly due him.

He was dedicated to his job and, in his mind, to his family as well; but to him that meant leaving things in Mama’s capable hands.

I am here and it hurts. I am fighting with all I have to be here.

People finding out what happened is all she’s ever wanted. Sometimes, we want only to tell our story and have someone listen. We must know that on this earth, what happens to us matters; otherwise, what tethers us to the living?

Did it happen? If they’re not apologizing, if they’re not admitting they’ve done it, did they do it? What is real? What is true? Is my life a fantasy?

A journalist sees the Omelas child, takes a video, and walks away. He posts the video with the comment, Why isn’t anybody talking about this? Perhaps the result would then be everyone talking about it, but still, what of the Omelas child? Justice-minded people know now that he’s suffering, but who might mount a rescue?

If I cannot forget, what is there? I am always remembering, even when I am not. Me is in itself a remembrance. Me does not exist without the past that shaped my being.

“Does the squeaky wheel not get the grease?” “Certainly sometimes. But it also gets the beating, the expulsion, the prison, the death. Not every battle needs fighting.

What do you really want, little girl? Them folks out there can’t give you nothing you need.”

Anything anyone describes as a family matter, a private matter, rarely is. It is a phrase used to protect abuse.

The image of my mother as a baby disorients me. Mama as small. Mama as weak. Mama as dependent and learning her world.

The world doesn’t make sense, so why should we, as inhabitants of that world, make sense?

was it I, Elspeth, who wanted to assert herself for Ezri’s benefit, or were we both the same and together all along, and it is I, Ezri, who wanted to do something beautiful for my dear mama, my dear pop, who, despite everything, loved us, loved us so much.

my dissociative episodes are never so sequestered from my core self. We are always inside dreams of one another. A single shape-shifter rather than disparate entities living separate lives.

“She just needs somebody to be angry with,”

The ghosts inside me tremble, frightened as they reckon with being forgotten and unknown, discarded and left out of the familial hold.

Several attendees shout amen, and I want to join them. The Lord does do what he does, and why? Why? Though I am functionally an atheist, it still baffles, the way the world has plans for us so out of line with what we could have ever predicted. And it brings no relief to acknowledge that that is because there is no plan.

They’d been happy, only moments ago, to ignore any unpleasantness about the realities that brought them here. One can elide murder-suicide for only so long at the funeral of the murdered and self-murdered.

How dare she speak upon my truth, a truth that is not hers to speak? She does not know what my eyes saw.

Consider the Holocaust, how it could be so, how such a sad, sad thing could be so—and yet, it is so. Genocide is to humankind like water, air. There is no such thing as never again. For how many decades has Israel tried to snuff out Falestin?

Humans are gods, making worlds, then making miseries of those worlds.

I say, voice cracking—fuck—“No one saved us.” “I know. It’s not fair,” she says. “It’s not fair at all.” “Not a bit.”

even though the climate has permanently changed to have summers full of heat waves. I wonder if it’s a heat wave if it’s constant, or if by calling them that, there is some attempt to hold on to the notion that this might pass, that some old England of mild winters and mild summers will return. So much of what we speak is our attempt to make our fantasies real.

I believe each person in my family—each person but me, of course—is a flower, a mountain, a river, a star—whatever beautiful thing of this world you can think of.

I notice that Emmanuelle has on her white voice.

“I know from the outside it can look like we can all leave anywhere at any time, whether that be a bad job or an abusive relationship, but psychological cages are real cages, and we have to ask, who built that psychological cage? The fact of the matter is that my parents should not have had to leave that house.

I don’t know because I was not in that situation. I don’t know because we often talk about what we would do, and then when push comes to shove, we don’t. What would you do if only a three-day drive from you, children were locked in cages? Surely, you would rescue them? I’m sure if someone had asked you at one time what you would do in that situation, you might have said, of course. But we know that that’s the very situation we’ve been living through, and no shade to you, but I know you’ve not done that.”

But, Emmanuelle, is it the house that did those things, or is it possible that it was your parents themselves?”

She does have a face. I remember it.

The distance from car to door stretches before me like a great pilgrimage. I should’ve packed snacks, a Bible, water, the hair of a lover in a locket, a letter to God. I’ve brought with me only fear.

“I do remember,” I say. “I did do that.” “Why?” “I was hiding you.” “Yes. Yes. Yes. I remember. From her.”

I know there is much in this world beyond my understanding, that I do not have control over, but what is in this house is not just a problem of the house. It was a problem with Mama and Pop, and it now lives in us, this rot that tries to eat away our joy.

I don’t understand her objection. Isn’t everything a story we tell ourselves?

She can’t understand that there are some things that are good to be left out of.

I don’t want anyone else to know. Never wanted Mama to know. Or Pop.

No one could live down the shame that is me. Not me, certainly not her.

The way that she always came, in the dark, no one but me any the wiser, I think I thought she was not real, a figment only I could see.

Eve and I understood long ago, I think, and found that understanding worse, indescribably worse, than the haunting we dreamed up.

I met your mother and she was one of the most awful people I’d ever met. We were a friendly, loving neighborhood. She didn’t fit. She acted so better-than.”

then she’d know I have something to be sorry for, will know my wretchedness.

A child can’t know it wasn’t its fault it happened. Can’t know it is without blame, without fault.

“You said you loved me, but you made me a monster. How come? How come? I was never really that bad. I don’t think I was really that bad a kid at all,”

I know now why Mama never left. Because she never believed it was the house. She believed it was me, and wasn’t she right?

It wasn’t possession. It was Ambien.