Constance
It was an accident when I saw Mom cry for the first time. I was cutting class and snuck home during lunch—freshman year, each day a unique disaster; I had been slighted by some former best friend and needed to get away—but when I tiptoed into the apartment, Mom’s racking sobs were coming from the kitchen. She propped herself against the counter, fists balled and knuckles white. It was an open-eyed cry, her heaving gasps didn’t sound defeated. She was releasing something dense from deep inside her. When she caught me peeking, she put on her everyday composed, maternal face. But it was too late. Daughters aren’t supposed to see their mothers like that. I had no choice but to ask if she was okay. Mom explained that her sister had called. Their Mom died. I didn’t know then that Mom had a sister. I guess I knew she had to have a mother herself, but that still surprised me. Mom had never talked about family in any terms other than the two of us.
Our apartment, the ground floor unit of a duplex in West Garfield Park, was humble or quaint if we were trying to make it sound nicer than it was. But it was claustrophobic during that conversation. Mom’s younger sister was Jodie, she told me, and their mother was Constance. Mom referred to her by her first name: Constance.
Constance was cruel in a way that would oscillate between rampage and neglect. She would lock Mom in her ascetic bedroom to howl and whimper like a beast, she would throw Mom’s few self-won luxuries–a diary, a scarf, a softball–into the fireplace, she would refuse to serve Mom meals for days at a time. Constance would pummel her own body with her bony fists and then show Mom the bruises, screaming all the while, “This is what I get for birthing a rotten girl like you.”
Jodie, apparently, was the only thing Mom and Constance ever agreed on. Jodie was innocent and precious, and avoided the entirety of her mother’s ire. She did her best to provide small comforts to her sister amid Constance’s punishments, but there’s only so much kids can do for each other in a haunted house. When Mom finally escaped, she wanted to bring Jodie with her, but Jodie couldn’t follow. “If I go with you, she might kill you.” They lost touch afterward. It was too impossible.
When Mom told me about Jodie, I imagined this brave, beautiful girl. She should have been radiant. Instead she was frail. Thin in a chitinous way. She looked like a bug when she first visited us. “What are you doing here?” I asked before I even confirmed who she was. Mom told me not to be rude. Jodie asked me about school and my friends and boys or girls I liked in the stilted manner of an adult afraid of a child. I answered every question with single mumbled words. Despite my behavior, Jodie hugged me goodbye and said, “It was so nice to finally meet you.”
“What the fuck was that?” Mom admonished me for my language, of course.
With Constance dead she had a new chance to reconnect with her sister. And Jodie wanted to get to know me, because Jodie wanted me to get to know her son, my heretofore unknown cousin Nico. Nico was really sick. This was probably our only chance to all be a family together.
Mom and I had to take two buses to get to the sushi place in the Loop. Nico wore red flannel pajama bottoms and slides with socks to the restaurant. Mom wouldn’t tell me what he was sick with, but I ruled out cancer as he had blond hair curled into that broccoli style boys my age loved. He was pale, and his movements with his chopsticks were painfully slow–he didn’t finish eating until an hour after I did–but he was cool. He asked what I was into, softball, and what position I played, first base. He told me he loved movies and dreamed of making his own some day. He didn’t talk like a boy that would die. Instead, he acted with unexamined immortality.
“They seem nice,” I admitted on the first bus home. “Can I ask you something?”
“You just did.”
“You’re the worst. Do you think Jodie told Nico about Constance?”
“No. Jodie had to live with her for years after I left. Even if Constance never treated Jodie badly directly, she still saw what happened to me. I know she was scared. What good would it do now to tell Nico about all that?”
“Don’t people deserve to know when someone was an abuser or whatever?”
“She’s dead now. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“How did she die, by the way?”
“I don’t know. I never asked. It was more important to know she was gone. Not how. Whatever you can imagine, it should have been worse.”
“What if she had each limb tied to a different horse, and then each horse was sent running in a different direction, so she was pulled apart into a bunch of pieces all over the place? I think that’s how one of the kings of England executed his prisoners.”
For the rest of our long trip back to West Garfield Park we imagined all the wonderful ways Constance could have died.
As the year progressed, Mom and I continued to meet with Jodie and Nico. It felt like our family was becoming more real each time we met, though even as I warmed up to them, Jodie never seemed entirely comfortable. Our get-togethers became farther and farther apart the closer we got to summer. By the last day of freshman year, I hadn’t seen my aunt or cousin in over a month. I came home, ready to be mindless and lazy until September, but Mom had a message. Nico was getting worse. He’d asked if I would stay with him for a while, so we could spend time together before he was gone. Mom helped me pack a week’s worth of my things and said, “Be good.”
Her Lakeshore condo, on the nineteenth floor of her building, could have fit three of my apartments in it. At least. It had a living room, a sitting area, and a den, each with indistinguishable leather chairs and framed abstracts and colossal windows looking upon Lake Michigan. The glass was polished so perfectly it looked like I could step through it into the air and I might not even fall.
Nico moved slower than the last time I saw him. He needed to brace himself against the cream colored walls as he shuffled. They must have had someone clean those walls daily to keep them so spotless. Or maybe boys like Nico didn’t leave fingerprints where they touched. His room had the best TV and game consoles on the market. The perimeter was lined with movie posters, mostly deep cut film snob stuff. He had a king bed. At its foot was a collapsible cot.
“Is that for me?”
“I hope that’s okay. It’s not weird, is it?”
“I just figured I’d have my own room while I was here, you know?”
“Yeah, I get that. I can ask my Mom to set up one of the spare rooms if you want. But I thought this way we could spend more time together. My Mom thinks it’s important. So you’ll remember me. Since we didn’t have that chance when we were little, right?”
“Is it okay if I ask what’s wrong with you? Or is that insensitive or whatever?”
“Bad heart.”
“Shit. Bad bad?”
“That’s what the doctors say. My Mom has been basically losing her mind over it. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I can’t really move. It feels like I’m not inside myself.”
“Are you worried?”
“No. It’s hard to explain, but I think I’ll be okay.”
“Okay,” I said, “the cot will be fine. It’s whatever.”
Those first few days in the Lakeshore place, spending time in Nico’s room was more fun than whatever else that summer could have been. He had a nice camera, and he’d film us. He had me act out some of my softball stories–he’d direct me to take my batting stance and when I did it without appropriate gusto he said, “Do it for real!”–which was embarrassing at first, but became liberating. Nico dared me into minor pranks he couldn’t do himself. I snuck into the kitchen to steal some of the premium snacks, small pours of wine, vodka, whiskey, gin, and mezcal into red plastic cups, and insignificant bills–ones and fives–from Jodie’s purse left on the kitchen island. When I crept back into Nico’s room with the contraband, he filmed as we celebrated our teenage victories. At night Nico played scary movies Mom never wanted to watch with me. We screamed and laughed at the blood and guts until Nico passed out. His heart probably couldn’t keep up with us, but he looked content as he slept. Never troubled in any way.
The fourth night I was there, he said, “I have another movie I want to show you. One of my favorites. But we can’t watch it on the TV that’s in here.” Nico gave me instructions to sneak out to the hall, careful not to wake Jodie who was not pleased with how little sleep her son had been getting since my arrival. A storage closet opened to reveal a cart with a bulky old television set and VHS player. Nico was so excited, he dropped from his bed to the floor and began to rummage underneath as quickly as his sluggish body would allow. He pulled out an old, much loved toybox. Inside, a collection of tapes. Transformers action figures. A toddler-appropriate toy camera. A knife, sharp and shiny, as haphazardly tossed into the box as everything else. Seeing it glisten was the first time I felt nervous in his house. “Some of my best stuff,” he explained. As if that said it all. I needed to be his hands at this point. Nico had me set up the TV and insert the tape, and then he clicked play on the remote.
Constance appeared on screen.
I knew it had to be her. She was an old woman with a fat face, nearly no hair, and a prim and proper black dress with white lace. Like a decrepit pilgrim, I thought. She was laughing at the camera, but her little eyes were humorless. It felt like she was staring through the screen. My skin itched while she looked at me. Like when I had chicken pox and I wanted to scratch so bad but Mom wouldn’t let me and I hated her for it even though she was trying to protect me. A little giggling version of Nico–before the bad heart kicked in–sat so happy on Constance’s lap. I imagined this woman, finally with a face, thrashing against her own body in a desperate fury directed at Mom. Directed at me. “Fucking hell, Nico. Turn it off.”
“That’s Grandma. You never got to meet her. Don’t you want to see what she was like?”
“I don’t have a Grandma,” I spat. “And I know what she was like more than you! Now turn it the fuck off.”
“Literally what are you talking about? Don’t be a bitch, just watch the movie.” Nico tried to hide the remote behind him, but weak as he was, I wrestled it away. I yanked the power cord to the stupid old TV out of the wall more forcefully than I needed and shoved the cart out into the hall. The cord wrapped around one of the wheels, it bumped into one of the walls, and it crashed down to the floor. Shards of the bulbous screen scattered around. The tape spat out of the crushed cassette in the console like intestines.
Jodie woke and ran down the hall, barely missed stepping on a piece of the TV screen razors. Nico was hyperventilating on his bed. He couldn’t get up. I tried to explain but Jodie wouldn’t listen at all. She ran to her son and held him. I didn’t know what else to do so I found a broom and tried to clean up the mess but Jodie told me I’d already done enough. She said it with a level of calm I didn’t like. I wished she would yell. I said, “I didn’t mean to break anything. Nico showed me this video of Constance, and I freaked out. You understand, right?”
I wanted to sleep on the couch in the living room, den, sitting room, wherever. But Jodie insisted I stay in Nico’s room, in case he had another episode in the night. I sullenly dragged the cot the farthest corner I could, not caring how much noise it made scraping the floor.
It was cold in the Lakeshore condo after that night. Jodie’s purse was conspicuously moved out of the kitchen. The liquor cabinets were locked. The snack pantry was emptied. Thin, frail Jodie had a sudden backbone. She glared at me as I moved through her space.“Nico showed me his videos. Stealing from your own family–that’s just unacceptable, young lady. I can’t believe I let such a rotten girl into my home. If Nico weren’t so fond of you for some reason–” She couldn’t finish the thought before the disgust I apparently wrought in her was too much and she needed to leave. She gave up on me.
Nico was behaving strangely too. He didn’t want to talk or watch movies. He said he felt too weak, but not so weak that he couldn’t roll away from me whenever I tried to get his attention. I wanted to call Mom, beg her to pick me up, take me back to West Garfield Park where I belonged, but I couldn’t find my phone with the rest of my things. When I asked if they’d seen it, Nico groaned a noncommittal sound, Jodie ignored me entirely. I searched everywhere I’d been in the almost infinite sequence of rooms that made up their home, but it didn’t turn up. I considered, for a moment, trying to break into the locked cabinets, but the thought of being caught misbehaving again filled me with despair and as best as I could see by looking through the small windows of the cabinet my phone wasn’t in there anyway.
I retreated to my cot, resigned to spend the rest of my week in self pity and exile, and fell into an uneasy sleep that was broken with a heavy pressure on my legs and a terrible smell in the room. “Nico?” I called out. “Is that you?” The weight, centered on my calves as I layed on my stomach, was so heavy, it felt like the cot should have buckled under the weight. It didn’t. The smell was putrid. At first I thought Nico had been sick in his sleep, but that wasn’t quite right. It smelled less bodily, more like meat had that turned bad a long, long time ago. Barely illuminated by his bedside alarm clock’s glowing numbers–it was nearly four in the morning–Nico sat up in his bed, sinking into a throne pillows. He was looking at me with wide white eyes. Each of his breaths, in and out, sounded like quiet, desperate screams. He wasn’t what was sitting on me. The bedroom door opened. Jodie was standing in the hallway looking in at us.
From what I could see as I tried to face it, the mass on top of me was oblong, bloated, and fat. It made its way from my legs up my body, stopping at my back. I could hardly breath as it crushed my chest, my lungs, my ribs, my heart under its lurching weight. The smell became stronger–more rotten–as it got closer to my head.
“Hi, Mama,” Jodie said. She sounded like a little girl, wonderstruck. “I missed you so much.”
The weight on my back roiled and wobbled, gelatinous, as a harsh voice laughed. “My sweet, good girl, Mama missed you too. And Nico, how big and handsome. How are you feeling, dear?”
Nico continued his labored breathing. My own breath sounded the same now, the two of us trying to scream, out of sync; his exhale, my inhale, his inhale, my exhale, all tumbled into each other.
“He’s not doing well, Mama. You said he’d get better. You said you’d make him better.”
“Mama didn’t lie to you, darling Jodie. Mama would never.” Cold fingers spread across either side of my face. The fingers were too long, too engorged, and ended with black pointed nails that scratched my cheeks and brow as they cruelly explored my features.
“Constance,” I murmured. The name barely escaped my mouth.
“Disrespectful little bitch!” she screamed. “Don’t say my name. Wretched daughter of a wretched daughter. At least you’ll be good for one thing in your damned life.” She pulled back on my head, lifting my chest up as much as possible with all her weight bearing down on my back. I thought I might snap in half at my waist the way she was ripping me. I should have passed out from the pain, but the smell of her fingers was so vile, so much like death, it kept me awake. There was a fluid spreading across my face that she was smearing into my skin as she moved her hands. Blood was my first guess, but it was too cold to be that. And too sludgy. “Nico, my beloved boy, I know you’re feeling very sick, but Grandma will make you feel better. Right as rain, you’ll be. Would you please bring Grandma what I gave you? Then we’ll get started.”
Nico pushed himself off his bed. Jodie rushed over to catch him before he collapsed to the ground. Constance cooed her approval as the two of them worked together. With weak hands they pulled out the toybox, and from the toybox the knife. It was longer than I had realized. Sharper. More deadly. Jodie supported Nico as he walked so slowly over to the corner I was trapped in. Each step an agony of screaming organs until I was face to face with my aunt and cousin.
Constance said, “Make the first cut, Jodie. Just like I taught you.” Jodie nodded. Despite how weak I always thought she looked, when Jodie stabbed forward the blade went clean through my chest, just left of center. What little air I was holding onto left me. Jodie sliced down. A long, deep incision. “Good girl. Now, the second.”
“I can do it myself,” Nico said. His voice was a wheeze. He took the knife from his mother and held it so the blade, slick with my blood, faced his own chest. He plunged it down in the same spot I’d been cut. Jodie shivered, but Constance soothed her. A hand let go of my face, so my upper body dropped limply onto the cot. I could breathe again, almost, but my blood was pooling underneath me.
Then, a hand forced its way mercilessly into my open wound.
Constance flipped me over to lie on my back as she dug around in my chest. It was effortless for her to move me like that. “Rotten girl, rotten girl,” she sang like a lullaby. Looking at her directly, I saw her round face. Beady eyes filled with hate. Stray wisps of once-white hair matted flat with ichor dripping down her face onto her swollen body. She wore the pilgrim dress from the home movie, tearing at the seams from all of her mass. Spindly arms and spindly legs, longer than they should have been, bent in too many places. Rounded nub teeth erupted from her bloody gums. Not bloody. Slimy. The same slime that covered her head and the hand which, in spite of the violence and pain I’d been inflicted with, wrapped itself around my heart in the most delicate manner and plucked it from my chest.
Jodie was considerably more careless in her methods as she finished removing the heart from Nico’s chest. She shrieked as if she were the patient under surgery sans anesthesia, and ripped out the small, pathetic thing. Shriveled. Grayish-purple. She tossed it aside. It rolled across the floor, and bumped into the toybox.
Constance lifted herself off me. It wasn’t until the weight was gone I realized I was still at least somewhat alive and aware. Constance cradled my heart close to her breast, like a newborn. “Open him up wide enough, darling.” Jodie did as she was told. She pulled Nico’s chest apart, into an empty chasm. His head lolled to the side, his eyes fluttered with the same semi-life much as mine. The knife, I saw, had been discarded. I tried to reach out to it from my cot, but it was too far. I tried to stretch toward it, and the cot rocked slightly with my weak movements. It wasn’t enough, so I pulled back, rocked again, and tumbled out onto the ground. With every bit of fading strength I could summon, I crawled forward.
“Resilient whore,” Constance said with a snarl. She began to scratch and claw at herself, ripping the fabric of her pilgrim dress, tearing into her bloated body, splashing that ichorous fluid around her. “Jodie, be a good girl for your Mama.”
Jodie pulled her bloody hands out of her son’s chest and lunged. I rolled onto my back. Barely strong enough to grasp it, I held the knife straight up. Jodie impaled herself on top of me. Pale and weak and bony, she whimpered for Constance.
“Not my baby,” Constance said. She dropped my heart. Nico reached weakly for it, but he could hardly move at all. Constance was on all fours, skittering around. She pulled Jodie’s limp body off me–off the blade–like a ragdoll. “Be strong. Be good. Mama will make it better.”
My heart rolled in an ugly spiral across the floor, leaving a trail of my insides with every asymmetrical bump. It went back and forth, tantalizingly close to my fingertips, losing momentum. I thought it was over, until Nico’s body fell forward, bumped into it, sent it bounding into my outstretched hand. My heart. Beating and healthy somehow. I felt its strength, flowing up my fingertips back into my core. I pulled myself up. The room was full of two lifeless bodies, Constance wailing with her daughter in her terrible arms, and me, suddenly unnoticed and unimportant to this family. I was a stranger standing in the middle of their grief. I stumbled out of Nico’s room, into the hall, and left my dark reddish handprints on the walls as I moved toward the exit. In the elevator down to the ground floor, I did my best to shove my heart back into the cavity Jodie made. I could only get it about halfway inside when the doors opened. I ran, slowly but as fast as I could, out of the building, and toward the closest bus stop that would take me back home to Mom, where I’d be safe.
About the Author
Mike Cripps is a Chicago based writer. He is originally from Coopersburg, PA, and has a degree in Creative Writing from Lebanon Valley College.