Nets Have Holes, & Houses Have Ghosts

by Maddy Ackerburg
Photo by Hayley Anderson

I. in which something something isn’t right
She stepped inside the decaying entryway with the chipped white paint. The floor, full of loose floorboards, creaked as she slowly turned on her heel, balancing a cardboard box between her arms. Maybe it had something to do with the hair standing up on the back of her neck, or the goosebumps that rose on her arms. Maybe it had something to do with the eeriness following her as she made her way through the decrepit house, ignoring the twisting in her stomach. She would later say that the house watched her as she moved, as she breathed. Something hung in the air, imprisoned between the confines of life and death.

Something.

II. in which stars can’t predict the future
Mom phoned her grandma the entire time she was pregnant with me. Grandma Timo was small, with crinkled olive skin and loud eyes that could command anything with a pulse. Nobody knew how she did it, but she could look at the stars and the way the tide receded into the ocean and tell you when it was time to stop breastfeeding. There were complications when Mom was pregnant with me, but Grandma Timo told her not to worry, even when Mom started bleeding and the doctors told her she had lost me. “Don’t worry,” Timo said, “Give her time. She’ll be a fighter.” Even now, I look up at the stars and try to find the same answers Grandma Timo did. I want to know who lied and said I was brave.

III. in which things flicker
It started small: missing socks, a light that wouldn’t stop flickering in the corner. Papa called a technician but there was nothing wrong with the wires. In fact, the house wasn’t even that old—it had been built in 1938 and there were no prior complaints about the charming and inviting colonial style home on the top of the hill, the one with the red door and the oversized windows. But she knew something was wrong, even as a sophomore struggling to balance high school and her job at a local supermarket so she could afford to go to college. Mom knew because of the drafts that followed her from room the room, the way the walls watched her. She knew when her older brother began to sleep with a baseball bat in his bed because he was terrified of the armoire in the corner of his bedroom. It had come with the house and smelled of rotting mothballs, but he refused to touch it. She stayed clear of it, too. She stayed clear of a lot of things.

IV. in which time and space collide
Mom says the moment she looked down at me, the moment she held me for the first time, she realized we had known each other in a past life. Maybe the roles had switched. Maybe we were sisters, always arguing. Maybe I had been her mother. Something was there: a connection, a tie. Hip to hip, bone to bone. The brown met the brown and suddenly it was just us in that hospital room, suspended in time and space, just as it had always been. I wonder what would have happened if someone dragged a projector in front of my Mom, clicked a remote, and showed her what was going to happen to us. That one day I would watch her stare in the mirror, pinching her hips as she said she looked too fat. That one day we would sit in a therapy room, angry tears pouring from my eyes when I asked her why she hadn’t noticed what was happening to me. That one day she would sit on the edge of my bed, fingers stroking my scalp, and ask me why I hadn’t eaten dinner. That one night after I turned nineteen we would both come home from drinking and embrace each other, mother and daughter, admitting that we might never understand the other.

V. in which things things are heard and seen
Eerie things started happening in that house other than flickering lights and strange armoires. Mom would walk out the front door, adjusting her supermarket uniform as she kissed her mother goodbye, telling her she’d be home for dinner. My grandma would begin to cook, the warm Italian aromas filling the kitchen as she waited for her children to come home from work and school. A voice called from the doorway. “Mommy.” She turned, spoon in hand, and stared in confusion at my mother standing in the doorway, wearing a long white nightgown, dark hair falling over her shoulders. She was smiling. “Laura,” my grandma said, bewildered, “I thought you left for work.” And the imposter who was not my mother smiled at her and left without saying another word. Grandma stared after her with uncomprehending eyes until my real mother walked in the door three hours later, exhausted from work and ready for dinner. “Laura,” my grandma said, standing in the doorway with an angry hand on her hip, “Where have you been?” And my mom stared at her, sliding off her shoes in the entryway, annoyed that she was being questioned the moment she came back from work. “Work,” she responded, “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” And then grandma explained what she had seen. My mom paled, holding up a hand as if she could block her words in midair. “I don’t want to hear about it,” she responded, “Don’t tell me this shit.”

VI. in which dirty dishes are left in the sink
I saw her cry for the first time in third grade. She stood hunched at the kitchen sink, one hand wrapped around her abdomen, the other clutching the phone. I watched her from the corner of the room, frozen in my fear, as she wailed that her father was dying. And then she looked up, nose running, and saw me. I wandered to her side, trying in the way only children can to make her feel better. My arms wrapped around her waist. I asked her what was wrong. But she had stopped crying the moment she knew I was watching, the moment eyes were on her. Then her jaw clenched and her shoulders set back. Somehow, she was comforting me.

VII. in which connections are made
My grandma kept seeing her, the imposter that was not my mother, standing in corners with her white nightgown. She told herself she was seeing things. Everyone did, during those three years, my mother’s younger sister, who insisted that her things kept going missing. Or my mother’s older brother, who still slept with the bat and his covers pulled up to his chin even though he had just turned eighteen. And my mother, who tried desperately to ignore the signs, couldn’t shake the fact that something was watching her. That the whispering she heard vibrating throughout the room when she was alone was just something in her head.

VIII. in which distance grows greater
Let’s talk about how we sit in the same chairs passing the same windows because we can’t stand the thought of not being comfortable. Of being alone. And maybe that’s why my mother, when we stared at each other with our identical eyes, told me that she didn’t know who I was anymore. She didn’t know why I couldn’t get out of bed at sixteen and go to school; why I had dark circles under my eyes from lack of sleep and my clothes didn’t fit anymore. Why I counted my calories and shoved my finger down my throat. Maybe that’s why she asked me, her face pressed against the bathroom door as I cried on the opposite side, why I was being so selfish. Why I couldn’t think about what she was feeling, for once. And maybe that’s why I threw my keys at her, screaming that I wasn’t the selfish one, it wasn’t me because what kind of mother tells her daughter she needs to lose weight, and maybe that’s why I ran that night. My bare feet on frozen ground, wind biting my cheeks, headlights on my spine. But I couldn’t run faster than the way she looked at me.

IX. in which the puzzle comes together
Money was tight and it would have been hard to move. Nobody brought it up, but everyone was thinking it: something was wrong. One night the family went out to dinner and left Barry, Mom’s brother, alone with his girlfriend in the house. While they were sitting there watching TV, the girlfriend started screaming, holding her hands over her ears as she stared at something in the corner. When the rest of the family came home from dinner, they found Barry sitting on the porch of the house, shaking hands wrapped around his BB gun. His girlfriend hadn’t stopped crying. When they asked what Barry had seen, the girlfriend held up a trembling hand, lips quivering, and pointed directly at Mom’s chest. “It looked like you.” That was all she needed to say. Mom knew what she meant. The ghost was back—and it still looked identical to her.

X. in which the ghost crabs watch
She came to find me after the others had gone to bed. The cool of evening brought waves that tickled my toes and wisps of the moon on open water. We were rebels that night, tipsy from wine, angry at my father who said I shouldn’t talk politics. As we stumbled across the shore, arms interlocked, we watched the ghost crabs crawl into small divots in the sand and laughed about his temper. Mom turned to me, her cheeks flushed from alcohol. “He said he was done putting up with his disrespectful wife.” Our laughter faded. I remember staring at her, and

she fell

like a snipped

flower,

her knees in the sand, face in her hands. I wish I had been brave enough to tell her how I really felt, how much I loved her. But I held her. We stayed like that for a while.

XI. in which the story ends
That’s it. The women of the house sat down for the first time that night, the night that Barry’s girlfriend cried, and talked about what had been happening all those years. And then, finally, they moved out. For a long time, they refused to talk about it: what my grandma had seen, what my mother had heard. Not a single word. They told me the story years later over flickering candles and half-eaten birthday cake. I had just turned thirteen. My grandma shook her head, shifting her frosting around with her fork. “I don’t want this to scare you, Madeleine.” But all I can remember is looking at my mom, at the way her face paled. I could see it in her eyes. How the walls were already up.

XII. in which nets have holes and houses have ghosts
You can’t blame a net for having holes. And that she does, my mother. I don’t know the woman who danced with ghosts, the woman with nine holes in her ears and the tossed wedding rings and shredded photos. But how do I tell her that she doesn’t always have to wander the sand? That she doesn’t have to stitch her skin with glue? That she doesn’t always have to wander that house, fingers brushing that chipped white paint, waiting. Waiting for those ghosts to haunt her. That I love her, and always have, because we’ve known each other, her and I. Through time and space. We’ve always known each other.