Resident

CW: Mental health issues, parental neglect, death

When I was born, a stone carver went out to the cemetery and chiseled my name into the grave marker.

It was a tradition in our family, a hold over from the days when children weren’t always expected to grow up, a practical consideration since, as soon as I was born, it would be inevitable that I would die. Every year, on the Sunday closest to October 10th, my parents would take my brothers and me to the cemetery and we would go to the grave marker with our last name on it and we would gather around it with my aunts and uncles, my cousins, and my grandmother and we would listen to the story we’d heard so many times that we could recite it, shout the appropriate responses to the speeches, and hold hands with the other families as we sang the songs whose lyrics we knew in our bones. Then, all the families would clean the graves. We’d scrub the headstones, taking the greatest care with the large family stone, and restore them. I took pains not to look at my own name carved deeply into the granite with my birth year and a dash just waiting for the terminal year to be added.

-

That line was the most terrifying thing in the world to me.

I was seven when I last looked at it. Bored, as children often are during solemn occasions, I had sat in front of the stone and traced my name letter by letter, then my birth year number by number, and then gotten to the beveled line.

“What does this mean?” I whispered to my mother.

“It’s your life line,” she whispered back. “It’s all the time in between your birth and death.”

That night, was the first time I dreamed of that line. I was a tightrope walker and the rope I was walking on was thin and vanishingly long and carved into granite. It stretched all the way back to when I was born in the shadowy past and disappeared into an impenetrable fog only a few feet head of me. I didn’t want to go forward. I knew that, if I kept walking, that I would eventually reach the end and tumble into the depths of the terminate numbers. But, I didn’t have a choice. If I stopped, the tightrope wobbled alarmingly and I didn’t know what happened to a person who fell off midway. I looked down and saw only blackness.

In movies, I’d jerk out of bed and scream and someone would come running to chase away the fear.

In reality, I woke from that dream drenched in dread. I’d stare into the darkness, pinned to my bed, unable to move or scream. Then, slowly, I’d recover and realize I was wet with sweat or urine. Either way, I learned how to change the bedding, do laundry, spot clean the mattress, and take a shower in the early morning hours without disturbing the rest of my family. I’m not certain I ever told my parents or siblings about the dream.

Over time, I had the dream less often but the dread stayed with me.

It clung to me like a stench as I sat in class alone. Every year, my class would put on a play we all had to participate in. I was, most often, an inanimate object, set dressing. I was a tree in the Wizard of Oz, my entire job being to reach out and try to grab Dorothy. My parents didn’t think it was worth their time to watch me rehearse dissociating on stage so they’d often forget to pick me up from school. I only called attention to my continued inconvenient existence once. I overheard the teachers talking about how my parents were terrible and neglectful. Child Protective Services came out that week and what followed was a month filled with the terror of being taken to live with people I didn’t know before the case worker reached the conclusion that my parents were forgetful and poor but not neglectful. After that, I walked the 4.1 miles home if they hadn’t arrived within a half an hour. I made a show of smacking my head with my hand, oh forgetful me, and saying out loud, “That’s right, I was supposed to go to Aunt Maggie’s house,” just in case anyone was watching, then walk off campus unnoticed.

It was better when no one noticed me.

My family lived in one of those houses that had started out as a typical starter home opening into a living room and kitchen with a hallway leading to a bathroom and two bedrooms. Over time, it had grown organically and unskillfully. The front porch was closed in and the original front door removed to create a sitting room. The back door was made into an archway and an addition was added to the back of the house to make my bedroom, a bathroom, and laundry room out of the garage. It was still cramped with a family of five. My bedroom had one wall that was the old exterior wall but, as the only girl, I didn’t have to share.

My brothers graduated from school and went to work or to college. I graduated, too. I didn’t walk to get my diploma because we were going through some financial trouble that year. Mom got sick so it wasn’t in the budget. It was fine. I had long since tried to make sure that my needs and wants were minimal. I never really liked it when people looked at me anyway and my grades weren’t the best so we’d have been there for a while sitting on the hard bleachers waiting for my name to be called while all the other smarter kids and their families filed out of the field. You were supposed to wait for everyone, to clap for everyone, but no one did.

I stayed home. I worked for my parents and did some online jobs. I was a customer service representative mostly. The person on the other end of the robo-call if you ever picked up.

People rarely did.

My job was to sit in my bedroom for eight hours a day while a computer generated phone call after phone call and to leap into action if someone said, “Hello?” Though, usually, they said “Hello, asshole, don’t you have anything better to do with your life?” And the answer was, no, not really. I was usually reading a book. It paid next to nothing but I didn’t need much. I had a handful of auto-drafted bills to things like streaming services and my phone but that was about it.

When I got off the phone with the irate people, I wandered up to the original part of the house and helped my father with my mother. She was weak by that time, basically bedridden, and needed help getting from the bed to the bathroom to the couch. Food needed to be prepared. Floors washed. I admit, I wasn’t great at all that. I’m not a natural housekeeper. It bores me and I get annoyed easily. I tried, though. I did my best. And, when Mom died and Dad got sick, he called in a part time home aide.

He didn’t tell me he was going to do this. One day, I walked upstairs and there was a young woman in the kitchen microwaving soup and she screamed when she saw me. My father calmed her down and I learned her routine so that I could stay out of her way.

Then, Dad died.

The home aide called the ambulance when he had not gotten out of bed in two days and was running a fever. The hospital said it was sepsis caused by another kidney stone but there was nothing they could do. It was time to consider Hospice. I couldn’t make the decision. I had not been given power of attorney. That had gone to my oldest brother who asked Dad what he wanted to do. Dad told him to sell the house and let him die. So that’s what happened.

There was no discussion about what would happen to me. I had nowhere to go, no savings, nothing. And neither of my brothers seemed to care.

I went to the cemetery for the first time in years and sat at the base of the large family stone with all of our names and dates etched so deeply into the granite. The stone-cutter had been out there already so Dad’s final death date was already carved deep, sharp and fresh. I traced my fingers along the edge of the numbers.

“What about me?” I whispered. “What am I supposed to do now? I know that it wouldn’t have been fair to just give me the house, I couldn’t afford it if you had, but what do I do?”

I went to my mother’s name.

“Mom?”

There was no answer from a single name chiseled on that cold stone. They were all silent and unyielding.

“What do I do?”

My heart clenched in my chest and my brain was crying. There were no tears, not yet, I was too sad for tears, too scared. The dread that had been with me since childhood was still present now but he seemed like an old friend. He was comforting. He told me that I could just lie down and refuse to get up. It was cold out. If I lay there all night there was a possibility I could die of hypothermia.

I didn’t particularly want to die. I had never really lived. There were a lot of things that I still wanted to do if I could ever scrape enough money and ambition to do them. I dreamed of being a creative person like my younger brother or of being successful like my older brother. Both of them were married with children and I had never dated. I would have liked to travel if I could think of a place I’d want to see. Things just never really seemed to work out for me. But, there were times when the dream from my childhood would return and I’d wake up wondering when I was going to crash into those numbers and fall down, down, down into the dark depths. I was still terrified of that dash.

Shaking, I lowered my eyes passed my parents’ names to the three already underneath them. My older brother, then, I drew a breath, me.

And I stared at it.

It couldn’t be right. There was a mistake.

I didn’t think anyone would be cruel enough to save up the money to do this as a prank so it had to be a stupid mistake by the engraver but there hadn’t been a death in the family thirty years ago.

Etched in stone after my dreaded dash was my death date.

I looked closer. The engraving seemed weathered as though it had been done three decades ago but I was no expert. I walked around the stone searching for, I don’t know what, some reason for this. Perhaps there had been a cousin or distant aunt who had my same name, or something similar, that had died and reading their name would jog my memory of their funeral. Nothing. I stared at the dates again. According to the engraver, I had been a child. But that was clearly nonsense. I was an adult woman. I had memories of the last thirty years.

I looked at the individual grave markers. While each family member was on the large stone, we each also had a plot where our urns would be buried with a small individual plaque. Mom and Dad’s were near the raised brick border.

“No.”

I sank to my knees, my legs suddenly too weak to hold me, in front of my metal plaque. My name, that was my name, and my birthday. Following the dash was the same death date. Taken from us too soon.

What did that mean? What had happened to me? Why didn’t I remember it?

This didn’t make any sense. I had a job. I was in debt, for fuck’s sake, how can I be in debt if I’m dead? How can I have a job? How could I have graduated high school? I had done things since the date marked in stone and in metal. I had lived. It had not been the life I had envisioned when I was a child but it had been a life.

The dread that had followed me for so long crashed over me like a warm tidal wave and I drowned.

When I woke, I was in my bed in my room and I was drenched in sweat and urine. It had been a long time since that had happened but, I figured, the stress of everything was bound to bring back my nightmare. I stripped myself and stepped into the shower, then dressed and stripped the bed. The washer and dryer weren’t where they usually were and this confused me for a moment until I remembered that my brothers, with no regard for me, had started selling off or taking the large items. I had no appliances now. I’d have to go to the laundromat later. This made me angry, really angry, for the first time in my adult life. I had stayed home with my parents and taken care of them in their old age when my brothers had gone off and started their lives and abandoned them and now I was being punished for it. I threw the bedclothes into the laundry room and slammed the door.

I cleaned and put new sheets on the bed, then I lay down and stared at the ceiling while the sunlight crept across it.

What the hell was I going to do? The house would be sold and new owners would be moving in and I still had nowhere to go.

The sunlight became moonlight.

I slept.

I was dead. Long dead and buried. I don’t remember dying but, then again, I don’t remember living, either. I had wanted to do so much with my life. It wasn’t fair.

I woke, drenched in sweat and urine. I cleaned everything and lay down and stared at the sun moving across the walls until it got dark and then I slept.

What kind of hell was this that I was dead and still had bills to pay? What had I done to deserve it? What sin could a child commit that demanded they live the rest of their life through puberty and menopause and poverty and loneliness and a shit job?

I woke.

There were people in the house. A young couple and a real estate agent.

“A nice starter home. Great if you’re looking to expand a family.”

I slammed the door to my bedroom and my anger was blamed on the wind.

I slept, I woke, I slept, I woke. People wandered through my house poking at things and checking things. Then, there were movers and the couple was back, “Congratulations!” and they were there moving things in.

And I glared at them because it wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair.

IT WASN’T FAIR.

I slammed my door like a petulant child and the woman screamed. I cried loudly, screamed my frustration, and collapsed on the floor keening in pain. When I woke them up staring at them as they slept they called in a priest to exorcise me. But, I am not Catholic and the power of Christ did not compel me to do shit.

They found out my story.

“I’m so sorry. Oh my god, how horrible. And where were her parents?”

“Fuck you, bitch, you don’t know anything about it,” I screamed.

She started scream crying, hysterical, terrified. He was angry with me.

“She’s just trying to help you. She feels sorry for you.”

“Fuck you, too.”

They put the house up for sale and moved out. They had lasted a month as new homeowners. The real estate agent was confused.

I slept, I woke, I slept, I woke.

I had been robbed of my life and now I had been robbed of my death. I was angry. I’m still angry. I will never stop being angry.

And, when the next couple come to buy my house, I will do it all again.

I will not stop.