Morbid Holidays

Content warning: Implied murder, dismemberment, and misogyny.

My family celebrates morbid holidays. 

We gather on dead men’s birthdays and gruesome anniversaries. If I am ever caught, I hope a trial of public opinion shames them. I hope they say I am the way I am because I was forced to attend a brunch commemorating Auntie Tanya’s skiing accident. Because we fought about the turkey on the day Joseph was diagnosed. Because I had to remember someone it hurts to remember.

So many deathday flowers will ruin you. 

Today is the third anniversary of my father’s madcoming. My mother has made scrambled eggs with cream cheese and an excess of garlic powder in his honour. We have, for dessert, the grocery store tuxedo cake he loved. My brother and I hate it; every year, we pick the cake apart and only eat the chocolate mousse layer in the middle.

We’ve already made our toasts: to loss, to unravelling, to being and then unbecoming. This means the conversation is shifting towards the mundane. We will now discuss how much frozen pesto is in everyone’s fridge at this exact moment and what fruits are in season.

There’s a leg in my freezer, I want to scream, want to laugh, want to sing.

Pay attention, Junie.

It’s hard when I have an itch. Unscratchable. Can’t do it on unknown terrain. I am a thing of habit and am loyal to my hunting ground. 

I focus on my brother’s face. His features are foxlike where mine are square. We have each taken after a parent. He is our too-feeling mother. I am our insane father. 

He’s more beautiful than I am, but it’s an earthly beauty that grounds me. 

He makes me want to be better.

Last night, when I could not shake the image of her from my mind, I paced. I do this so I will not toss and turn myself rabid and wake with my mouth foaming. He found me stomping about to keep the urges at bay. In the night-light dim hallway, he said, “Can’t sleep either? These frickin’ beds,” and we had a midnight feast of cold milk and Oreos, as if we were children again. Then I could sleep.

“Junie’s gone back to school,” my mother announces to the table proudly.

I have not gone back to school. Although it is true I am often on college campuses. 

“What are you studying, Junie?”

A chorus around me, so many curious people who want to know how I am nurturing my not-at-all-mad mind.

“Floral arrangement,” I answer from out of my body. I’m being punished. Stacking lies upon lies where my sweet, good brother can see me.

It’s the gyms I love especially, with fresh-faced juniors running in and out in their biker shorts and calf-high socks, their New Balance sneakers and campus hoodies. I love the pretty girls whose sweatshirts are stitched with their futures: Nursing, Physics, Engineering, Early Childhood.

Her sweatshirt said “Life Sciences.”

“Is that a degree?” Auntie Tanya’s widower asks worriedly.

In this moment, he is someone I would like to kill, but he doesn’t meet the criteria. Off-limits, or I will get caught.

The perfect kill is always alone but wants to be seen. I covet these women who bubble themselves in lovely silence, who are observed and admired without ever making contact. They wear miniskirts with oversized shirts. Their diamond earrings flash me from the stationary bike. They paint their long nails for no one and everyone. Their cat-eye liner is dark and sharp with sex. They sweat prettily, and I adore them.

“You think you can do four years of flowers?” my cousin Arthur shoots back nastily.

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe she wants to teach.”

“Teach pansies?”

“Junie,” my mother interrupts pointedly, “Is it a degree?”

Be good. I find my brother’s eyes across the table. I always sit where I can see him, and I answer to him alone. “It’s a non-credit course. Just a semester.”

“Well, there you go,” says my uncle, happy it’s settled. “I hope you’re not missing anything important by being here, kiddo.”

I am forty years old and still his kiddo. My earlier anger shatters. I wish I were good enough to be a kiddo. But I am thinking about fresh bodies while my loved ones grieve. I am a perversion. I am maggots under skin and rot that sinks the house.

God above, I want to be good.

But I also want the unflinchingly stunning girl from Life Sciences, whose glossy black braid hung midway down her back and swung like a pendulum between her shoulder blades.

My mother’s brow pinches in worry. “I didn’t realise … I thought … well, never mind! How’s the job hunt going? Sounds like you have some time for it!”

I don’t have any time. That’s what people like them could never understand. My prey drive commands me, and my teeth are always bared. I am a wild creature in pursuit of a low profile. 

A cougar stalks. When you can see it as clearly as it sees you, you’re fucked.

“I’m really busy,” I say weakly, and I detest the quiver in my voice. I am always pleading to be understood by someone. I hold my brother’s gaze. He smiles reassuringly as if he knows me. I alone know he knows nothing. He’ll always hold me as his strange and gently mangled sister.

In the land of morbid holidays, I am a hollow copy of a woman.

In my own world—in a little Boston apartment, surrounded by brilliant students and old magic—I never, ever pretend. It’s lonely, but I can be myself, with all my badness and my squareness and my maybe-mad brain. The dead girls and their frozen limbs see me for who I am.

I wish my brother could save me. 

I’m also relieved he can’t.

I yearn for the woman with the jet-black braid. I crave the softness of her girlhood flesh. I want to flay and devour.

I say, “I have so much frozen pesto right now.”