Actias Luna

I stood on the stoop outside my mother’s house and flicked the ash of my cigarette into a planter, a concrete grave to a dead topiary. She made a point of having the boxwoods meticulously sculpted into perfect spirals to match the finials on the roof of her historic three-story townhome. Rather, she hovered over her gardener until they were trimmed to her liking. Once, when I was a kid, a tether on my backpack whipped around this very one as I was running out the door, late for school but excited for the talent show that day at my elementary school. Jerked back, I watched in horror as the top of the topiary lurched toward me, the delicate trunk creaking followed by a painful snap. A handful of its little green leaves fluttered to the ground as I frantically tried to unwind the nylon strap, which must have sensed my panic and tightened around its own plastic buckle. My mother abruptly flung open the front door, bearing that menacing thin lip. My heart jolted into my throat before falling into my stomach. She called the gardener and told him not to come, but she would pay him anyway. How kind. I imagined playing “Zombie” (a song I spent months learning) on my guitar for the show while I spent the rest of the day in my mother’s garden. By the afternoon, I’d plucked every weed with the cheap pair of tweezers, just as she instructed.

Now, eyeing the shriveled brown leaves on the boxwood, I took a long drag from my cigarette and threw it in the planter, daring the derelict topiary to catch fire as I trudged toward the front door. My phone buzzed with a text from Andy. “I can be there in 15 minutes if you change your mind, Dara. Just say the word,” he offered. “I know. Thank you, but I need to handle this alone,” I hesitantly replied. It would definitely be easier if he were here, as he knew about my relationship with my mother better than anyone. I slid my phone back in my pocket and unfurled my grip on the set of keys in my left hand, leaving small indentions in my palm. You can do this. I swiped the soles of my Docs on the mat, out of habit. With a deep breath, I opened the door and stepped onto the marble floor of the entry hall I hadn’t seen in five years.

While it was not a large space, it was opulent. Some things were different, though. She’d painted the walls a slate grey and replaced the portraits of the round-faced child I once was. There used to be three of them hanging on the wall that guided the elaborate staircase to the second story landing. The last one was taken when I was ten years old. She had forced my already curly hair into more perfect curls with hot rollers that burned my scalp a bit, and insisted it be an equestrian theme. I’d never ridden a horse in my life, but I think she liked the idea of me excelling in activities of a certain caliber. I remembered feeling like an imposter wearing those riding pants and boots, but I loved the smell of the purple and yellow wildflowers in the meadow where the portrait was taken. A perfect place for fairies to play. I stared at the painting of a large black stallion framed in ornate silver that hung in its place and scoffed. A familiar ache sunk into my chest. Before it could burrow deeper, I recognized the smell of onions, garlic, and fresh basil coming from the kitchen.

I followed the scent through the archway of the dining room and through the swinging kitchen door. The large windows behind the breakfast nook had a breathtaking view of the garden out back. Flecks of dust danced in the late afternoon sunlight as my mother hurriedly sliced through a carrot—a bowl with eggplant, zucchini, and tomatoes were off to the side. Her silken dark brown hair was twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck. The sleeves of her emerald green shirt were rolled above her wrists, and although her back was turned to me, I could see she had on the apron I gave her for Mother’s Day when I was five, maybe six years old. The black and white polka dotted strings gave it away. The ache softened in my chest. She only knew how to make one dish, and that was solely because her grandmother couldn’t have a Garneau woman in existence who didn’t know the family recipe.

“Ratatouille, huh?” I asked as I set my keys down on the kitchen island between us. The frantic chopping ceased, and her shoulders relaxed. “Isn't it strange? I can never remember to put the carrots in the pan along with the garlic and onions. Grand-me re would smack my hand with her wooden spoon if she knew. Just don’t tell her it’s going with pasta too,” my mother replied with a slow, dry chuckle. My great grandmother would have been appalled by her ratatouille paired with pasta instead of fish, had she not passed away over fifteen years ago. The carrots hissed in the pan as my mother scraped them off the cutting board with a chef’s knife.

“What’s the occasion?”

“Now, Dara, are you implying I only cook on special occasions?”

“Where there’s smoke...”

My mother snickered, “Well, it isn’t every day my only daughter comes to visit me.”

The tension in my shoulders eased a bit when she went along with my joke at her expense—a risky move on my part. We didn’t share many laughs together, but when we did, they were in this room. There were a handful of times when I’d find her sitting in the breakfast nook late at night, staring into her Earl Grey. The moonlight softened her sharp features, illuminating a rare vulnerability. I’d tell her I couldn’t sleep either, for one reason or another, and she’d pour me a cup. She was lighter at night. There is peace in the stillness, solace in the dark. Perhaps she could exist in ways she had been conditioned against in the light of day. Whatever her reasons, I was grateful to find her without her spiked armor in those rare moments.

I watched as she added dried herbs and crushed tomatoes to the pan. Just as I felt at ease enough to take a step toward her, she stiffened. Without turning to me, she said, “Speaking of smoke, would you put your jacket on the rack? I don’t want the house to smell like an ashtray." Here we go. With a twinge in my chest, I told her I would get right on that. I walked back to the entry hall and hung my jacket on the coat rack behind the front door. Shit. I was wearing a sleeveless shirt. Her disdain for my eau de cigarette would take a back seat when she saw my heavily inked arms. Why did I wear this fucking shirt? I thought about putting the jacket back on, but I would end up having to take it off in front of her—making this situation more uncomfortable than it already was.

I wiped a bead of sweat off my lip, ready to make my way back to the kitchen when my phone buzzed in the back pocket of my jeans. A text from Andy read, “You ok?”

Confused, I responded, “Yeah, I literally just got here.” I watched the three dots indicating an incoming response appear and disappear several times before he finally sent one, “What? It’s been a few hours. Thought I’d check in. Did you go somewhere else first?” He was surely mistaken. I looked at the time on the screen, and it had in fact been three hours since I texted him last. My stomach dropped when I looked out the window—streetlights glowing in the misty darkness of night.

I was startled by the sound of scurried movement followed by a loud thud upstairs. My breath quickened. I called up to the landing, “M—Mom?” As a knot was forming in my throat, she replied, “Come upstairs. I want to show you something.” The air thickened as I slowly made my way up, dust mounding like snow against my fingers on the railing. My mother used to keep a clean house. None of the sconces were lit, which awakened the bone white skeleton and its horse in Cecily Brown’s The Triumph of Death against the dark walls of the landing. My mother had impeccable taste in art. I walked past it toward the hallway. At the end of it, the door to my old bedroom was cracked open, a sliver of light seeping onto the floor. “I’m in your room,” my mother crooned.

Taking a deep breath, I made my way to the end of the hall and stood in my old doorway. My mother had put new paper on the walls, taken down the old band posters, and removed the clutter from my desk. She left my bookshelf intact along with the framed photos I’d placed between rows of worlds bound in cardboard or leather—my first introduction to escapism. The largest photo was of Andy and me in cowpoke cosplay for

Harvest Fest junior year of high school. Learn about taxes? No! Square dancing? Obviously! We were apparently trying to befriend some crows in the cornfield. We didn’t have many other friends. I grinned and looked over the others.

My mother added a picture of the two of us. I had no memory of taking it or what appeared to be the pageant I’d participated in to get the silken sash and glittering crown I was wearing. She was beaming in the photo. I couldn’t have been more than five or six years old. I was looking up at her with a hollow smile, desperate for her approval. “What do you think? I kept nearly everything in order for you; in case you ever wanted to come stay,” she said from the other side of the room. I didn’t want to start anything, so I muttered, “Mmhmm.” Her neatly coiled bun now hung in a little ball between her shoulders with wild strands of hair frayed around it. She was holding one of the velvet curtains back to look out the window.

“Will Andrea be joining us this evening?” She asked without turning to me.

As calmly as I could manage, I replied, “His name is Andy.”

She clicked her teeth, “Ah, yes. It’s hard to keep track of what you kids are doing these days.”

“Is it, though?”

“Careful with that tone, Dara. After all I’ve sacrificed for you, I won’t tolerate

disrespect.”

I can’t imagine why I never came back here.

I closed my eyes, hoping a deep breath would calm the fury coursing through my body. However much good it did was cut short when I opened my eyes to the sight of the bed. That bed hadn’t felt like mine since my late stepfather began sneaking into my room at night. I was thirteen. There wasn’t a particular pattern to the nights he chose, but I would keep myself awake, counting the purple flowers on my wallpaper to ensure he never took me by surprise. Hellebores have five petal-like sepals surrounding a ring of nectaries, but the sepals do not fall as petals do on other flowers. They hold tight to the plant, determined to keep its integrity. Hellebores are also poisonous.

Fuck this. As I turned to leave that room, lifeless yet filled to the brim with pain, the door slammed shut. I ran to open it, frantically twisting the brass knob until it detached into my sweat-coated hand. A putrid smell crept into my nostrils, its tendrils choking me from the inside. It was a combination of decaying vegetables, rotten eggs, and flesh—the smell of death. I kicked the door once, twice, three times; each blow harder than the last. I readied my boot for a fourth, when her fingers closed around my shoulder, bones protruding where her fingernails once were. She tightened her grip and whispered through icy breath into my ear, “We would have lost everything.” I froze upon the realization that she meant we would have lost everything if she tried to stop him. She knew. I whipped around to face her. There was a triangular hole where her nose should have been, and the sinews in the hollows of her cheeks stretched to keep the skin from sliding off her face.

In that moment, I realized my mother was never going to understand—not in life, not in death. I did lose everything. I lost my sense of self. Perhaps I never had one, so it would be more fitting to say I lost the right to fully find myself. Every mundane activity was a forced performance, and if I didn’t meet my critic’s expectations, I wasn’t worthy of the roof over my head or the food in my mouth. When she welcomed that monster into our house, it was my fault he preyed on me. I wasn’t wearing a bra, my shorts were too short, or I gave him a look. It was then, as a child, I knew I had lost any hope of having the mother I needed. Whatever fractals of selfhood I’d managed to scrape together by that point found solace in the shadows. I was safe in the dark.

Hot tears stung my cheeks as I stepped toward her into the moonlight, almost touching her face with my own. A milky film covered her once vibrantly green eyes. “And where did that put you, Mother?” I almost dared her to answer. She stepped backwards, aghast. Was she afraid of me? I closed the gap between us and raised my voice, “What exactly were you so afraid to lose? The money? Your status? This house?!” I banged my fist against the wall, jostling dust from the top of the doorframe. She looked at me in horror, her bony fingers clutching the freshwater pearls draped around her neck. I scoffed, “I hope it was worth it. I hope this is everything you dreamed it would be—you and this house rotting together.” The door clicked open, and there, in the light of the moon, I could finally see her for what she was. She clawed at the window like an animal trying to escape its cage; imprisoned in a mausoleum of her own vanity.

As she clamored in vain, leaving bone carved scratches in the windowpanes, I walked over to my old bookshelf and scanned the bindings until I found the familiar black leather. There you are. I ran my finger over the embossed luna moth on the front of my childhood journal—the only thing I regretted leaving behind. I’d poured all I was and hoped to be into those pages. Pages of poems, lyrics, and stories that deserved a new life outside this house of pain. I tucked the journal under my arm and made my way downstairs, ignoring my mother’s feral mutterings. I no longer smelled her ratatouille. The black horse suited the new wall color just fine. As I put on my jacket, I called up to my mother to tell her a cleaning crew would be coming by in the morning. After months of deliberation on what to do with the house, I decided to donate it to the city’s historical society. Maybe some good could come from it after all, or perhaps she would become a stop for weekend ghost tours. Whatever became of this place, of her, I was free of it.

I locked the door and stepped onto the stoop outside, soaking in the light of the full moon. As I put a cigarette in my mouth and readied the zippo (I’d quit again tomorrow), a luna moth settled onto the lifeless boxwood I’d harbored such contempt for mere hours ago. The weight in my chest lightened. Cliche, but I’ll take it. I smiled, thanked her, and tucked the cigarette behind my ear before traipsing down the sidewalk to the subway station. I thought about the parts of my journal I’d like to read first on the ride back to my apartment as my mother’s spine-chilling shrieks were swallowed by the night behind me.