by Mei Davis
I’ve told Jenny a thousand times if I’ve told her once the front door won’t open anymore, but does she listen? No, she goes to the front door, knocks three times, crosses her arms, and presses her lips like she can barely contain what a hellhole she thinks the house has become, and I know she goes to the front door on purpose just to get at me.
Someone’s always trying to get at me.
“The back door!” I yell from my bedroom window. “You know that door won’t open!”
“You said you would clear everything out.”
“The hell I did! Why are you here, anyway?”
She waves her phone. “You tell me. I woke up in the middle of the night to a message—largely incoherent, I should add—rambling about someone breaking into the house?” She pushes her sunglasses to the top of her head, as if showing off her red, puffy eyes will prove she would rather be anywhere other than visiting her own mother. “Have you been drinking again?”
“I’m an adult. I’ll do what I please, and if you don’t like it, then go home!”
“Is someone really breaking into the house?”
I jut out my chin. “Come inside and see, if you don’t believe me.” A challenge if there ever was one.
Little Miss Prim and Proper hasn’t come inside the house for years. Says she won’t do it anymore, that it’s not good for her health, blah blah blah. A germaphobe, that’s what she is. Even as a child, she was always after me to throw this out or clean that up, like I was her maid. Like I wasn’t working double shifts just to keep food on the table. Like I didn’t have it hard enough raising the brat by myself, but no, I had to be Martha Stewart while I did it!
“Fine,” she mutters. “But just for a minute, and because I’m worried.”
She walks to the side gate and circles around to the back of the house. The sliding glass door shattered a few years ago, but the screen is in good shape and keeps the worst of the bugs and critters out.
“If you’re worried about burglars, you should get that door replaced,” she says.
“You come here just to nag me to death?” She knows I don’t have money for repairs but has to rub it in my face every chance she gets.
“The only reason I ever come here is to help you.” She slides the screen open and steps inside, pressing her handbag against her body as she squeezes between the piles of my things flanking either side of the door. She won’t say it, but she’s afraid her expensive leather will get contaminated if it touches anything in the house, and isn’t it just like her to care more about her handbag than her own mother?
“Forget burglars, I’ll be dead of old age by the time you finally get in here!”
“You don’t need to be a contortionist to get into my house, so forgive me if I’m a little out of practice.”
Of course, she’d say that, even though the living room is something I can be proud of. I’ll own that the rest of the house could use some tidying, but in the living room I’ve piled up everything carefully, made a nice path from the back door to the kitchen, and another one to the bedrooms. But what does Jenny do? Tiptoes into the room like she’s walking through a minefield, halting at an itty-bitty pile of old magazines like she’s at the foot of the Himalayas.
“Just step over it!” I say. “It’s not hard!”
“These are covered in mold,” she says. “Why are you keeping them?”
“Because I haven’t read them!”
“Throw them out. They’re disgusting! This whole house is disgusting, and I hate it!” She clenches her fists. Her mouth trembles, and it’s on the tip of her tongue to tell me that she hates me too, but she won’t say it. No, she’d never stoop so low, crawl through the muck and mire like her disgusting mother.
“You think I’m disgusting, don’t you? Well, I think you’re an ungrateful brat, and I wouldn’t care if you never came here again!”
“Forget it, Mom. Forget what I said and show me what you’re talking about so I can get out of here.”
I lead her down the hall to my bedroom. “Just take a look at that!”
“What? It’s a roomful of garbage, the same as it always is.”
“Garbage?” There she goes again. Trying to spite me, when she knows full well I have tens of thousands of dollars gathered into this room, a priceless collection of imported kimonos that I’ve arranged in several stacks from floor to ceiling. “This is my retirement. I tell you that all the time, but you call it garbage!”
She sighs, rubs her forehead like she’s got a headache, like I’m the biggest pain in her life that no amount of pills will cure. “Just tell me what’s missing.”
“My purple kosode, with the yabane pattern. My most valuable, and I can’t find it! I’ve gone through my pile of silks and my pile of cottons, even went through the full-sleeved kimonos, but it’s not anywhere!”
Jenny points to the crammed, overflowing closet. “Maybe it’s in there?”
“It wouldn’t be in there!”
“How do you know?”
I want to shout, the same way you know your milk isn’t in your oven! Instead, I say, “Because I would never put it there. That pile’s for regular clothes. The ones I buy on sale at the outlets to sell later online.”
“There’s a Tupperware of old toothbrushes in that pile. I can see it from here.”
Why did I even call her? I knew she wouldn’t be any help, would only come here to put me down. “Someone’s coming into this house at night and stealing my kimonos, stealing them right from under my nose, and you don’t care! Think I’m just a disgusting liar, don’t you?”
“Mom, please stop crying. Look, I’m sorry. Can you tell me what this person looks like? Have you seen them?”
I calm somewhat, wipe my nose with the back of my hand. “Just their hands.” I look down at my own hands—ugly and spotted, glistening with snot. “White hands. Stark white, like they’re dead. Pale, dead hands reaching out from the sleeves of my kimonos.”
“If you’re really concerned, we should call the police. But if you have no proof...” She shrugs, walks out the way she came in, tiptoeing around landmines, clutching her bag like a lifeline. Even though I got her back inside the house, after she said she never would again. When she slides into her car without another word or glance, it doesn’t feel much like victory.
“Serves you right if they strangle me in my sleep!” I yell out the window as her car pulls away.
***
I search through my pile of silks, then my pile of cottons. No purple kosode, but there’s a few nibbling mice that I shoo away. They’ve eaten into some hems, nothing that can’t be repaired, though Jenny complains about them. As if her own home doesn’t have a squeaker or two. Every home does. The pesky things can fit through a hole the size of a bean! But Jenny has to make me feel bad for having a few dozen or so in the house, even if I don’t clean up their droppings as often as I should. Once I get the place cleaned up, I’m getting a new carpet, so what does it matter?
Afternoon turns to dusk. I still haven’t found my purple kosode, but with the light fading, I can’t work anymore. I’ve only got the one lamp in the living room, so I head to the bathroom to get ready for bed. The shower drain’s been clogged up for a while, but the faucet works just fine. I use it to brush my teeth and mop myself with a rag, since the sink is filled up with my toiletries. They’re really nice toiletries: scented shampoos and creamy soaps I get as free samples from a neighbor. Jenny tells me to throw them out. Free—and she wants me to throw them out! That’s how I know she’s spoiled rotten and doesn’t understand hardship. People who understand hardship don’t throw free things away, things you can use. And I will use them. I’ll use all of them, eventually, once I fix up the clogged drain and clean out the stagnant water in the tub and fix the toilet. It’s been busted for years, the whole thing rusted and fallen over, so I have to relieve myself in the big orange bucket I got from the hardware store. Even though I empty the bucket every week or so, Jenny threatens to call social services. Tells me it’s a health hazard, as if I enjoy going in a big orange bucket. Of course I don’t! But how can I get the toilet fixed or the shower cleaned out or the sink emptied when no one ever helps me?
***
Twilight dims to night. I settle into the cozy crawl space I’ve carved out by the vent, right behind my piles of kimonos, where I keep my pillow and a little flask that helps me get to sleep. Jenny says I should have a blanket, but I don’t need one, not when I’ve got my kimonos looking down on me, keeping me tucked in and warm. They remind me of Obachan, my old grandma who emigrated from Japan and gave me that purple kosode, my very first kimono, when I came to live with her and Ojisan. Before bed, she’d lay the kimono beside me, tell me dark tales about white hands reaching out from the sleeves, the ghosts of the women who once wore them. She told me that if I ever felt hands trying to get me at night, sneaking in my room and snaking up my blanket, that they were just the hands of ghosts.
“So don’t ever tell anyone about them,” she told me in harsh whispers as Ojisan stood silent by my bedroom door, hidden by shadows. “Not your teachers or your friends. The hands are just ghosts, and no one will believe you!”
Just like Jenny doesn’t believe me when I tell her someone’s coming into the house, stealing my kimonos and trying to get at me.
Someone’s always trying to get at me.
***
I wake up to Jenny banging my car window. “Mom? Mom, are you okay?”
I roll down the tinted window, squinting at the sharp sunlight, because I guess I’ve slept in the car. “Why are you here, Jenny?”
“Are you serious?” You’d think she’d look sympathetic, knowing there’s a thief in my house and that I had to sleep in the car. But she just looks tired. “You left ten messages last night. You said someone was in the house and that you had to run for your life!”
“What else am I supposed to do when someone’s sneaking into my house, stealing my kimonos and trying to get at me!” I jab my head out the window. “Someone’s always trying to get me!”
“Of course they are.” She lifts up a grocery bag. “I bought some new light bulbs. If you’re going to keep running away from invisible people in the middle of the night, then we need to get your lighting sorted out. It’s not safe for you to trip around in the dark.”
She spends the whole day clearing paths to the outlets, installing new lamps and bulbs. She never says a word, but her silence speaks volumes. Disgusting. Dirty. Gross.
Liar.
I already know I’m all those things without her saying it, or not saying it. I know that I live in a pile of garbage, that I’m no better than garbage myself, and while she works, I sit on my folding chair and sort through a few piles in the living room to make me feel better. I dig out an old cookie tin shaped like a teddy bear that I bought New Years of ‘89, a limited edition, which is why I had to keep it. “Remember this, Jenny?”
She glances at it. “No.”
“You used to keep barrettes in it.” I open it up. There’s still a few of her old hair things rattling inside, and some pretty marbles, too. “You want it for Clara?”
“Clara doesn’t need thirty-year-old junk.”
My granddaughter’s just as spoiled and ungrateful as my daughter. But some other little girl will like it, so I put it aside and keep rummaging. Jenny never liked sorting, but I could spend all day getting lost in my things. Tubes of half-used lipstick. Discolored baby toys. Frayed straw hats and a stained shirt that no longer fits me but could be cut up for a sewing project. Like an endless Christmas morning, every second recovering an old treasure, that little thrill of knowing it’s mine, and no one can take it away from me.
The sun’s starting to set by the time Jenny installs the last bulb and flicks on all the lights. “What do you think, Mom?”
“Not bright enough. If you cared about me at all, you’d have bought forty watts instead of whatever energy-saving crap this is.”
This is where she usually cries. A small whimper at first, before she lets loose the fat tears to try and make me feel guilty.
She stares at me with hard, dry eyes. “What made you this way?”
What can I do but snort? Only answer she deserves after a question like that.
“Angry, selfish, bitter, rude,” she continues. “I love you. I’ve tried for decades to get this place cleaned up and just… livable, but you won’t listen to me—or anyone!” She strides to the front door. I’ve told her a thousand times, if I’ve told her once, that it won’t open, but she goes there anyway, starts tearing down the piles blocking the way. “I hope someone does steal your kimonos and everything else in this wretched house!”
“Stop it!” I shout. “You’ll ruin my things!”
She doesn’t listen. With a scream, she pushes them all down, and my lovely things come crashing to the ground in a swell of angry dust.
Jenny yanks at the knob until the door cracks open. “Don’t ever call me again!”
***
With Jenny’s new lights, I can spend the whole night restacking the piles she knocked over, getting them just right. All my precious things are spread out and jumbled up like they’ve been spit out by a tornado, and I cry as I try to piece them back together. “What has she done to you?”
By the time I finish, it’s too late to wash myself up or brush my teeth. I’m too tired to turn off all those lights, so they stay on, shining like a thousand candles as I collapse into the little space by the vent, nestled behind the kimonos, where I keep my pillow and flask.
I take sip after sip. The sleep starts to come on, that hazy pull I know so well. I’ve almost dropped off completely when something brushes against my leg, and I bolt upright.
I look down at my legs. Nothing. I look up at the piles that surround me—my wall of stacked kimonos. Once upon a time, they kept me tucked in and warm. A barrier that kept away all the things trying to get at me. But now someone’s stealing them, stealing them right from under my nose. I first noticed it one night when I couldn’t sleep, when I couldn’t drown myself to oblivion no matter how much I sipped at my flask. I laid awake for hours, in pin-drop silence, until—
The rustle of fabric. The weight of breath against my face. And there, in the darkness, a pair of white hands reaching out from the sleeves of my purple kosode.
I screamed for help, screamed and screamed until I thought my lungs would burst. But Jenny was gone. She hadn’t come into the house for years. No one was around to hear me or help me, and they wouldn’t believe me anyway. So, I yanked the kosode out of the pile, took it outside and burned it. When I came back, the stack of kimonos had changed. Instead of guarding me, they loomed over me as I sipped my flask. They sent their ghostly white hands after me every time I nodded off.
A finger slides down my leg, and I scramble to my knees with a scream. “Get off me! Get off me!”
Hands, hands, a hundred white hands emerge from the sleeves, reaching for me, trying to get at me. Why are they always trying to get at me? I tried being a good girl. I tried being a bad girl. Finally, I covered myself in garbage and filth and hoped they’d leave me alone. But they didn’t. After all these years, the hands are still reaching for me, sneaking into my room, snaking up my blanket, tickles of cold flesh crawling up and down my body.
I heave out of my little sleeping space and lurch out of the bedroom. I slam the door behind me and lean against it, because I’ll be safe out here. Like Obachan said, the hands only come out of the kimonos, and they can’t get me if I stay away from them. They can’t get me if they’re in there, and I’m out here. Tomorrow, I’ll burn every one of them.
Then I see it. A hand. Two hands. A pair of dead, white hands. They creep from under the lid of an ancient board game, fingers cracked and grasping. Another pair dangles from an old vase perched at the top of a nearby pile. Another appears, then another, because they’ve escaped from the kimonos. Like the mice, they’ve infested everything: a thousand white hands reaching out from countless piles, out of old plastic cups and desiccated cereal boxes, between the tines of a broken blender, and the folds of old, moldering magazines.
I shoot to my feet and try to make a run for it. But I can’t run in this house. All my things are piled up every which-where, and even with Jenny’s lights blazing the room into a hot, white glow, I knock into every one of them. My whole life crashes to the floor in a cloud of dust and shame, but I don’t care. All I want is to get out of this house, leave it all behind.
I climb over the shambles of my broken life, white hands reaching for me as I make a break for the front door. But it won’t open. No, that door doesn’t open anymore, no matter how much I pull and yank and bang and scream. My piles and piles of things block any way of escape, and before long, one white hand clamps onto me, then another. A thousand pale fingers drag me back under the mire I’ve created. They thread their fingers through my matted hair, grab my unwashed arms and legs. My decades of belongings swarm on top of me as their cold touch sneaks under my clothes, snakes into my nose and mouth and everywhere else. They wrap around my neck, and squeeze, and I know it won’t be long. I’m in their grip, and maybe I always have been.
But there’s one thing I can do before they take me away for good.
I dial Jenny’s number.
“The hands,” I say to the message recorder, gasping for air. “I never told anyone about the hands, because Grandma told me not to. But I’m telling you now, Jenny. I’m telling you that the hands have finally got me. They’d sneak into my room, snake up my blanket. They used to come only in the darkness, but now they’re here in the light, too. Because they’re my hands, Jenny. At first, they were someone else’s hands trying to get me, turning me into something worse than garbage. But now they’ve become my own. My very own hands.
“But don’t you worry. I’ll get rid of them. I’ll destroy them before they can get you, too. Because I love you more than anything in the world, more than anything in this house.”
One of my own hands breaks free. It may be wrinkled and spotted, but at least it’s alive. With struggling breath, I knock over the nearest lamp, the lamp that Jenny got for me. It falls onto the sea of all the things that have drowned me alive, and I stare at the white heat of the bulb. For hours or days, who knows how long, I watch as it slowly smolders a yellowed newspaper, and the newspaper crackles into a spreading pool of flames. I grin as the hands that have been after me my whole life shrink from the orange tongues of fire, shriek with pain, and burn to blackened bones.
Grey smoke creeps into every crevice, choking the air away. But for the first time in decades, I can breathe. The hands are gone, and at long last, I’m finally freed from it.
Freed from the grip.
Mei Davis, the grand-prize winner of the Presence Short Story Award, currently lives in the cold wilds of Metro Detroit with her family. When not wrangling either her literary or literal children, she can be found binging procedural dramas, collecting rupees in Hyrule, or skipping to the last pages of a book. She has been previously published by Prairiefire, Translunar Traveler’s Lounge, Sans Press, Parsec Ink, and others. (Stock photos are used for authors like Mei who prefer facial anonymity.)
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