The problem was that house, too many memories. Momma couldn’t walk the stairs without crying “I wish it had been me instead.” When she said that, my grief curdled into something raw and sour. I, too, cried every time I passed his room, now empty, and thought about how sweetly his little fingers used to wrap around my index finger as if he was programmed to do that.

“Your brother’s soul is in heaven,” Momma said.

“Where’s his body?”

“In the ground.”

“Could I visit him there?”

“When you die, not before.”

“Then I want to die.”

“He wouldn’t want you going before your time.” 

I wondered when my time would come. I asked Poppa if we could move to a new house. He said as soon as he got rid of the debt tied to his new business. When he said that, I cried, and told Momma I couldn’t pass his room without getting the chills, but I didn’t have any choice, my room was just down the hall from his. Even the hallway between our two rooms felt haunted. Fear and trembling besieged my limbs every time I passed his door. I had the sense that his ghost was there, imprisoned in the walls, banging its ghostly head, trying to wrench itself free.

It affected Momma just as bad. She started attending funerals, no one she knew personally, errant souls who brought her closer to a sense of her own mortality, at least that’s how she described it to me the one time I asked. She said she wanted me to see what death looked like up close. As if I didn’t already know. At one funeral, I climbed on the casket and placed my fingers on the dead stranger’s face. His skin felt like hardened clay, the kind that’s been baked in the oven, and looked vampire white. It smelled toxic; perhaps from the chemicals that had been pumped into the body.

When we came home, Momma seemed eager to talk about it. “I don’t understand death either.” Momma said. She told me that she dreamt about her sister in the night, the one that died of tuberculosis.

“If my brother was here, I’d share all my toys with him,” I told her.

“Sweetheart.” Momma gave me a big hug.

That night, like all the other nights since my brother had been gone, I had trouble getting to sleep. The house whistled a deadly wail, the walls of my room began vibrate and gave me nightmares.

Later we went to the grocery store. A little boy sat in a grocery cart in the middle of the aisle. He was maybe a year old, and he wore a pair of little blue suede boots that he swung into the rails, making a clicking sound. I stared at him, tears blinding my eyes. He reminded me of my brother, all fat with big rosy cheeks. 

“Your baby is beautiful,” Momma said to the woman. Momma looked sad. 

I reached out to hug the baby, but Momma kept me close. Behind us, more carts lined up, all of them filled with babies. Tiny humans popped out on carts everywhere, in the aisles, at the counter. The whole planet appeared to be full of chubby, gurgling faces. A few wore the slightly uncomfortable contortions of expression that babies make while pooping, and a couple were scrunching their faces from hunger, and others reached out their arms for their Mommas to hold them. Momma’s eyes misted with emotion. We both had loved my baby brother so very much.

That night I refused to sleep in my room alone. I wanted Momma with me. She brushed her hand through my hair and told Poppa that I looked sickly. 

“I’m not feeling so good either,” she said. “I’ve had trouble sleeping too. I wonder if it’s the house. Haven’t you noticed the way the house groans when we walk upstairs, and when I pass the baby brother’s room, the house shakes?”

“Nonsense,” Poppa said. “You’re imagining things.”

“Come with me.”

The door of baby brother’s room was sealed as shut as if it had been waterlogged, icicles hung from it, and the air around it was wintery cold. As we approached it, the house felt as if it was breathing in, taking big gulps of air and the door began to shake. Poppa put his hand on the wall to stop the breathing. He had to struggle free his hand. It was like his hand had been Velcroed to the wall. 

We as soon as we went away from the baby’s room, the house stopped shaking. Poppa said we were moving as soon as possible. He got on the phone to call a real estate broker and said he was putting our house up for sale.   

Momma stopped taking me to funerals. She took up house hunting instead. And when we were home, we stayed outside a long as possible.  Luckily it was summer so the temperature was mild. She pulled weeds for hours while I looked for crickets in the grass. When I tired of that, I sat on her feet.

“I wonder who put the blanket over baby’s head.”

“Maybe the house did.”

I slapped her arm. 

“Make me a new brother.”

“If we have another baby, I don’t want you putting the blanket around a baby’s head again, never ever.”

Her recriminations hit me with the force of a sledge hammer. I found it difficult to breathe; waves of fever broke over me and left me parched in my terror. I hit my Momma hard with my fists, increasing the velocity until the sparks flew, and burned everything around me. I felt nausea of the blood, nausea of the bone. I cried out and grabbed her, squeezing hard. And I stuttered so bad that Momma couldn’t understand me. My words came out like shredded paper, all mixed up.

We started packing that day.

     THE END