Anna Caro
The James Street house has all the space we need. No more crowding into one bedroom because the creeping mould has claimed the second. No more buckets in the hallway or loose planks in the floor. The house needs some work, sure – there are window frames to be stripped and repainted, doors to be eased – but it’s sturdy. They don’t make houses like this anymore.
‘Has character’ was what the advert said. I always thought that was a euphemism for falling down, but when we moved, lugging in boxes and mattresses from the rented trailer, I understood what it really meant. It had characteristics, it was a member of our family, more a person than an assembly of wood. The sawdust and paint flakes smelled of success; success a long way from my childhood.
Tonight I pause outside the girls’ bedroom. To tell the truth, I’d rather that maybe just for these first few nights, they stayed with us, in our room. The decoration of their bedroom in coral and cream, the new beds with carved roses on the headboards, were always more about me than them. I wanted to feel that, if I was abandoning them to their own room instead of having them right there where I could see them – like it had been for so long – then at least it would be a nice place.
It’s ridiculous, I know. Kids grow up. It’s healthy – and besides, it’s nice to finally get some sleep. Emmy in particular seems happy with her newfound measure of independence. She’s burbling happily on the other side of the door, fragments of sentences emerging in spurts.
‘Cut me—’ she says, ‘—cut me into pieces – into the wall – put me in the wall – cut in pieces ...’
Denny – who has appeared behind me without me noticing – half-chokes with laughter. I raise my finger to my lips and he shakes his head in apology.
‘What did she just say?’ he whispers. ‘A bit creepy, eh? She’s got an imagination that one.’
I dismiss him. ‘Probably just something on TV she’s got confused about.’
By morning the rain has cleared, and with it most of my worries. After breakfast the girls are out in the garden, leaping through puddles. They’re well fenced in here, safe, and I even get to read a book close to the window.
‘Come on Emmy, let’s get you out of those.’ It’s lunchtime and Emmy, like her sister, is soaked.
I peel the sodden clothes from her, feeling a pang of guilt. Would a good mother let her children out in weather like this? What if she catches a chill? But she’s still smiling; smiling as she dutifully stretches her arms over her head so I can tug the dress from her. She sits on a towel on the sofa so I can remove her shoes. One, then the other. Then I stop.
‘What happened here, sweetie?’ One side of the sock is caked with blood.
She shakes her head. Sudden flashbacks to the time my brother got a nail through his shoe when we were kids. The crying and the tetanus shots and the anger and the shouting. I hate the idea of injury to my kids. Hate even more the idea that I may not be able to handle it.
I pull off her sock. It takes me a few seconds to work out what is wrong, and when I do I cannot stop myself recoiling in horror.
I look at her foot.
At the space where her toe should be.
‘What happened to you?’ I’m trying to stay calm, but my voice is shaking, tears of worry growing. ‘You need to tell me what happened.’
Emmy looks at me blankly. ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ she reassures me.
Denny picks up the blood-encrusted sock, turning it inside out. I suddenly realise what he’s looking for.
‘I’m calling an ambulance,’ I say, grabbing my phone, but he stops me.
‘No, don’t. She’s fine – look, the blood’s already clotted. We just need to clean it out. She’s not even in pain.’
Mia’s started howling and I’m fighting to think through the noise.
‘They won’t believe us,’ he says, and I can tell he is fighting to keep his voice steady. ‘We can’t go through that crap.’
He grew up in foster care and still resents it. I only wish I had. His hand on my shoulder is firm.
Fighting back tears, I hoist Emmy over my shoulder and carry her up to the bath while Denny calms Mia down. All that night, I fight back feelings of failure. I was going to be a good mother who fed her children and put them to bed on time and took them to the doctor when they got sick. And now I have been tested, and have failed.
In the light of day, I rationalise things. Mia seems withdrawn, but Emmy is fine. And will it really ruin her life to grow up without a toe?
Two days later, Emmy loses a tooth.
‘A bit young, isn’t she?’ Denny comments. He’s right, but the spread of leaflets I pored over in her early months told me not to worry too much if things happen a bit earlier or later than expected. And she’s almost five. Instead, I’m buoyed by this most normal of incidents. I tell her how she can put it under her pillow for the tooth fairy, and the fairy will leave her money.
Emmy’s face crumples as she tells me she doesn’t know where the tooth is. I think quickly. ‘How about we write a letter to the tooth fairy, together? We can tell her it’s somewhere here. She’s good at finding teeth – it’s her job, after all. And I’m sure she’ll leave you some money for telling her about it.’
We write a note – I write, and Emmy traces over her name and sticks glittery dinosaur stickers around the words, whilst Mia, her hair in pigtails, crunches down on a dry Weet-Bix, kicking her legs against the underside of the table. My family. Sometimes, I feel as if the happiness, the knowledge that I have managed to create this against all the odds, is too much to bear.
The night brings autumn thunderstorms and nightmares. The old house creaks in the wind – it’s enough to scare me, so no wonder the girls are restless. Mia crawls into our bed, tearfully babbling about being eaten alive. We hold her between us and I doze, not entirely peacefully. I’m woken by a crash.
Denny is already out of bed. ‘What the hell was that?’ I yell.
‘She’ll be sleepwalking again. I’ll go.’
The crying that follows brings relief. Denny returns with Emmy scooped in his arms. ‘She tripped on the stairs, I think. Nothing broken.’
‘I didn’t fall!’ she insists indignantly. ‘It kicked me down the stairs.’
‘Sweetie, who kicked you? We were all in here. I think you’ve been having a bad dream.’
‘The house kicked me. The house kicked me because it doesn’t want to be a house, it wants to be a person, and it wants me in the wall.’
I don’t sleep anymore.
*
The public library has a database of old newspapers. I take the girls to story-time, the laptop in my shoulder bag, and connect to their on-site wi-fi. I search for James Street. Thousands of results, most of them real estate listings. More relating to the school at the other end of the road. A few completely irrelevant, about people named ‘James Street’. I panic, momentarily – I had been so sure this would help me work it all out.
I don’t dare enter any type of word that would narrow it down by subject – I can’t bring myself to acknowledge the way my thoughts are heading. I try the full address in quotes and find only the listing from when we bought the house ...
... when we bought the house. It was being sold from the estate of an elderly woman, who had lived there all her life. What was her name?
I search frantically back through my email. Combining the address and surname gives me the result I was looking for.
The result I feared.
I desperately scan the mothers – and occasional fathers – in the library, eventually finding one I recognise. Joanna, no, Joanne. Her son is at the same kindy as Emmy, and I’ve seen her at a few events; we’ve chatted whilst waiting for the kids to get their shoes on. I don’t really know her, but ... I touch her arm.
‘I’m so sorry to ask this,’ I say, ‘but I have to go. I’ll call their dad to come collect them, but I’m not sure how long he’ll be. Would you – would you mind keeping an eye on them until he arrives?’
Her eyes are wide and all concern. ‘Of course. Is everything OK?’
I nod. ‘It will be. Just family stuff. Thank you so much.’
As soon as I’m out of sight, I run to the car, breaking every speed limit on the way home. Despite my promises, I don’t call Denny. The past is creeping up like rising damp, and I don’t want to expose him just yet. At home I tear at everything. Chairs are overturned. Pictures thrown from walls. Nothing found.
I find a weak corner and rip back the wallpaper. With it comes a cloud of dust and the cracking of old paste. Underneath are repeats of blue flowers and tiny green leaves. I scrape at it with my bare fingernails and see hints of a third layer underneath.
This was meant to be a new start for us. But there’s nothing new about it. Only layers and layers of history.
I move upstairs, to the girls’ bedroom with its coral and cream paint and carved headboards.
I’m starting to think that this is all me going crazy. That our family has just had a bit of upheaval, and I’m getting creeped out by nothing.
But I have to finish this. I grab a screwdriver and undo the screws we’d used to fix the heavy drawers to the wall. Behind it, a hole. Not very big. About the size of a mouse hole, though higher up.
I tear at the plasterboard with my bare hands. My nails are shot, my fingers bleeding. I don’t even go to look for a hammer or a crowbar, just keep ripping at the wall until the hole gets bigger and bigger and I’m choking on the white dust and my eyes are watering. I don’t stop.
I find, first, a collection of teeth.
Then, what can only be a decomposing toe.
Further down the wall, I find a collection of bones.
Bones that can only be the remains of Susan Mullins, who disappeared aged seven from this very house, her parents staying until their deaths, trapped in a past that stopped moving the day she disappeared, perhaps always convinced that one day the bell would ring and she’d be standing on the step, home.
Perhaps what the house had got from Susan had worn off; perhaps it had never really worked in the first place. But just a tooth from my child had given it the ability to bite. A toe had let it kick my daughter down stairs. No wonder it wanted more.