The house sat atop a hill in a golden pasture. I’d spent plenty of time there as a child, tagging along with my mother when she went to clean it two days a week. It was beautiful, hardly looked lived in, and being from a cramped, two-bedroom, glorified shed that we shared with my 4 siblings, I resented that. I didn’t resent much else about that place.
It was the fault of the old woman who lived there. I heard the way she spoke to her girls, ordering the hunches out of their backs, the local slang out of their vocabulary. She wouldn’t let them play with me, not even when we were very small. Perhaps she worried that my poor would rub off on them.
Anger at this woman I didn’t even really know welled up inside me year after year. I kept it down to appease my mother – our family did need the money, and I was able to let some of that go when I accompanied her less and less as my studies took more of my time.
But as it goes in life tragedy struck and long story short I left my dreams of a different life behind and went to clean that beautiful house in my mother’s stead. Those girls were still there, tethered like the story of the circus animal who, though untied, could not leave the ring. I wanted to talk to them, but now I was trapped, my mouth sewn shut like my mother’s, and wasn’t the damage already done?
One evening, working late, I was struck by the quiet in the house. I’d heard the old woman earlier, grousing to herself in the sitting room, broken up by screams at her girls. In all the time I’d spent here, it had never been quiet. Something felt wrong.
I found myself tiptoeing, checking the rooms around the house. When a metallic smell rolled over me, I knew that I was about to see something ugly. There were those diabetic ankles lying on the tile in the kitchen. I slowly moved to see around the kitchen island for the full scene to unfold. The old woman lay on her back, not breathing for the hole carved into her chest. Her daughter, the eldest, sat by her head, knees drawn up to her chest, rocking back and forth, and her hands covered in blood.
When she looked up at me, her eyes were red, but she didn’t look startled or scared. She just looked…resigned. I came to my knees beside her as she watched, likely expecting more anger or condemnation. She was stiff when I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, but eventually hugged me back and started crying.
After a moment I pulled away. “Where’s your sister?”
“Upstairs,” she answered, voice cracked.
“Does she know?”
She nodded. I scanned the old woman.
“We can hide the body, we can make sure nobody ever finds out, but I need to know if you both can keep the secret.”
“You’re going to help us?”
“If I can. Are we going to do this?”
She hesitated only a moment before jerking her head in a nod.
We buried her in the garden. Her daughters fed a story to the authorities about how she had been struggling with undiagnosed dementia. She had wandered off and they couldn’t find her. It was eventually determined that she fell into one of the nearby mine shafts, or was torn apart by wild animals. It wasn’t a hard story to sell, she was a well-known kook who hated all and was in turn hated by all. Nobody wanted to take any longer to consider the situation than they had to.
Her daughters moved. I can’t imagine I would like to stay in a house with so much pain anymore they did. I don’t know where they are now, but I do hope they are well. And me? Well, I still go back to see that house from time to time. I admire its golden grass, and the view from the hill. But most of all I go to see the old woman, screaming soundlessly from the windows.