Chapter 13. Return #3
her grandmother lines the bottom of the pot with tomatoes and
her uncle runs around, zooming like a madman, creating paper airplanes and flying them round the house and of course
her grandfather grumbles and mutters, smiling from behind his newspaper.
Haifa’s fingers trail against the kitchen counter as she wanders through the room, her mouth slightly open in awe.
She looks up. There is something about the wallpaper—there.
A corner. Reaching up, her hand intuitively moving, she rips it.
The torn paper reveals an entirely different color, aged by time and yet preserved by the bond of the new one.
It’s yellow: yellow flowers on vines. Just like her kitchen back home.
“Oh, my god.”
This comes out as a whisper as Haifa drops to her knees and allows the release of all of her tears in a silent bawl, empty cries behind full tears, but she quickly picks herself up; she doesn’t have time for that, can’t have time for that.
Her eyes search for Marina, but they are drawn toward old items—from her mother’s time—as her fingers trail the skeleton of the house.
The wallpaper. The marbled pink vase whose age shows in the delicate cracks over its surface.
And the painting in the corner, by the window that faces out to the Mediterranean, the fisherman’s taut line brimming with a hope and love for the sea.
It is entirely different from the painting that was beside Nuhad’s bed, in which the woman’s mournful yearning could be felt without ever seeing her face.
It was a response—like the house, Haifa realizes.
Every single aspect of life, including Nuhad’s love of paintings, had been cut and maimed by genocide.
She knows it is her mother’s painting from when she was a young girl.
She can feel it. And in this lost home, despite everything, there are these three mementos still preserved in that lost past. In the time before.
Three things from the past. Three small things from her mother’s time, left inside of the house.
Why keep remembrances of the people whose ghosts still linger?
Why not throw out everything that reminds you of the bodies you stand on?
She thinks back to her conversation with Rania just earlier today.
Settlers inherit stolen goods—this house, its bones and marrow, were from her family.
Haifa can sense how every part of the foundation was built upon her blood, but none of it is hers now.
Haifa has little time to ponder this before a heavy sigh is accompanied by the jingling sound of keys from the other room. She freezes, her legs encased in ice, but the stones shift beneath her feet, and she almost trips, almost falls, but she gasps her way to a closet off of the kitchen.
Her heart pounds.
The realtor sighs again from the other room and a small sound is indecipherable beneath it, but it sounds like he’s shuffling something heavy across the floor. Haifa peeks from behind the crack in the door and clamps a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.
It’s a body bag.
It is black and plastic and when the realtor drops it—panting as he does so—it thuds to the ground with the weight of a human being. There is silence for a moment and Haifa feels the closet tighten. The house kills people. The house kills people.
The phone rings, and Haifa nearly jumps out of her skin. She grasps the edges of the wall for stability, her vision swimming as she backs away slowly from the crack in the door. The realtor remains in sight, a tiny sliver of color against the black.
“Hello?” He speaks English. “Oh, hey, Ryan! I’m good, how are you?
… You would not believe the night I’ve had, man.
Guess what?… Yeah, the occupants I just sold the house to died.
Drowned, if you can believe it.” He laughs.
“I came to check on them tonight. Just needed another signature for something. The house was empty, so I figured I’d just leave it inside with my extra key, right?
Well, I came inside”—he wipes his forehead—“and found them. Called the police, of course, and they did a whole examination. Took pictures, the works. The whole thing took hours—it’s crazy how late it is already.
And on top of that, they said the medical examiner can’t come until tomorrow …
What? No, no. So I’m dragging their bodies to the door.
It’s gross but what can you do? I’m trying to be efficient here.
Hopefully they can pick them up first thing tomorrow and we can get to selling again! ”
Another laugh. “No, no, don’t worry. It’ll sell again—it always does.
Shit happens, but the buyers don’t need to know about every little detail for me to get my check.
Can you imagine living in this fucking house, though?
But it’s weirdly beautiful in a way … Well, I just mean, like, this was my grandfather’s old home”—Haifa sees red—“and now I get to sell it. The cycle of life … Thanks, man. I appreciate you saying that … I know. Listen, I gotta get moving these bodies so I can go home. I can’t believe the police don’t do that.
They take forever to get here and then don’t even help.
Ah, well … all right, talk to you later, man. ”
He hangs up and shoves the phone in his back pocket, leaning over to drag the bag to the door.
Haifa holds her breath, wondering how long it takes for a corpse to begin decaying.
Tears squeeze at the edges of her eyes; this is not how she wanted to first see her mother’s childhood home.
She stands in the darkness, listening to him drag the second body.
Sighing again, as if the entire weight of the world leans on his shoulders, the realtor heads into the other room. A sudden wave of dizziness overtakes Haifa and she puts a hand against the wall to steady herself. Her breathing comes in shallow inhales. Her grip against the wall loosens.
The realtor—and everything—disappears as she loses consciousness, sliding down the wall silently and helplessly.
Sleep. Sleep now.
She does not need to see.
This man, with the false smile and bared teeth, is still here—when will it be enough?—still slithering inside to prepare for the next settler who will wade in the blood apparent on the floor, pointing and walking over the bodies. I watch him, and bare my stones in a smile. He does not know.
My family is here—I promised to stay empty—
He walks into the kitchen, where my skin is begging to be bared to the light—yellow, finally—and reaches for a glass on the top shelf.
The liquid from his stolen drink rouses the water in Death’s perch and She rises slowly in shadow before he slams the glass against the table—my bones, my flesh.
I watch him. Plastic. Death’s cold fingers nudge, they ask, they beg in wonder at this cruelty: he should have fallen into the wall and been sucked into the damp spot—smothered, like the rest—but no. He is still here. Still—breathing.
He walks to the bodies—to the blood he has shed. Not me. They are not my bodies.
Death’s long fingers reach for him and stroke him—gently,
and he whirls around.
There is nothing there. His eyebrows are raised in confusion and fear—noticing for the first time that Death lives in these walls.
Hello, he calls, but only the water drip drip dripping answers him and he turns, slowly, to return to his bodies.
Death follows at his shaking heels, consuming his shadow with Her own deep, vicious being; the screams and cries of those dead echo down below in Her dark cloak but he does not hear. They clamor for him. They await him.
Beneath the cover of the plastic body bag—he has forgotten—the woman gripped a knife, prepared to cut their way out of the walls as the water grew around their throats.
The blade is still erect in her stiff hand, the point just tearing through the thick plastic; fear is still carved forevermore into her frozen face.
Death’s fingers grip tighter, colder; the man walks, and She reaches out—
tilting a tile up.
He trips over his own feet and falls into the bags, the plastic absorbing his shocked face and the instant rush of his blood as he lands on the erect knife—torn by the flesh he sold—and the metal slices through his skin easily, but stops just before his heart—no, no, no!
—and a stone falls from my ceiling, then a second and a third and a fourth and a fifth.
They land on his back heavily and he gasps, one hand reaching back to tear them off of his body, but the weight is too much—We push, We press more deeply,
into the knife.
He gags on his own blood and the taste drips to my floor and it is delicious, it is so righteous; he cries for help but his own words are drowned by his choking throat—now, yes, yes—as he gasps and swallows but there is no air, not anymore, there is only blood left—he swallows, he swallows, and the stones slowly lift back up into my ceiling as he breathes his last, desperate for more but the hunger is forever—
The floorboards can see his face and his expression is frozen, the falseness of his smile long gone as the blood rises like the water did, pooling slowly and viscously around all three of their bodies in a scarlet well—I promised, I promised to stay empty—and Death rises above slowly, Her shadowy figure reaching for them—cold, cold—and slowly dragging them down, their bodies receding into the damp floor until there is nothing left.
All that remains is the disturbed tile; slowly, purposefully, I creak it back down to its place. Haifa Nuhad did not see. She is safe.
And I—I am home.