By Nalini Jacob-Roussety
There was a monster in the house.
It was not under Anita’s bed, and it was not in her wardrobe, either. It appeared regularly in the evenings as the moon fell, and it stared deeply into her eyes like they were jewels for its taking. Every night, just before the lights went out, the monster loomed over the foot of her bed with tired eyes and aged skin. Every night, the monster in Anita’s house patted her floral blankets, leaned in close, and said, “I love you.”
Anita hated to call her mother a monster. But in the darkest hours of the night, there was nothing she was more afraid of than—
“Anita.” The voice came from behind her.
Already in her baby pink pyjamas, Anita turned slowly at the top of the stairs with a pleasant smile on her face. Her hand on the railing shook. “Hi, Ma,” she said.
The older woman leaned against the wall at the bottom of the stairs and crossed her arms like she was waiting for something. Anita descended the stairs to meet her, hand now dragging along the railing, making the sound of a cornered snake.
At the bottom of the stairs, aged arms hovered, open. Ma’s hugs sometimes reminded her of a handshake with her school principal, the one who used her multicultural likeness for all the promotional photos.
Or perhaps a bear trap would be more accurate. After all, the principal never crushed his star student.
Anita stepped back. “I’m not feeling well.” She’d been avoiding Ma’s hugs all week, and a clock ticked away in her chest. How much longer could she avoid the woman’s touch?
Ma frowned and stepped forward, making Anita flinch. “It’s been a long time since you hugged your mother.”
Anita wrapped her arms around herself, “I’m sorry, I’m just not feeling well.” Her sentence was punctuated by a conveniently timed, wet cough.
Ma frowned and crossed her arms. “You won the second round of the pageant.”
“Yes.” Barely. It was hard to pretend, up on that stage under those glaring lights, that she was made of a skeleton instead of broken thread. It took all of her energy just to climb the stairs, with legs that had shrunk to half their size and lungs that now failed after minute exertion.
“Good girl. I knew you would. I’m very sorry I couldn’t come today.” And Ma looked it—genuinely disappointed. Her skin was paler than usual, her eye-bags more prominent. She looked like she had skipped meals. “However,” she said, “I hear that you only spent two minutes on the piano segment. We were very clear on the necessity of that extra minute. Next time–”
It would always be the same. “Wonderful speech, but you forgot to signpost in your introduction. You’ll lose points for that.”
“Well done on your interview—but if it were me, I would’ve worn the skirt.”
“Lovely drawing; my art teacher once told me I should become an artist.”
But Ma hadn’t become an artist. They were flipping through a photo album once, and Anita was shocked by the change between the first and last page. On the first stood a beautiful, slim, fit seventeen-year-old girl. On the last stood a stranger. A bulging belly that seemed too large for the girl’s small frame; swollen feet that could no longer fit her school shoes; and breasts that Ma complained would leak milk through her vintage blouses. The things I went through for you, she always said, making sure Anita would never forget it, to give you the opportunities I never had.
“— are you listening to me?”
“Yes, Ma.” Anita’s palms were sweaty, balled up in the pocket of her pyjama pants.
“When’s the next round of the pageant?” Her mother demanded.
“Next week.”
“What day? What time? I need to write it in my calendar.”
“Tuesday. Seven.” Anita tensed, held her breath, as though her mother would be able to smell the lie.
“Okay. I believe in you. You’ll win that one, too.” She was breathing heavily, like speaking had become an effort. She searched Anita’s face like she was browsing an Evon magazine. “I’ve left a new cream on your bed,” she said by way of dismissal.
So Anita collected her new anti-aging serum. Completed her thirty-minute bedtime skincare routine. Annotated her seven bible passages. That night, sleep came fitfully, but the young woman was not as troubled as she should have been. Not if she had known the pain morning would bring.
She woke with intense stinging all over her face. A wet, exposed feeling on her cheeks. Her bedsheets were covered in blood. Had she gotten her period early? She tried to slow her heart. So much blood for one person…
Her stomach ached. The hunger was acute, like she’d been starved for a month. After checking that she had not, in fact, begun her period, she wrapped herself in her dressing gown and hobbled downstairs. She found herself nauseous and couldn’t quite think straight. Ma was making tea, her back turned. Anita stopped in the doorway.
Her mother, having heard her footsteps, turned around. “Good morning,” she said, and Anita screamed.
It was too terrible, too viscerally horrible, to imagine. Her brain faltered over the image, and she gripped onto the nearest chair to keep herself upright.
That was her mother: the pearl earrings she purchased in San Francisco. The diamond rings on her fingers from past lovers. The stretchmarks on her tanned legs.
And yet, that was Anita’s face.
Her mother was wearing it. Wearing her face like an accessory. Anita’s eyes, Anita’s lips. If her face was there, what of… what of….
Anita brought her hands to her face and felt only wet muscle beneath. In the reflection of the backsplash behind the stove, she saw a red mess where her face had been. A red mess that reminded her of the slabs of meat at the deli. And it smelled like the deli, too. She hadn’t been imagining the tangy, metallic stink.
But there were no jagged marks on her face to suggest a theft. It was as though she had always appeared this way; like she had never owned a face at all.
Anita let out a sound like an animal being ripped apart by its predator.
“Gosh,” her mother said in her own voice from behind Anita’s rosy-red lips. “You’re going to burst my eardrums.”
Anita screamed again, staggering towards her mother with hands still gripping where her face should’ve been. Legs barely able to carry her weight. “Ma,” she sobbed through the muscle that was once her mouth, “What have you done?”
Her mother tsked, barely looking at Anita, stirring her tea. Her hands, those diamonds, went round and round, so at odds with that horribly youthful face.
“Don’t be dramatic, Anita.” The teaspoon clanged against the insides of the fine china cup.
“Give it back,” Anita said, her voice small. Pitiful. Whining from a wall of muscle that was pathetically dripping blood onto the kitchen floor. It sounded like a tap that had been left loose overnight. Drop. Drop. Drop.
Her mother turned her back to Anita. Reached into the cupboard for some biscuits and spoke to the cookie jar inside. “Give it back? Do you hear what an ungrateful brat I’ve raised?”
Anita wailed and shook her hands in front of her, not knowing what to do, what to say. “You…. Ma, please…” she screamed. “It’s my face!”
“Don’t be silly, Anita,” her mother said, still not looking at her. “Anyway, I birthed that face. Me—I did. You know that?”
“How could you—”
“Do you know,” her mother was shaking now, too, “the sacrifices I’ve made for you?”
Anita knew. For years, Ma’s favourites went back on the shelf so they could afford chocolate ice cream after school. A single mother’s income didn’t go far; tears stained the bills that piled on the kitchen table. The men came and went and paid for things before they disappeared. Ma printed textbooks and worksheets for Anita when they couldn’t afford tutors. The BrightStellar Scholar award that sat on the bench was a team affair. It wasn’t even about the money; it was about the future. Real pride in Ma’s eyes back then. Only, at some point, the pride had turned to greed. The glee of relaying Anita’s achievements to other mothers at school stopped being enough.
“Have some tea,” her mother said, holding out a cup.
Anita was rooted to the floor.
“It’s chamomile, your favourite.” Ma approached with a plateful of biscuits in one hand and her teacup in the other fingers turning white as they gripped the handle. She lifted her daughter’s chin with one long finger and poured the hot liquid down her throat.
It didn’t taste like chamomile tea. It tasted like heat to the cheeks, patchy vision, and blackness.
Anita woke in her bed to morning sunlight streaming through the window, hot and searing. She attempted to leave the room, but the door had stuck. Pushing against it produced a metal clanking sound, like someone had fixed a lock to the outside. She pounded a fist against the door, shrieked until her voice was hoarse. It was useless. She sagged to the floor, soaking her knees with tears. There she stayed for hours.
That evening, there was a polite knock on the door. “Honey, can I come in?”
Anita said nothing.
A clicking sound and the door swung open. Anita’s own face stared back at her. Blue school dress straining against the too-wide hips of an older woman. Hair hanging in Anita’s usual two braids, now thinning with streaks of grey.
Her mother’s gnarled feet padded forwards. “Toby looked cute at school today,” she said.
Anita tensed at the mention of her boyfriend’s name. Surely he had noticed something was wrong—he would come to check on her soon.
“I couldn’t get close enough to really see at the assembly,” Ma continued, “but I think he got a new haircut.” And then she frowned down at Anita. “Are you feeling okay, hun?”
Anita’s mouth worked open and closed. Dry. Confusion. When Ma lay a hand on her fleshy forehead as if to check her temperature, Anita let out a loud moan.
It was like hot coals pressing into the muscle. The little energy she had left seeped out with a sigh of air, a bit like the sigh her distant grandfather had given when he died at the hospital a few years ago. She was too weak to do anything as Ma perked up again and adjusted her hair with a satisfied “Hmm.” Without another glance at her daughter, she pranced out of the room, and the school dress suddenly seemed to fit just a little bit more snugly.
The following afternoon, Toby came by. At the sound of her boyfriend’s voice, Anita perked up. She heaved her sweating, shivering, waning self to the door, pressing her ear against it. And her stomach twisted into knots.
Lips against lips—the wet, terrible, beautiful sound of Toby’s lips against hers. She could almost feel his tongue sliding down her throat, except it wasn’t her throat, it was her mother’s.
There was a thud as they backed against the wall in the hallway, and Anita backed up towards her bed, dry heaving. There was not enough fluid to produce tears. She thought about how they would feel— the tears—sliding down that wet membrane of hers. The thought could not be entertained for long before exhaustion reasserted itself and she collapsed on the bed.
That night, Ma entered her room, and Anita no longer had any eyelids to close—could no longer pretend she was asleep. She simply stared at her mother, eyes watering, muscles around her mouth quivering.
Ma sighed and pressed her hands to Anita’s chest like she was about to perform CPR. And when the hands came down, it was like a thousand needles poking into Anita’s heart. She screamed, and then she lost the energy to produce sound. Ma’s hands continued to press into her while Anita’s mouth gaped open, wheezing. Until she finally lost the energy to stay awake at all.
Ma came again the next day, and Anita soon found she had no breasts.
After that, no hands.
On the thirty-sixth day since her face was stolen, Anita received a kiss on the smooth, glistening muscle of her forehead, while her mother thanked her for her feet. To “I love you,” there came only vacant silence.
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