WHAT WE TELL OURSELVES IN THE DARK
By Lyndsey Ellis
“This has to stop.”
Mona’s voice booms through the door of my bedroom from the kitchen. I lean off the bed and listen to her fling silverware in the dishwasher.
“You’re right.” Dad sounds more scared than mad. “We need to do something now before things get out of hand.”
“She just accused her principal — your friend — of having an affair with one of her teachers on school grounds,” I hear Mona say. “It’s already out of hand.”
“Okay, one, he’s not my friend. We barely know each other outside of golf and this new contract. And, two, that’s not what she said.”
“Yeah, Larry, that’s basically what she said.”
“No, Mona,” I shout at the closed door. “That’s not what I said.”
More cutlery slams into the dishwasher before I hear Mona shambling towards my room. She opens the door without knocking.
“Where’s Dad?”
Instead of answering, Mona slumps against the edge of my bed. I imagine sweat from the back of her sheer blouse leaving a permanent stain on my comforter.
“You’re making this bigger than it is,” I say.
“No, Vi. This senselessness can’t happen again. I know you wish your dad had more time to spend with you and your brother, but that doesn’t give you the right to sabotage.”
“My name is Vi-o-let.”
Standing, Mona puts her hands on her hips. God, she’s so annoying. A walking clothespin with slits for eyes. She talks like her nose is always clogged, and when she eats, the fork makes this ugly scraping sound as she drags it out of her mouth. She thinks she’s Claire Huxtable from The Cosby Show, but behind her back, me and Vince call her Hilary Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I’ll be 13 in two months, and I’ve got more sense than her.
Mona sweats a lot, too. Like, a lot, a lot. Many adults here in Snail Trails do. It could be minus-whatever degrees outside, with icicles growing out of Earth's ears, and I’ll notice the mailman fanning his armpits, or the cashiers in the corner store wiping their upper lips. Dad doesn’t have that problem, so I don’t see how he and Mona get along.
“Okay, let’s get straight to it then, Ms. Vi-o-let.”
“Straight to what?”
“Your punishment.”
“But, I didn’t do anything.”
“Give me your phone.”
Mona holds out her hand. The teeny droplets of sweat on her wrist look like pimples on a raw chicken.
“This is stupid.”
Mona doesn’t blink. She just tucks her tongue in the pocket of skin between her chin and her bottom lip, like she always does. As if she’s trying to keep from saying the wrong thing. Or, too much.
I first noticed her habit when Dad introduced us last June. Until then, me and Vince were used to him working long hours after we moved to Snail Trails from the South Side. For almost two years, we rarely spent time with Dad as he slaved to get his driving company off the ground. The few times we were all together, he always reminded us of where we were going. “Don’t focus on the past,” Dad would say. “That’s old news.”
But, I missed our old news. The townhome we lived in, with its loud pipes and cracked floors. My friends and their everyday reminders that the shabby neighborhood south of downtown was always ours to explore. Folks who didn’t stay there liked to call it “The Gutter” until we started calling it that, too, so they couldn’t hold anything over us. Snail Trails is different, but it’s no dream. The houses are bigger, the lawns are neater, and the streets are wider with less litter. Big deal. Dad enjoys living close to water, even though the riverbank near us is smelly with a bunch of critters. Vince likes it, too, because he thinks it’s his answer to not having friends. I can’t blame him, really. The kids here are mean, but not in a straight way. And, the adults? Even worse. Most of them are nice in a way that makes me want to puke.
When Mona came into our picture, I knew it was trouble. Dad surprised me and Vince by picking us up from summer school one day and took us to our favorite Taqueria in the mall. When we walked in, Mona was sitting at our special table in the corner. I thought she must’ve been nervous because she had those gross sweat stains in the armpits of her silk shirt. Her handshake was flimsy, and she sat too far away from me and Vince, like she was scared of us.
Dad forced a conversation after we ordered, but me and Vince interrupted him by taking turns asking our server to turn up the heat. We laughed as we snuck peeks at Mona, dripping sweat over the dry parts of her shirt. I would’ve died to know every cuss word she was calling us in her head. But, instead of complaining, Mona fidgeted and hid her tongue in her little skin-pouch. To spare her, Dad switched us to a takeout order, and we ate our food in the car.
“Violet,” Mona says, “let’s go, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I hand over the landline and pout, like I’m hurt.
No big deal, really. Like Vince, I don’t have friends to call. Not anymore. I stopped talking to the girls on the South Side because I hate hearing all the things I’m missing. Last year, Felicia and Kal were cool when we started sixth grade together here at Montgomery Middle. But, they both got weird after I told them about our principal, Mr. Abbott’s, freaky closet adventures with Mrs. Dillard, the history teacher.
They promised not to repeat what I shared, but Felicia told her other friend, Wendy, a snaggletooth loudmouth who rolls with the popular girls in our grade, and Wendy told her whole crew. Then Kal told her big sister, Evelyn, who told her boyfriend, Reggie, who told his homies, Mookie and Devin, whose uncle is the barber of our school district’s superintendent. So, Devin’s uncle told the superintendent, which got Mr. Abbott and Mrs. Dillard in deep trouble. After that, our school district threatened to cancel Dad’s contract to bus kids this year since he got the deal through Mr. Abbott. And, now, I’m everybody’s favorite tattle-tale.
“Your television, too,” Mona says.
“Dad!”
There’s no way I’m giving up TV for this chick.
“Your father’s about to head out for work. We’ve already discussed it together anyway, and he’s on board.”
That’s a lie. I know it, and Mona knows I know it. But Dad can’t save me if he’s not here. Fuming, I stare at the 13-inch TV on my dresser. My Sarafina! VHS tape sits halfway out of the built-in VCR. A machine sticking its tongue out at me.
“You go to school in an older building, so funny noises are to be expected,” Mona says, after she places my TV in the hallway next to my phone. “There’s no reason to equate that with two people — two authority figures — engaging in those kinds of private acts. It’s absurd and dangerous, and I don’t think you understand the magnitude of your accusations. They can be bad for many well-connected people with good intentions, which eventually hurts everyone, including your family.”
I hate how Mona says “your family.” As if she’s not the one who barged into our lives last summer and made herself part of us. Or, like whatever bad that comes out of this moment won’t affect her.
Smiling, Mona pats my leg the way she always does when she thinks she knows what I’m feeling. I move out of her reach and count the tack marks between the SWV and Kris Kross posters on my wall.
“Vi, I’ve never told you this, but when you all came to Snail Trails, I found peace. Sounds silly, but it’s true. You and I are a lot alike, you know? When I first arrived many moons ago, I wasn’t sure if I belonged either, because I was different from the people who were already here. Like you, I had to adjust to leaving all I knew behind for this place that felt foreign and, in some ways, cruel.
“But the key to adapting is the messages we give ourselves when things seem hopeless. What we tell ourselves in the dark. Your father’s tenacity wouldn’t have manifested had he not known that. His driving company’s success will help make sure you and Vincent and I all reach that bright future, thanks to the support of people like his good friend, Mr. Abbott, who want to help light the way, not dim it. Understand?”
My blood pulses through me so hard, I feel it raging in my ears. There’s no getting through to this chick. I don’t care how long I’m on punishment at this point; I just want Mona out of my space. Gone from my life.
“You’re nothing like me. I heard what I heard.”
“Alright, young lady.” Mona’s nostrils flare as she backs out of my room. “Then, enjoy hearing complete silence for a while as you use that imagination of yours to come up with an apology.”
The door closes behind her with a soft, satisfied snap.
Eric Zeigler, Still Photographs One, 2010, Archival Pigment Print, 20" x 34".
–––
Warmth from the morning light spills through Vince’s room. I scoot further below his bed until I can see the middle of his mattress.
This is my favorite spot, and I’ve got years worth of rug burns on my elbows to show for it. When I was four or five, scared of critters coming for me after dark, Vince always let me hide underneath his bed. I’d sleep there until dawn, when the woodpeckers hammered the side of our old house on the south side. I’m not afraid anymore, but sometimes I still hide out of habit.
“What else did she say?” Vince asks. Above me, the chattering buttons on his Game Boy stop. His mattress groans as he shifts sides.
“That I wouldn’t get my phone or TV back until I apologize.”
“You blame her?”
“Hell yeah. What kind of question is that?”
Vince lifts the bed skirt and looks at me upside down. The metal braces on his teeth glisten in the sun’s rays reflecting off the window. So do the syrup stains from breakfast that got trapped in the cracked lettering of his dingy Bart Simpson t-shirt.
“Look, if anybody knows Mona’s wack, it’s me. But, she’s got a point. What you said about Mr. Abbott and Mrs. Dillard wasn’t cool.”
“You don’t believe me?”
Vince drops the skirt and lies back on top of his bed.
“I don’t know what to believe,” he says. “All I know is you’re messing with Dad’s money, and that’s not good for us. You wanna end up back in The Gutter?” I bite my tongue to keep from saying yes. Moving back to our old neighborhood would mean the world to me, but it would kill Vince. The kids his age get fresh with him a lot, but at least they don’t scrap in Snail Trails. He was too nerdy and quiet for The Gutter, which got him more black eyes and busted lips than I could count.
“So, what’d you hear anyway?” Vince asks.
“Huh?”
“The school closet. What’d you hear in there?”
I close my eyes, hoping it’ll stop the thunder in my chest. I wish I’d never signed up to be a hall monitor this year. Then I would’ve never got stuck outside of class after the last lunch bell or been tempted to poke around our school’s basement. Mr. Abbott and Mrs. Dillard could’ve done their thing in peace, and I’d be free of what I took in.
Watery, thick, slimy sounds. Like cooked noodles being stirred together and pulled apart. The smell of warm farts and ammonia creeping under the closed door. Clinging to the walls, those lockers, my clothes. I remember the mop bucket next to the frame being filled with cloudy water and dead flies. The handle attached to the head looked swollen and slippery, like it was wet, too. Sweating.
Whatever was going on, it wasn’t sexy-sounding. I’d witnessed grown-ups doing the nasty before. Sort of. Vince keeps dirty magazines in the baseball card box underneath his bed. If I don’t turn my TV up loud enough on Tuesday night, I usually hear noises coming from Dad and Mona’s room. Bed squeaks, moans, giggles — those kinds of things. The more I think about how different the closet sounded, the more I try not to remember.
“I don’t know.”
I tug at the carpet fibers near my waist, not knowing what else to say. “It’s all in your head.” Vince kicks the bed with his heel. “Sounds like you just caught Mr. Abbott tonguing down Mrs. Dillard. So, what? If you ask me, she’s the wackest chick at Montgomery. He should’ve been dry humping Ms. Nelson, the new drama teacher. That chick’s Boyz ‘N Da Hood fine — got a face like Tre’s girl, Brandi, and a body like Ricky’s girl, Shanice.”
“Whatever.”
My brother’s doubt is the worst sting. The growing lump in my throat is a tight, closed fist. I suck the insides of my cheeks to keep my eyes from watering. I can’t help what I heard, and I won’t be sorry about it.
“Wanna hear something wild?” Vince asks, a smile in his voice. “Last week, in science class, we learned about glow worms. They’re actually fungus gnats as little babies, living in caves as far away as New Zealand. Their tails light up, not their heads. So that Glo Worm toy that Dad bought you as a bigheaded toddler got it wrong.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, guess what else? They live in some areas here in Snail Trails. Like, in the ravine behind our school. That explains those tiny, dancing lights we saw after we met Mona.”
Above me, there’s paper moving. Book pages rustling. Vince holds up the bed skirt again, this time to show me the picture of an insect in mid-flight. Its wings are clear and filmy. Below its antennae, the top half of its body and its teeny sets of legs are a brownish color. But its bottom half looks like a mini neon lamp, spreading light in the dark path surrounding it. I trace its body with my finger. The evening we met Mona, Dad took the long way home past Montgomery Middle so he could lecture me and Vince about how ugly we treated his new girlfriend. He drove so slow that from the back seat of his Grand Am, I saw the guts spilling out from the roadkill on the side of the street and guessed the organs of each dead animal to block out Dad’s words. Hundreds of tiny greenish-orange lights dotted the sky as we neared the school. Dad quit talking and slowed to a stop in the middle of the empty road. Stunned, the three of us stared in silence at the lights blinking at us. Realizing the glows were connected to small bugs flying in the moonless black sky, I was too scared to move, but Vince let his passenger window down and held his arm out of the car. The mob of twinkling lights slowly covered his elbow until his limb looked like the sleeve of a rainbow studded jacket.
“What’s this have to do with Mr. Abbott and Mrs. Dillard?” I ask, tracing the insect’s glowing bottom on the page with my finger.
“Nothing, I guess.”
Vince shrugs and claps the book shut on my finger.
–––
The next day, Mrs. Dillard towers over my desk and points at the folded paper in my hand. She’s tall and knock-kneed with big gums and curly cue chin stubble. Even though she teaches history to seventh graders, she wears one of those elementary school cardigans covered with apples, rulers, and random letters of the alphabet. Her sweat smells tart and seeps through the beige cotton fabric.
“Violet, would you like to share that with the class?” she asks. I wince at her breath which reeks of peppermints over coffee, over cigarettes, over something rotten. Behind us, several kids, including Wendy what’s-her-face, chatter and giggle at their desks. I balance the opened Encyclopedia on my lap and hide a glow worm’s description with the chain letter that was hurled at me from across the room. The paper’s worn creases feel good against my shaking hands.
“Go ahead.” Mrs. Dillard nods at me. “Show us what you have.”
Somebody makes a sex sound from the back of the room, and the whole class loses it.
“Quiet!” Mrs. Dillard smacks the air with her palm, silencing everyone. She looks down at me again, a new chill in her eyes. “Front of the class. I’m not asking you again.” I gulp and re-read the chain letter to myself:
Violet Reynolds is a back-stabbing snitch
Pass this to 10 people before the end of class or
You’ll die in the next 24 hours
Walking to the front of the room takes forever. My whole body pulses with rage as I turn around to face the class. This is my chance to put Wendy in her place. Unlike Felicia and Kal, who completely turned on me after the closet news spread, Wendy gets a kick out of being off-and-on nice to me. I couldn’t understand why at first, since she’s part of my grade’s cool clique. But it didn’t take long for me to figure her out: she has a crush on Vince and tries to use me to get close to him.
“Backstabbing is one word,” I say, squaring my shoulders. The smirk on Wendy’s face crumbles as her eyes dim with confusion. I think I’ve hit her hard when a hot, stale rush of air crawls up my skin. The Chucks on my feet sink deeper into the carpet and my teeth start to loosen, like I’m having one of those dreams where they all fall out.
Moisture drips from my nose and runs over my lips. I taste salt and think it’s sweat or worse, snot. But, when I wipe my mouth with my hand, a red streak beams back at me.
Eric Zeigler, Still Photographs Ten, 2010, Archival Pigment Print, 15" x 40".
–––
“Bad day?”
Vince’s teasing makes me want to punch him in his Adam’s apple. I give him the finger and adjust the wad of tissue sticking out of my nostril. The greasy goop on our food trays glisten as we slide them down the rails.
“She was probably faking it.” Wendy pokes her head out from her place in the lunch line and throws Vince her best jack-o-lantern smile.
“How do you fake a nosebleed, Dorito Breath?” Vince asks, and the lunch line explodes in Awwwww’s and No he didn’t’s.
The main cafeteria’s louder than usual with a Friday excitement even though it’s Monday. Instead of lining the walls, lunch monitors corner kids’ tables to keep everyone in check. A few tables up, Wendy cackles and high-fives a girl in their group. Behind them, boys hurl pieces of brownies from their trays at each other, catching it with their mouths. I hope Darius, the ringleader, chokes so they can all stop ignoring Vince.
We sit at our table in a back corner of the cafeteria. It’s Vince’s favorite spot because everyone forgets we exist here. Brown water stains from an old chest freezer behind us makes the floor look gross, and we can hear rats scurrying through their homemade tunnels in the walls, but no one bothers us.
“That skeezer needs to be muzzled.” Vince stabs the peas on his tray with a fork and puts them in his mouth, one at a time.
“Yeah,” I say, “stupid skeezer.”
“Don’t say that word.”
My brother’s eyes soften as he reaches for the fruit cocktail on my tray that I never eat.
“So, I found out something else about glow worms,” I say, raking a fork through my mashed potatoes. “They’re actually beetles in their adult stage that give off light to attract their prey. They inject bugs like snails with this kind of digestive sticky juice and they drink their insides.”
“Snails aren’t bugs,” says Vince. “They’re gastropods.
“Whatever. Don’t you ever wonder why this place is called Snail Trails and you never see any snails?”
“Not really.” Vince stirs the stew in his bowl. “Maybe the glow worms ate them all.” “Then, what else are they eating?” I ask, my voice growing tight.
“The adults don’t eat. Only the larvae do.”
“My point is,” I say, looking around to make sure no one’s listening, “how are they able to stay alive? What are they feeding on if there’s no snails?”
Vince stops slurping from his spoon and points at me. “You’re bleeding again.”
I nod, placing a hand over my nose. Before I can say anything, the lunchroom erupts in screams. Alarmed, I glance around the cafeteria, noticing other kids’ noses are bleeding. Heat gushes up the back of my neck like lava.
Vince follows my gaze across the lunchroom towards a neon light spilling through the entryway. The brightness is coming from the stairwell next to the door. The same stairs that lead to the closet in the basement where I heard Mr. Abbott and Mrs. Dillard.
“Come on!”
My brother drags me toward the chest freezer against the wall in the corner. He struggles to push open the machine’s door as the moisture in my mouth overloads. I vomit chunks of brown and green everywhere.
“Get in.” Vince holds the freezer’s door open. I can barely hear him because of the deafening screeches climbing the stairwell, pushing through the heat coming from the massive brightness. Waves of heat so thick, the cluster of light bulbs on our lunchroom’s ceiling bend and burst. Inside, the freezer is dank and shabby. I wish it wasn’t unplugged so the stink of raw meat wasn’t so strong. Vince shushes me, closing the door over us. His body feels surprisingly light on top of mine.
Sharp rays of light from outside pierce the cracks in the freezer’s frame. My head shrinks and swells, trying to absorb the vibration. I can’t tell if the water trickling down my temples is coming from my brother’s tears or my own. Like sweat, it stings my eyes. I keep them open and stare at nothing, willing them to adjust to the darkness.
Lyndsey Ellis is a writer, editor and teaching artist who enjoys crafting speculative fiction and longform essays that explore regional history and/or intergenerational dynamics. Her work appears in Kweli Journal, Narratively, Shondaland, Catapult, The Rumpus, Literary Hub and Electric Literature. Bone Broth, her debut novel, was published by Hidden Timber Books in 2021.
Eric Zeigler is an artist, designer, and researcher whose current work involves photography and the unconventional transformation of images. He received an MFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and exhibits his work nationally and internationally. He also writes about human tool use and its connection to contemporary design and non-Anthropocentric ecological viewpoints. Eric is an Assistant Professor of Art in the Department of Art at the University of Toledo.