Animus

by Anna Kornfeld

The house was always haunted; it just took me a while to find all the ghosts. At the time, it seemed so bright, big and full in a way I wasn’t used to, a wholeness I wanted claim and make my own. Inside lived a family—a mother and father, their five children, and an abundance of pets. When I first knocked, they let me in, and I almost thanked them for it.

It always felt like the whole world was gathered there, our ages spanning those of the siblings—children and pre-teens, girls about to become women, men who were told they were still boys—eating, swimming, playing, evolving, and remaining unchanged. It didn’t matter who you were, only that you were a part of it.

They had more money than my family, that much was clear. Every bedroom had a TV, and the oldest siblings each slept in their own queen-sized beds. They had four cars and a pool with a diving board. The father owned pet stores while the mother stayed home. She cooked and cleaned and drove her kids to and from wherever it was that they needed to go. 

I was close friends with one of the daughters and started dating the oldest son. I loved him in the way that you do when you’re young. I liked his name, J-A-C-K, the way you could say it slow or fast and it always sounded exactly the same. 

We kissed on the living room couch when no one was around, on the front steps of the house, on the lounge chairs that surrounded the in-ground pool that none of them thought was anything special at all. I lost my virginity in his bedroom, on top of his plaid sheets, one of the cats sleeping at the foot of the bed. I felt like a grown-up—like I had both lost and gained a part of myself, something that no one else would understand. 

I didn’t know that he hadn’t spoken to his sister in over four years, not until too much time had passed for me to realize how much something like that actually mattered. I was already swept up in him, the way he was mine and I was his.

What happened with you two? I asked

He just shrugged.

I skateboarded down their driveway and pet the rabbits that lived in the big wire enclosure in their backyard. I laid out in my bathing suit and tried to get tan. I had sex with Jack and painted my nails with his sister. She had so many more colors than me—bright greens and bold glitters, topcoats from brands I’d never heard of.

Heather, her mom would call up from the kitchen, don’t spill any on the carpet.

I wandered around the house, peeking in everyone’s bedroom, seeing how each person made it so completely their own. The younger brothers with their matching superhero sheets and unmade beds, Heather’s bulletin board filled with photos she’d taken with her Polaroid camera, Jack’s walls almost completely bare.

I remember how clean the youngest of them all kept her room—bed neatly made, no piles of clothing on the floor. Once, I found a piece of looseleaf on her desk, where she had written a numbered list of excuses, 1-5, to get out of seeing friends. 

1.      My stomach hurts

2.      I have to help with the dogs

3.      My mom won’t let me

4.      I can’t get a ride

5.      I’m too tired

She had a hamster at one point that was so fat it barely fit in its wheel. Heather accidentally dropped a bowl of cereal on it one morning as it was running around and killed it.

We ate dinner while we watched TV, which was something I’d need been allowed to do at home. We piled our plates high with whatever was provided—usually fast food of some kind, noodles dripping in sauce or cheese, fried meat that tasted like grease and butter—and headed into the living room. There were so many of us that we’d have to sit on the floor to fit.

Once I noticed that Jack would ask anyone but Heather to pass the salt, hand him the remote, move over so that he could have more room, I couldn’t stop noticing it. The way her eyes glided over to him when he talked—slow, shy, asking for permission to exist. The way he never acknowledged her no matter what she did.

There were always sick and injured animals at the house. They were from the father’s pet stores, recuperating, free to roam as they regained their strength and got their health back. Mostly puppies and kittens, so small and fragile that I thought they might break. Babies with whiskers and fur that I held close to my chest while the others played video games and rode bikes.

There was one puppy I took a liking to. I sat with him on my lap, fed him treats, kissed his head. His breathing was labored, and his nose ran, doggy-snot seeping through my shirt. I wanted to be a healer, I wished that just by touching him, I could make him whole again.

The other animals didn’t like him. The dogs growled when he drank water. They ate his food. They lunged when he laid down in any of the pet beds. The cats glared as he walked by, hissed, but did not move from lying lazily in the sun-drenched windowsill. 

Outsider, they said. You do not belong.

I protected him from the bared teeth, the sharp claws, the cruelty of the animals that surrounded him. I showed him kindness, acceptance. 

Then one day he wasn’t there.

He had to go back to the store, the dad said. 

Why?

He bit one of our other dogs, he said. He drew blood.

The mother was always in and out, asking us what we wanted from the grocery store, the Thai restaurant, Starbucks. Their fridge was so full that they had an extra one in the garage for whatever didn’t fit.

She asked me about school, my friends. She told me about Heather and Jack, showed me baby pictures and home videos from when they were young. My parents couldn’t afford a camcorder when I was growing up, so I didn’t have any of my own. 

Their mom was the one who made sure Jack’s vest matched my dress for prom. She posed with me in pictures, a big smile on her face, arm draped easily over my shoulder. She got me an expensive wallet for Christmas that year, and Heather told me it was nicer than anything her mom had gifted her. 

She asked me where you and Jack go, Heather said. When you drive around. 

Nowhere, I said.

She asked me if you were still a virgin.

I didn’t respond. 

The summer before junior year, I seemed to grow hips overnight. My bra size jumped from an A to D in two months, and I started filling out my clothes in a way I hadn’t before. I wore smaller shirts, shorter shorts. I wanted people to see me, and they did. Boys started to notice me more and I liked the attention. Jack told me to stop being so flirty with everyone. I rolled my eyes. 

You look different, his father said one night.

He’d known me since I was 13—bony and childish, Heather’s friend with the divorced parents and the dark hair. But now I wore push-up bras, I made his son come with only my mouth and told my friends about it. I painted black liner on my lids, straightened my hair, and got my period every month. I wore perfume—too sweet, almost cloying—staking claim on anyone I touched. My skin glowed in the way it does when you realize you are no longer a child.

Older, he said. You just look older. 

Heather told me about the kittens one night while we sat in her backyard eating McDonalds. 

Our cat got pregnant, she said. And when she had her babies, she put them in the wall for some reason. There was this small hole that only she was able to get through. We couldn’t get in to feed them or give them water. They all ended up dying.

Why didn’t you make a bigger hole in the wall? I asked.

I don’t know. My dad didn’t want to, I guess.

Could you hear them? I asked.

Yeah, she said. It was really sad. 

I googled how long it took for a cat to die from dehydration. I couldn’t believe they listened for that long. 

When we went out to dinner, their father started sitting next to me. He never rushed over or made it obvious, but I knew what he was doing. He sat across from his wife, grinning ear to ear.

Maybe that’s when it started, when she first noticed the shift. She slowly and yet very suddenly saw me as something wicked that her son had been exposed to, something that was now infecting her husband.

You spend a lot of time in Jack’s room, she said to me. 

We like to watch TV up there.

Hmm, she said.

 I didn’t know that she went through Jack’s trash to look for used condoms. I had no idea that she read his text messages while he slept.

I had sleepovers with Heather most weekends. We baked Funfetti cake and watched movies that were never as good as we thought they’d be. When she fell asleep, I’d sneak up to Jack’s room—skin on skin, quiet and fast—before heading back down to the living room for the night.

            One night, when I left his room, his mom was in the hallway, a glass of wine in her hand.

            I left my phone in there, I said. 

            Somehow, I knew, without a doubt, that just a moment before, she’d had her ear pressed against the door, listening to us. 

            I started to notice how much wine she drank. How she and her husband couldn’t go one dinner without at least three glasses each. I learned that when she started smoking cigarettes, she was really drunk, and she laughed a lot at things that weren’t funny. 

            She added me on Facebook and then deleted me, asked me to put my clothes on over my bikini the second I was done in the pool. Once, while I was in the backyard with Jack, I looked up and saw her staring at us from his bedroom window. 

I didn’t like the way the father looked at me after a while, his gaze lingering for just a little bit too long. His hugs lasted forever, his closeness made me cold. I felt his wanting in my own body, something icy and damp that started in my stomach and made its way into my chest. 

If I had a girlfriend with a body like that, he said to his son. Oh, what I would do.

He grilled burgers in the backyard, his eyes on me as I laid out on the grass with his daughter, both of us in cotton shorts and tank tops. I brought my knees to my chest, hugged my arms around them. 

Are you getting hungry? He asked. I pretended not to hear him.

That night, we sat around the table and ate the burgers. They were so rare that the blood seeped from the meat onto our plates in a pink, greasy puddle. He saw me staring and laughed. 

There were so many people in that house, and not one of them ever said a thing to me about it. There was no way they couldn’t hear his slimy words, see his fat fingers resting on my arm when they had no business being there. Marco Polo in the pool, physics projects that took longer than they should have, dyeing Easter eggs, the Kentucky Derby on full blast. Voices and people and him—always, always finding his way right next to me. 

Come on, he said to his wife with slurred words. Just a blow job. I was sitting in the kitchen five feet away from them. He looked at me because he knew that I’d heard. Because he wanted me to. 

Why is she looking through your trash can? I asked Jack. 

            Who cares? he said.

            She watches us.

            Again, he just shrugged.

I started looking for anything out of place in Jack’s room, any clue that his mom had been inside, searching for whatever it was she needed to find. I kept my phone in my pocket at all times, in case she tried to go through it. I censored texts I sent Jack, just in case she read them. 

She saw the pictures you sent me, he said.

Why is she looking at those?

She just wants to make sure we’re being careful.

How could her seeing those photos—my teenage boobs, lithe stomach sucked in, back arched—make us any more careful? She knew the shape of my body, the way my hips dipped into my waist, the dimples on my lower back. Did she share them with her husband? Did she ever give him that blowjob he so desperately wanted?

The two younger brothers got a ferret and named him Stanley. His cage was in their room, and it smelled like straw and an attic that was being opened for the first time in years. They tried to keep him contained in their room, but he always managed to escape by sliding under the closed door.

One day, Heather told me that Stanley was missing. Was he in the walls, trapped and scared? Another carcass added to the graveyard.

            In his room, the youngest brother sat staring at the cage.

            I’m sorry about Stanley, I said.

            There was still food in a small bowl that hadn’t been cleaned out yet. I sat down next to him, knowing that Stanley wasn’t coming back. 

            Don’t be sorry, he said, I don’t think he liked it here.

The last time I was ever in that house, it was New Year’s Eve. Heather threw a party. She had a new boyfriend who brought a bong and tried too hard to seem important. He introduced himself to all of us, and I knew immediately that he would be easily forgotten. All the girls dressed up—little black dresses that were tight and short, smoky eyeshadow shimmering with cheap glitter, pink gloss smeared on our lips.

Jack wasn’t interested in drinking with his younger sister’s friends in the basement—or in acknowledging his sister at all. I told him I would come up to his room before the end of the night.

Don’t you want to sleep down here with us? I asked him.

He shook his head.

The rules of the night were no hard alcohol and no drugs. But there was an almost empty handle of vodka on the pool table and the entire basement smelled like the weed Heather’s boyfriend brought. We tried to cover it up with our vanilla-scented body sprays, excited with our disobedience.

Their father came downstairs with snacks.

I like your dress, he told me.

His greedy mouth opened up and swallowed me whole. 

His wife was agitated. She’d found the vodka, knew we were high. She watched her husband pour me too many glasses of champagne.

I’m good, I said, pulling away from him.

It’s New Year’s Eve! he said, his voice too loud in my ears. You need more.

I looked around for someone to save me. Everyone was right there but entirely somewhere else—drunk texting girls who weren’t interested, arguing about whether indica or sativa truly was best, trying to look attractive while drunk and sweaty and young. Eating, hugging, kissing, existing, without me. 

He was almost as drunk as his wife, her eyes glassy and far away. I waved at her from across the room and she pretended she didn’t see me. 

What did they talk about when they went upstairs? Was my name on his lips, my scent on her skin? Or maybe they didn’t talk about me at all. Maybe they just drank until they realized how much they hated each other or themselves, whichever made more sense in the moment. 

Later that night, I stood with Jack in the upstairs bathroom. The door was open as he brushed his teeth, wearing only his gray boxer shorts. Once he was done, we’d go into his room, be together until we weren’t, and I’d head back downstairs to the friends that I should have loved but didn’t. 

Suddenly she was right there, sharp and cold, inhuman. 

You’re poison, his mother said to me, her hand gripping my arm so tight that it left a mark. You’re fucking evil. 

Her younger sons stood in their bedroom doorway, directly across from the bathroom, watching silently. Jack was next to me, still brushing his teeth.

I looked again for someone to protect me, to keep me safe. Anyone.

Their eyes, bright in the darkness of the hallway, told me everything I already knew. All this time, I’d only been visiting—and my time was up.

She let go and I ran down the stairs as fast as I could, heart racing, hands sweating, fear and anger burning so bright in my chest I thought I’d spontaneously combust—burn down the whole house and everyone in it. Instead, I cried in the basement bathroom alone until my dad picked me up, less shocked at the night’s events than I’d anticipated.

Later, she said she blacked out, that she didn’t remember what happened. She left me Facebook messages and voicemails about how sorry she was. I hope you can forgive me, she said, her voice unnaturally high and out of place. I miss having you at the house.

 I missed being there, too. Certain things—the feel of Jack’s comforter on the back of my thighs, the way his room always smelled like skin and rain. I missed Heather’s voice, how you could tell her all of your secrets, and she would never reveal them. I missed being surrounded by people and sounds, voices, and stories that were not my own. I missed the house, but not enough to go back.

Ears pressed against doors, wandering, hungry eyes disguised with fake kindness. Mothers who were always watching, prying, wholly without compassion. Weak fathers without boundaries. Sons who didn’t care and daughters who didn’t question it. 

Jack and I saw each other one more time after we ended things. We had sex on the floor of my room, and I cried afterwards.

What’s wrong? he asked, but he already knew. 

Later, his father got arrested for animal abuse. Not a veterinarian of any kind, he performed eye surgery on a dog that resulted in its blindness. He left two cats so malnourished that they died under his care. It wasn’t until he lost his stores that I learned one of them had burned down years ago. People said he did it for the insurance money. All the animals died in the fire.

BIO: Anna Kornfeld is a fiction writer in Portland, Oregon. Her work examines relationships, vulnerability, and the ferocity of human nature. She holds a BA in Written Arts from Bard College. Find her on Instagram: @annarkorn.