Content warning: discussion of sexual abuse and eating disorders.

Monsters

I’m writing this from the cabin in a storm.

The waves are so high

it’s like I’m floating on the ocean

during some Atlantis, end of the world shit.

I’m supposed to be figuring out what to do with my life now.

I’m supposed to be figuring out what my dreams are.

I spent a year in LA and didn’t see rain for five months.

There were fires all over the city right after I left.

And fires in Yosemite right after that, 

Like destruction was following me.

I got bed bugs on my way back East.

I came into the cabin at night in 

thirty degrees, barefoot, shirtless, in shorts, running

into the shower.

I threw away everything.

It was very metaphorical.

I’ve been researching bed bugs.

Anyone can get them: 

Rich, poor, black, white, young, old, teachers, doctors

Bed bugs hide under your mattress like little monsters

and they take little pieces of you.

You can’t see them, but they’re close.

In therapy we talked about little pieces of me,

The pieces working hard, but not working for me,

The pieces trying to survive

That don’t serve me anymore,

That just serve themselves.

Years ago, during the winter, I was my sister’s keeper

until my parents came back in May.

I almost never saw her, but there were signs:

The toilet flushing too many times,

Oil in the water. Fake sugar all over the stove,

Like a drunk elf with pixie dust.

I’d walk into the kitchen to chunks of meat boiling in pots,

And her door closing upstairs.

Pizza boxes stacked in the bin.

She had the delivery men leave them in the garage

Her credit card there for them to charge,

Because she never wanted to see anyone.

She didn’t shower.

Hair stringy, sticky, liked cooked rice noodles

Everyone has some theory about how to kill bed bugs.

Poison, powder, bagging everything up until they slowly suffocate,

Calling someone up and paying them a thousand dollars to just fix it all.

My last girlfriend, a very good girlfriend, a reason to stay sane,

told me it takes three generations for trauma to work its way through a family.

My brother just had a baby. The first grandchild of the third generation.

He has big blue eyes that stare at light bulbs.

My grandfather raped his daughter, my aunt, regularly, until he died.

That is one of the few things I know about him.

She lives alone in the same house, heating it the bare minimum to keep the pipes from freezing.

Like a living ghost.

Bed bugs are hard because you can’t see them. Because they come at night.

And you’re ashamed of them. It’s something you don’t talk about.

Nobody wants to hear about bed bugs.

You can freeze bed bugs, but it’s hard to do.

It takes persistence.

Silence is something my family is very good at.

If you took away the endless mundane lists my mother makes,

To bring the laundry, buy a pot, move this mattress to that room, schedule the vet because the dog is picking at her hotspots again, licking the wound so it won’t heal, register my sister’s car, bring back the library books, make up the grocery list, search for the missing keys, search for the missing hangers, buy more hangers, look up the swimming schedule at the Y, renew the AARP subscription, look for pants at Goodwill, 

If you took that all away there would be nothing to say.

And maybe that’s fine.

I remember her saying that this program was the one.

“We’re finally over the hump with her.”

“She told me today she wanted to get better.”

And we’d watch my sister slowly wasting away.

Or eating away her pain.

It was always one or the other.

Waxing or waning.

I can see the moon from the cabin over the water,

This is a place that people come to,

To just sit and look out.

People say it’s beautiful here.

I remember seeing the veins on her bony face

while she used an electric zapper to kill flies.

Flies are easy. Satisfying.

She was living on her own.

Try to get her to make it on her own.

No more enabling.

Her finger got infected.

Her infected finger my mom ended up calling her an ambulance for

Because even though it hurt so much she couldn’t sleep,

She still couldn’t bear to leave her apartment to get to a doctor.

And how about that she wears a diaper and pisses herself every night?

At thirty years old?

Is that worth talking about?

Is that helpful?

I saw a bed bug.

That’s what started all of this.

It was out in the daytime,

Where it shouldn’t have been.

It was small and clumsy and fragile and horrifying,

And I killed it, 

I crushed it with two fingers.

Maybe that’s the trick.

We need to fix our eyes.

It’s like anything.

As soon as you can really see it,

You can kill it.

If we could see in the dark.

Or maybe we could stay up all night.

Or maybe we could go back in time…

My sister is made of vertebrae.

I’m thirteen and she’s twelve,

We’re on a family trip across the country,

but she won’t eat lunch.

When the trip ends, she’ll spend

the next twenty years in and out of hospitals

that won’t help her.

My mother will spend twenty years on the phone 

with insurance companies who will spend twenty years 

doing everything they can not to pay for anything.

My sister will scream at my mother,

Tear her down, over and over,

While my mom will do absolutely anything she can to keep her alive.

Bed bugs can survive for months without eating.

Do they feel good? Do they feel skinny?

In 7th grade, just before the summer when my sister got sick,

We had a period to write. Free write.

Write what's on your mind, whatever you want.

If you're not sure, write, "I don't know."

Until something comes to you.

Our teacher said one student had the audacity to write "I don't know" for an entire period.

For over an hour.

I was a good kid in school, 

but whoever that was, 

I kind of love them.

In 9th grade, I was playing StarCraft, my drug of choice for my adolescence,

Because drugs were bad,

but escaping into the hive mind of the Zerg for twelve hours was healthy fun.

My mom comes in and tells me my sister has swallowed all the pills,

and she’s taking her to the ER.

Without looking up, I say, “Okay.”

And she turns and goes.

Later I walk in on her:

“You’d think he would have said something! Done something!”

I don’t say anything. I don’t explain.

We’re good at silence.

With bed bugs it isn’t about the physical pain.

They’re basically just mosquitoes.

It’s the emotional pain.

It’s what they put you through.

It’s dark January.

I’m driving my mom to the airport.

She’s muttering low, nonstop, like incantations.

Her voice doesn’t shake, but I finally realize she’s nervous, she’s afraid. 

Which never happens.

And she’s not afraid for herself.

Oil in the water. Sugar on the stove.

“That wasn’t fair,” my very good girlfriend tells me later.

“For her to have you do that.”

What’s fair? Has her life been fair?

Bed bugs hate the light, 

but even if you try to stay up all night

they’ll come eventually to feed.

At first you might not react to the bites, 

but then you’re getting small bumps, 

then itchy swollen red welts.

I was her keeper for a few months.

But even then I was in Boston a few days each week.

Staying sane.

I shopped for her, rationed her food like the prisoner she was.

Thought I’d be the one, really connect, ask her what it was all about,

Get to the heart of it, that’s all she needs to do.

“She’s trying this new medication.”

“She’s going on an amphetamine, it’s okay, it’s an appetite suppressant”

“She’s been diagnosed OCD, she’s not actually anorexic, or a food addict”

“She’s reading about how God saved this woman and how she’s healthy now”

The militant atheist is all ears.

She was nocturnal while I watched her.

The light under her door, the toilet flushing,

The only ways I really knew she was still alive.

My other responsibility was to walk the dog

who could not interact with other dogs, because she’d been attacked,

and like a virus, would now attack other dogs,

creating a never-ending cascade of violence.

While I was keeping my sister I called Domino’s 

And said the one thing you can say to them to make them stop taking your orders.

I told them not to deliver pizzas to our house anymore

Because I could not guarantee the safety of their drivers.

Like some rabid animal lived here.

After that I found Chinese one night. 

Those black plastic containers stacked up.

Eight of them. Enough for an entire well-adjusted family.

I dumped them on top of the snow-covered compost pile.

And she screamed at me that they were hers, it was her money.

Like she was even there at all.

I told her to go to OA and a demon voice laughed at me behind her door.

I try to tell the Chinese place not to deliver, but they don’t understand English very well.

So I’m repeating over and over “I can’t guarantee your safety here” 

Until I can’t understand myself anymore.

I felt wrong in my room. 

It was wrong in that house.

Like living with a drug addict using next to you day after day.

The food was locked in the car, under blankets.

A secret cache.

I would eat in the frozen car and cry.

And wonder how my mother did this,

Had been doing this for twenty years.

What’s new trauma, and what’s its wake?

I don’t think tears kill bed bugs.

I couldn’t find anything on that.

After I found the Chinese food,

After I stopped the pizza,

After I got rid of all the other food in the house,

When I thought I had her in a stalemate,

And it would not be okay, but it would not be hell,

Because I knew she’d keep herself trapped.

She ate the toothpaste.

And she ate the dog food.

Is that worth talking about?

Is that helpful?

Is that a good one to trot out at Thanksgiving?

It wasn’t always dark.

I helped her learn guitar.

She helped me with girl trouble.

There were moments of lightness.

On good days she would do her mound of dishes,

Throw away things,

Do her Sudoku

Talk about tomorrow.

I have a peaceful memory hiking with my mom and dad.

Coming to the water and just watching white foam rising up and disappearing back into the dark blue.

A long time ago, three kids, a dog, a doctor, a teacher, three rabbits, hamsters, fish, iguana,

Someone brought a male rabbit, then there were twenty.

My dad trapped them and brought them to the forest in January.

What was the oil?

She drank it.

Mineral oil.

It’s a laxative, 

So she could eat and shit without getting “fat.”

After she flushed, 

I’d find drops of oil

Hundreds of them

Little perfect flat circles

floating in the toilet water.

What makes someone drop out of Harvard,

During finals, just about to graduate,

Like my grandfather did,

And spend the rest of their life violent and drunk and a rapist?

Was that from trauma?

Was he the third generation?

Were we close?

When it was all over I left for a small city and eventually LA.

As far away as I could go. Three thousand miles.

Like a familiar current, blowing me west.

When I came back for Christmas, she was in a program.

My dad whispered how overweight the nurse was,

And I just.

We ate Christmas dinner in the facility, under the supervision of a staff worker,

Trying to pretend like it’s normal.

She’s not up to weight, as per usual, she’s breaking the rules,

As per usual, she is drinking too much water, they want my parents to give up control,

To give the facility full reign to tube her involuntarily.

She wasn’t going to let them.

None of this came up at dinner,

There was a call on our car ride home,

Between my parents and my sister, her arguing against, them pushing back

Yelling into the phone on I-95 while cars scream past us

Like all of the drama I had missed in all the months 

Was now concentrated into this one horrible day.

They say don’t leave your bed if you have bed bugs

No matter how much you may want to

Because they’ll come find you

No matter where you go.

They took my sister from our house once.

When a therapist couldn’t believe this was all just from nothing

Or just from bad genes, or whatever.

I guess no one ever told her the three generations thing.

No one told her about the curse.

She was convinced my father was abusing my sister,

So the police came and took her away,

And my parents had to fight to get her back.

Cockroaches kill bed bugs.

Isn’t that something?

Is that metaphorical?

My mother is at the cabin with me

There’s no running water,

We collect the rain from the gutter

and dump it in the tank

And flush the toilet once a day.

She keeps the lights dim here,

To save money, supposedly

And she counts out change,

And she won’t eat out, even if the alternative is eating in the shed

By my sister’s trailer,

Because my sister won’t let her eat in her presence.

My mother sleeps in the bedroom next to me

And I hear her scream at night, sometimes

In the voice of a little girl.

My father left when I was in high school.

When I finally asked him about why,

Because back then, he was just gone,

Which really fucks with a kid,

(We’re good at silence)

When I asked him why,

He said he thought my mom was starting to believe the therapist,

So he left.

Someone, a psychiatrist, told my parents, when my sister was still only twelve or so,

That she would never be able to exist in society.

She would never mix.

That they should just lock her up forever.

My sister made us all collage posters for Christmas one year,

With pictures and a bunch of words describing us.

Anorexic, Rebellious, Stubborn, Anxious, Depressed, Binge Eater, Dysmorphic, Agoraphobic, Bipolar, OCD, Manipulator, Borderline, Narcissistic, Defiant, Unapologetic, Rebel, Intelligent, Brave, Persistent, Unique, 

After my dad left, the internet stopped working

I had to call tech support, and he asked me what kind of router it was

I couldn’t see anything on it.

We went back and forth, trying to figure out what fucking kind of router we had

I’m pleading with him, he’s pleading with me,

“WHAT KIND OF ROUTER, SIR?!”

I DON’T KNOW I DON’T KNOW I DON’T KNOW I DON’T KNOW

They multiply

Until you’re just a swarm of black

And the bugs scatter in daylight

And you’re not there.

Maybe that’s not true.

Maybe I didn’t read that.

I haven’t been sleeping very well.

I don’t want to become my bed bugs

We used to come to the cabin in the summer

We’d walk on the rocks and search the cracks

For starfish and sea urchins

My sister is living on her own again,

She’s doing well.

She’s keeping her weight.

She keeps it hot.

Maybe it’s a sweat thing.

Heat can kill bed bugs, but it has to be real hot.

A therapist told me that my level of anxiety was due to trauma.

She alluded to blocked memories, wanted to try hypnosis.

She all but said that I was sexually abused by my father,

No matter how many times I told her it never happened.

You’re talking to the wrong generation.

Is there some gold star for therapists who uncover sexual abuse?

A cash bonus? The fucking secret rape award? 

Maybe trauma is like a storm wave crashing on the rocks,

Crashing on the backs of each generation,

As they cradle their young and try to shield them

but the wave turns their body into another wave

that crashes,

and

At the cabin, present day, typing this,

I’m numb.

I’m hoping writing this will somehow wake me up.

Los Angeles was as lonely as people tell you it can be.

I remember writing that it would never feel like home, but maybe that’s okay.

Reading that is so sad.

Today, I was out in the storm, watching big swell, like California-style swell,

Welling up and smashing the rock slabs, and white foam caressing the top surface,

Washing it over. Small waterfalls formed as the water moved back to the ocean.

Rain fell on frozen pockets and turned to ice and little ice particles slid down,

And I guess melted again because they disappeared.

Does that all mean something? 

Do bed bugs have dreams?

My dad came here when he left.

Before moving up to Canada

Like some slow wind pushing him North.

It’s easy not to think about them most of the time.

But they’re there.

Under your mattress.

Growing, molting, laying eggs.

It could have been me. Is that something I should be thinking? 

What should I think of that?

What should I think of my dad saying she’d kill herself some day 

like it was a dream she was pursuing?

I thought he was a monster when he said that.

What’ll they think of me for writing this?

What comes next? I don’t know.

 I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know

She’s still going. “She’s doing okay.”

I'm tired of waiting for the end of trauma’s wake.

But it's not something you can just break, with a single violent act.

At the cabin,

My mother is worried that she accidentally left 

A container of chocolate frosting at my sister’s trailer.

She searches the car frantically

And sighs and sighs when she finds it rolled under the seat.

Once you’ve been bitten

There’s no going back

If you could just cover your whole body, 

armor it from head to toe,

No holes, no weak spots,

Maybe they wouldn't be able to get in.

It’s not my story to tell. I think.

As if silence has served our family.

As if nothing is festering,

Twisting dark roots and squeezing.

As if things like this die when you bury them.

When you throw your things away,

You better bag them up,

Tighter than you’ve ever bagged anything,

Or you’ll just end up getting the eggs everywhere,

And it’ll be even worse than before.

It’s hard to know when you’ve finally gotten rid of them.

It’s not some trumpet that plays in the morning.

It’s endless months and years of wringing worry.

Until finally you let yourself start to believe.

What are my dreams?

I don’t know. I don’t know.

I think about bed bugs passing from one house to another

From one generation to another

These terrible dark secrets

That come out at night

That are so hard to handle

That take everything you have

I go walking on the rock slabs,

There’s cracks and crevices 

I like exploring, looking for things

The sea urchins are long gone,

Bed bugs can hide in anything.

Does it really take three generations?

Or is that just how long our memories are?

If we could see through the foam, all the way back,

Is it just trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma

Until there’s no more me and no more anyone anymore watching the stormy water

collapsing on the rocks,

It’s just that primeval trauma of two things

That will never mix, 

oil and water,

love and silence,

And all the different ways there are to starve.

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know

What’s the opposite of trauma?

Does it have a name?

Does it protect a family for three generations?

Is there something magic like that?

Scarlet marks are wounds if you hide them, 

But worn openly, maybe they could be a sigil.

Bed bugs are small, 

like little dark jewels.

Like secret little black family heirlooms passed down from one generation to another.

Like the dark blood that’s in 

my mother 

and her sister 

and my father 

and my sister

and my brother 

and his baby.

Could you make bed bugs into earrings?

That would be something.

That would be brave.

I wonder if anyone ever named their bed bugs.

I don’t think that’s a very common thing.

But maybe that’s how you kill them.

Maybe that’s how you kill all the things you’re afraid of.

By speaking their name.

And hanging them from your ears. 

In a few days they will all come here,

We’ve been saving extra water for the extra flushing,

For the big meal, they’ll come to the cabin,

My brother, his wife, their baby, my father, my aunt, my mother.

My mother will put the turkey in and make mashed potatoes,

My father will carve it and talk boats,

My brother and his wife will bring stuffing and their baby,

My aunt will hold my brother’s baby,

My sister will of course not be there,

But she will also be everywhere.

We will take turns holding the baby,

Cooing our incantations,

We will talk about mundane things,

About Trump, and baby farts,

And comfortably confirm our humanity

At the cabin on the cliff.

Maybe that’s all they want.

When they come at night.

Maybe they just want to be heard.

Maybe they just want to know that they are loved.

Maybe they’re just lonely little pieces. 

They’re all just doing their best.

They are not monsters.

They are not monsters.

Anonymous.