House of the Moon
by Mary Kay Jennings
“I’m going to build a house of the moon!” Sofie, my niece, tells me. She’s six years old and we’re outside in her back yard looking at the night sky. “A house for the moon,” she corrects herself.
Inside, her mother’s body is ravaged by a double mastectomy, bouts of chemo, and now enough morphine to dull most of the pain. Her mother is dying.
Jonathan, my husband, is by his sister’s side, reminiscing about their childhood years. Of that I’m certain. Jonathan has been fixated on those times since his sister’s health took such a turn.
As children, Jonathan and his sister weathered the storms of their parents together, hiding under the bed in the back room when words that couldn’t be recalled were screamed, when dishes were broken and doorjambs destroyed. When, as children, they were afraid.
The younger sibling and a boy, Jonathan suffered the after-shock. The beatings in the tub with the belt buckle after his father stormed out. He’s told me how his sister comforted him when, finally, the house was dark and quiet and he lay whimpering.
“What kind of house would you build for the moon?” I ask my niece. Outside, the air was crisp, the sky was clear, the moon almost full.
“I’d build a soft house,” Sofie says, choosing her words. “The moon is hard. Even harder than here on earth. The house I’d build would be soft and fluffy.” And then she adds, “So nobody would get hurt or be afraid.”
Sofie is fair-haired and blue-eyed and has her mother’s gentle disposition. Her father is gruff and harbors aggressive tendencies, a streak mean enough to have provoked my sister-in-law to consult a lawyer—at first to file for divorce—but after the prognosis, to make sure Sophie becomes the sole recipient of her insurance policy and retirement money.
I wonder how Sophie will fare once this ordeal of her mother’s death is over.
I wonder the same about Jonathan. About my children. About me.
Jonathan’s sister married a man with a temper like their father’s while Jonathan broods over his past and suffers from bouts of anxiety. Sometimes, his temper flares and lingers under the surface for days.
He too would like to build a house of the moon and take his sister to it.
Raised trauma-free, I’m ill-equipped to understand the debilitations of anger, anxiety, depression. I’m ill-equipped to cope.
We have two boys, ages five and seven. Fearing Jonathan’s anger might spiral out of control, I’ve become the family disciplinarian, an emotional shield between Jonathan and the boys.
I try to dispel the suspicion that any of us has anything to fear.
Sometimes, in the dark of night, Jonathan awakes gasping for air.
The first time it happened, I called 911; the EMT team diagnosed it as a panic attack.
Jonathan tells me that it happens when he’s dreamt of being chased and beaten. In the dream it’s like Mad Max, he says. Only when he awakes, it’s real
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About Mary Kay Jennings
Jennings has taught English, Creative Writing, and Humanities at San Jacinto College in Houston and was editor of the literary and arts magazine there for many years. She has published a humanities text, Stories That Changed the World, along with a number of essays and short fiction in McSweeney's, Sequestrum, YES, and other publications. Some semesters she reads and edits for Gulf Coast Literary Journal. She has a BA and MA from the University of Missouri, an MA and PhD from Rice.