Murielle's House
By Ludmila Rishkova
To Daniel Rochefort ...Rock on, Baby
Everyone in town knew the house on Maine Street, the tired old thing in which progress and adaptation, slow as they were in Yellowleaf, gave up entirely. It was the house at the dead end of the street. The gravel path leading towards it stretched from porch to sidewalk like a tired old tongue. What was once lush overgrowth, children now compared to arthritis-bent fingers, their flesh and leaves dried up throughout the years. Its windows were near sighted eyes, the dust layering them like milky cataracts. No dog had barked there in over a decade. Zadie said so. Being fifteen and all, Zadie was a figure of authority for all of us.
The house, he said, was the first one ever built in Yellowleaf, which made it almost a hundred years old. It was the house of Murielle and Stephen and their twelve children who went on to populate Yellowleaf. Zadie believed that one of those offspring hooked up with many a passing soldier, giving birth to his grandmother, Mammy Leona, along the way. It was from Mammy Leona that he learned that Murielle still lived there. She told him so when she died, he said.
“She died before she told me,” Zadie said. The weather was shitty that day, so only me and Judy ventured on Maine Street. We had our bikes with us in case we needed to move fast. It was noon and the sky turned grey, then green, then yellow as we watched it press in on us. It made the world smaller, bringing Murielle’s house closer as we listened to Zadie’s story.
“Mammy Leona died, and only then she spoke.” Zadie looked gravely at Judy and I knew that he didn’t mean to scare her. He didn’t mean for anything to happen at all, but rather, in his boyish way, he wanted to impress.
“Her throat gargled when she spoke. I’ve never heard a living being’s throat make such a racket before, and the stench. She smelt like a dawg!”
Judy smiled, not quite believing perhaps. I didn’t quite believe myself but Zadie was a good storyteller and the mood was right.
“Her eyes rolled up,” he continued, “and she grabbed my hands in hers. They weren't cold like they say they turn. Only a little, but they were also hard and dry like-” he looked at the dry underbrush in search of a good word, “like fucking twigs. So she gargled and rattled and told me Murielle was there and would like to get a visit from her great-grandson.”
The air was heavy now, saturated with unspilled rain and the yellow clouds lay weird shadows on Zadie’s face making him look a little crazy. Later Judy told me she had thought so too, but she couldn’t tell me with Murielle’s house watching us.
“I’m going to visit her, like Mammy told me. You guys into it?”
He paused, waited for an answer we didn’t give.
“You don’t have to if you're scared.” There was something triumphant in his eyes as he looked at me. You aren’t good enough for her if you’re scared, they seemed to say and I might have given in. I might have followed if Judy went. But she didn’t and neither did I.
“We’ll wait,” she said.
“We’ll watch your bike,” I said.
“OK then, I’ll see you later. Maybe I’ll bring you a souvenir,” Zadie bowed, kissing Judy’s hand before he went.
We watched as he walked up the path, half expecting it to roll up and swallow him. We watched as he opened the door, revealing a deep dark entrance bathed in faint yellow light. After he had closed the door, a smell drifted towards us. Something sad and old that smelled of wet autumn leaves and something else too- a rotten smell, which Judy thought must have been like that of Mammy Leona’s dead breath.
We didn’t wait long before it began to rain, slowly at first, big fat droplets landing on Judy’s cheeks and nose. When it started to pour, she suggested we leave, which we did after propping Zadie’s bike up against a tree.
By nightfall, there was still no news from Zadie. Judy stayed over late, playing Zelda until her parents came to pick her up. Somehow, although we never spoke about it, it was decided that we shouldn’t say anything about Zadie’s visit to the house on Maine Street. The police came to ask questions the following day, but neither Judy nor I knew anything. When we found out that Zadie’s family was moving out a month later, we didn’t go to say goodbye.
***
By fall, Judy started to come over more often. She had picked up smoking, as a form of revenge, she said. She didn’t like the fact that her parents bought out Zadie’s house.
“When I lean out my bedroom window to smoke,” she told me once as she stretched her long legs over my lap, “I swear I can see Murielle’s house. And sometimes the lights go on, but not always. You think she made him stay there?”
“You think she was real?” I asked in return.
There was only one way to find out.
***
We were fifteen by then, Zadie’s age last summer, and many things had changed. Except Murielle's house.
It wasn’t raining when we stopped at the end of Maine Street, but the sky was grey and Judy’s hand in mine was clammy. We walked up the gravel path, feeling every branch clutch at us. A sheet of paper with an ink cross on it was pinned to the wall.
“We come in peace,” I read. “Creepy.”
Judy was peering into the dusty door window.
“Still want to go in?”
“What the hell, we’re here, right?"
Although only a year had passed since we saw the door open for Zadie, it wouldn’t budge for us. Holding hands, we returned to the path.
“Let’s go back, Danny. This wasn’t such a great idea after all.” Judy produced a cigarette out of an empty CD case, stuffing it between her lips. She was right. This wasn’t a good idea and I wanted to go, but something held me back. Some new feeling was eating at me. It turned and flipped in my stomach when I looked at Judy, the smoke escaping her lips.
Her lips, that’s what it was. Red and soft and warm. Of all the times and places in the world, my courage chose to show itself now. I put my fingers on her lips, taking her cigarette away and then covered her mouth with mine. I don’t mean to sound bad, but right then and there I was glad Zadie was gone. I knew I would have never kissed her otherwise.
She asked me what I was doing as a form of polite protest. She didn’t really care. She was kissing me back and offered no resistance when I lead her to the back of the house under the pretext of finding a second entrance.
We found one, but we didn’t care much by then.
“Shhh, I’ve never done it before, you know,” she told me. “And we have no condoms, and I’m…here,” she spread her arms.
“I’m here too,” I squeezed her small breasts. Fast, awkward, but efficient. She squeezed my crotch. Just as fast and awkward. Very efficient.
I thought I heard a noise coming from the inside of the house. A step creaked or maybe someone coughed, but I was sitting on an old crate and she was kneeling in front of me.
A cough, again.
“Judy?” I whispered. Suddenly I felt warm and she was spitting on the ground. When the door creaked, we ran. I stumbled over an old bike, and we kept running.
It was only after this incident that she started to mention Zadie again.
“We should have gone with him. Why didn’t you go with him? And that bike you tripped over. Jesus Christ, I think it was his. You ought to go see, you know?”
She’d get all fussy and anxious about it and would pace all evening, chain smoking until my mom would open the basement door and gently tell her to cut down on the smoking or go out on the patio. Every time she chose the patio, and every time after I patiently followed her around, listening, she would calm down and we would have sex. She never called out my name though. It was Zadie she thought of. I was sure, although she never said so.
Even our last fight had to do with Zadie. We didn’t speak afterwards, but I was leaving for college soon so it didn’t matter. She could have gone to hell for all I cared. She could have moved in with the ghosts of Maine Street. Only one thing bothered me. It was the funny stories I heard, like she went with other guys. And always in funny places.
“Under the fucking bridge Danny,” Max told me once. “Behind the old church too, and I heard she went with Jim into the old house on Maine. Creepy shit, eh? She’s smoking hot, but God knows after hearing all this, I’d never do her.”
It never occurred to Max that he should pipe it down. It’s like the three years I dated her had been wiped out of his memory. But I was going soon, so it didn’t matter.
I only saw Judy once after I left for college. Driving around with Dad one day, I noticed that the old house on Maine was cleaned up, the branches cut and a man my age was carrying boxes between his van and the house. A pretty girl stood in the doorway receiving them. She looked just like Judy. Something was off though, something I don’t like to think about. When the young man turned around, he looked too much like Zadie. But that alone, although unusual, would have been OK. What was wrong was that on my way back home, the house was back to its old self. To be honest, it looked more like a hearse than a home.
“I wonder if they’ll tear it down eventually,” Dad said. “Damn old thing is useless. Has been so for over fifty years.” He looked at me, his face taut and serious all of a sudden. “It ain’t going nowhere now either. It’s like the damn hole has fingers, eh?”
He fell silent, his close-sighted eyes fixed on the road, his mind somewhere else. Perhaps it was behind us, set on the house, watching it lest it moved. But I bet it was Mom he thought of. How she aged. Her walk to the grocery store taking longer and longer every week. Looking at him, I first realized what I know now. I will come back to Yellowleaf. That’s where the heart is, rotting as it is.