It was an annular eclipse, the moon not quite obscuring the entire sun, instead forming a glowing band of light along its edge. I snuck a glance directly at the sky and found a ring that was more beautiful and more piercing than a full sun could ever be. A glowing yellow ring. I could slip my finger through it, hold it on my hand, bring it back to my mother and replace the one she wore, the one she pulled off and pushed on as she fought and loved and made up with her volatile young fiancé. I could replace that ring that came and went like the tides with something eternal; I wanted to give her a beauty that would burn forever. But the ring in the sky lasted for only a moment.
The eclipse proved something to me. I had been waiting for years to see one and it had finally come, as though my wishes had made it manifest. At the time, the eclipse seemed a culmination of so many good things that were happening in my life—I had begun to write something I thought of as a novel, I was making more friends, my chubbiness was melting away. And most important, my mother seemed happy; that gold band and its small diamond had been sitting on her finger more often than not. That slice of night in the day seemed like a miracle, a singular event that showed, just by its existence, that regularity and constant motion ruled the universe.
But historically, eclipses are not good signs. Eclipses are threats to safety and order. Angry gods flaunting their power—frogs, dragons, and demons eating the sun. Eclipses portend war, famine, and death. After the eclipse come chaos and disorder, raping and pillaging. When I looked up at the sky, I saw none of this. I saw only beauty in that fire-ringed darkness. I didn’t know that one small moment of darkness foreshadowed a much greater one. One that would block out the light entirely, and hover there for a very long time.
2
* * *
the night
The horror begins quietly, in the midnight hours between May 11 and May 12, 1994, after one day has faded and before the next has begun. I’ve been sleeping for hours, curled on my side and wedged among my many stuffed animals, surrounded by the white, filigreed metal of my daybed, one palm pressed flat under my pillow. Then, through the fog of sleep, muffled voices push their way into my brain. An argument. A high voice, a low one. They come to me as if through deep water. I’ve heard this angry duet before, and it awakens me no further. I remain submerged, and moments later I slip back into unconsciousness. Uncountable dreamless minutes pass.
The stillness is shattered by my mother screaming “No! No! No!” Over and over and over. My body lurches into a sitting position as quickly as my eyes open, and suddenly all the lights are on inside me, my blood is slamming through my veins, a high humming is beginning in my head, and I can feel my eyes continuing to open, stretching wider and wider, as though alertness alone could serve as a defense. I’m frozen bolt upright, palms flat beside my thighs, fingers clenching the sheets tighter and tighter as my mother continues to scream. She’s so loud it’s inside my every cell, so loud her screams turn the wall beside my bed to paper. That wall is all that separates my room from the living room, which opens up into the kitchen. I think she’s right in the middle, in the broad opening between those two rooms. I can hear her voice ring off the linoleum, the sturdy cabinets and drawers. We are maybe fifteen feet away from each other. We live alone. Just the two of us.
Panic spills out of me in one word: “Mom?!” Then I try to recall that word, to pull that air back in, gasping sharply because I realize, suddenly, that she can’t answer me without giving me away. I ball my hands into fists and my spine bends down sharply, as though expecting a blow to the head. I shut my eyes for just a second and will myself to disappear. Then I open them wide and listen for any sign that whoever’s out there with her has heard me. I hope that her terror has drowned me out. This hope feels selfish, even in this moment. The screaming continues, and I hear no footsteps approach my room, so I assume I’m safe. Something terrible is happening, and I can still try to get help, try to get us through it. Mom is still screaming “No!”
I swing my legs over the side of my bed and take two steps to my bedroom door. My electrified body registers my footprints in the short, bristly carpet. I lift my bathrobe off the hook and wrap it around myself, holding my breath as the slightly rough terry drags across my bare skin. My partially open door lets in a faint orange light from the kitchen; the dimmer switch must be on low. But the hinges are on the far side, so I can only see down the hall, away from the screaming. I cannot risk opening the door farther and peering around to see what is happening. I don’t need to see. I need to survive. Mom is still screaming “No!”
I grip the door handle tightly in my sweating palm, turn it slowly. I hold the latch in while I push the door shut, as silently as possible. There is no quiet way to push the button to lock the door, and it sounds like a gunshot announcing my presence. I flinch and wait, but nothing changes. I sit back down on the bed. My feet hover parallel to the floor. My posture is perfect, and my eyes are still wide-open; even my ears feel wide-open. Mom is still screaming “No!” I can think of nothing to do but wait, silently, and strain to piece sound into meaning.
Then. Boots thundering across the linoleum. A drawer pulled to the end of its runners, slamming at the end. Metal on metal, a knife pulled out, surely. Impossibly, her screaming gets louder. In that scream I hear absolute terror, terror I didn’t even know existed. But there’s fury, too. In my bedroom, I’m still, so still my locked joints ache. I hardly blink or breathe. And then.
A heavy, wet thudding, fast-paced. My hectic mind brings me the image of a gigantic fish, a five-hundred-pound deepwater sturgeon, wet and thrashing for air and life on the hollow kitchen floor. A hopeless seizure. I know there is no fish. The fish is insanity.
The no’s continue, now quieter and quieter, automatic animal moans, drained of anger. A sound of defeated sorrow. In tandem with one of these last moans, I hear a deep grunt, the sound of pure hatred, disgust. A finishing. Then, the staccato, robotic pulse of a phone left off the hook, beep-beep-beeping into the new silence.