“I wasn’t drunk.”

  Mother smiles and looks at me. She bounces me on her lap and in a singsong says, “Vernon doesn’t know / His friends called me / Vernon doesn’t know / His friends were drunk, too / Vernon doesn’t know / It’s okay to get caught / Vernon needs to learn / How to just stop lying.”

  Vernon looks a mix of sad and furious. He puts his face physically into his hands and then he says, “Oh, my love, I’m so sorry! I was drunk. I really was. I don’t know why I lied.”

  “Isn’t he adorable?” she asks infant-me. “When will I learn?”

  He comes to the chair where she sits and kneels beside it and kisses her arms and knees and anything he can reach with his lips. He keeps whispering, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” until he reaches her face and my face and he kisses us all over our faces, even when Mother flinches, and then he calls out, “Marta! What’s for supper?” and waltzes out of the room to the kitchen.

  Mother holds me to her face and smiles at me. She holds me above her head and plays airplane. She hums the singsong she’d just sung and then disappears through the doors to the study with me in her arms.

  When the sitting room is empty, a figure emerges from behind the settee on all fours. It is my mother’s sister, my aunt Finch. When she’s fully clear of the furniture, she brushes off her hands and knees and walks toward the kitchen.

 

  The Islands

  My grasp of the Caribbean Islands is not great.

  I have memorized them several times, only for the names and locations not to stick. I can remember minute details of the strangest things and every one of Mother’s lyrics, but for some reason, Saint Kitts and Saint Nevis are not important to me.

  Vernon has given me a blank map with lines drawn next to each island. Instead of writing the names of the islands into the blanks, I write mnemonics—words that might help me remember. Mnemonics are the way I’ve always memorized things, often in the form of songs. This has been made complicated by Vernon’s music ban. Also: his insistence that I not become anything like Mother. I wrote a scene about it last night.

  INT. SMALL IMAGINARY PUNK CLUB INSIDE JANE’S HEAD

  Song: “Daddy Said”

  The music starts abruptly here with a guitar feedback squeak followed by very fast and loud punk music…

  We see JANE and her three imaginary BANDMATES, dressed as (foam) islands of the Caribbean, onstage at a small, packed imaginary punk club in Jane’s imagination.

  JANE

  DADDY SAID

  DADDY SAID

  MAMA NEVER LOVED YOU

  AND I KNOW IT’S TRUE

  BECAUSE HE SAYS IT’S TRUE.

  Jane sings into a microphone, toward screaming, freaking-out fans. She is dressed in short black leather shorts, mismatched legwarmers. Big fuck-off boots. Across her shoulders and chest is a rigid foam cutout of the island of Jamaica, painted with the Jamaican flag. Jane’s hair is tousled and wet from sweat.

  JANE (CONT’D)

  DADDY SAID

  DADDY SAID

  MAMA ONLY LIES TO YOU

  AND I KNOW IT’S TRUE

  BECAUSE HE SAYS IT’S TRUE.

  JANE and BAND

  TRUE TRUE TRUE.

  TRUE TRUE TRUE.

  TRUE TRUE TRUE.

  Jane kicks high in the air. The band members play a wicked good bridge.

  JANE

  DADDY SAID

  DADDY SAID

  I’M THE ONLY ONE WHO’S HERE FOR YOU

  WHO LOOKS OUT FOR YOU

  WHO LONGS FOR YOU.

  Jane is on her knees at the edge of the stage, watching the mosh pit.

  JANE

  DADDY SAID

  DADDY SAID

  I’M THE ONE YOU SHOULD TALK TO

  THE ONE YOU SHOULD TRUST WHO

  THE ONE WHO WILL HELP YOU.

  JANE and BAND

  TRUE TRUE TRUE.

  TRUE TRUE TRUE.

  TRUE TRUE TRUE.

  Jane crouches down, points to the BOUNCER at the edge of the stage as the band plays the bridge. She moves her head wildly to the rhythm.

  JANE

  DADDY PUT A HAND ON MY LEG

  SQUEEZED IT TWICE

  CODE FOR OWNERSHIP

  CODE FOR WORSHIP

  CODE FOR LISTEN-TO-ME.

  JANE and BAND

  LISTEN TO ME!

  JANE

  DADDY SAID DADDY SAID DADDY SAID.

  NO ONE CARES WHAT DADDY SAID.

  JANE and BAND

  TRUE TRUE TRUE.

  TRUE TRUE TRUE.

  TRUE TRUE TRUE!

  Jane is just freaking out now. Her island costume is crowd-surfing while she is left onstage in a black bra, mascara sweat running down like tears, screaming the chorus. Rolls around onstage.

  JANE and BAND

  TRUE TRUE TRUE!

  TRUE TRUE TRUE!

  TRUE TRUE TRUE!

  We hear the music fade and the sound of the crowd overtake it, then it slowly becomes background noise to the sound of a tapping pencil.

  END SONG

  INT. STUDY

  We see Jane sitting at her desk, pencil in hand, staring at a map of Caribbean islands. She taps the pencil in beat with the song that just faded.

  JANE (V.O.)

  The thing about the lyrics to Mother’s songs is that they are never lies. This is one of many things we have in common.

  Projection on DROP: a fast side-by-side comparison CLOSE-UPS of MOTHER and Jane as she lists each one: hair, nose, feet, singing, laughing, being smart, smile, lips.

  JANE (V.O.) (CONT’D)

  Other things we have in common—I have her hair, her nose, and her feet, as already noted. I have her pitch, her humor, her intelligence, and her smile. Her lips.

  Jane sits, studying her geography and looking out the window. MINA is in the tubes, watching Jane stare out the window. VERNON is napping lightly on a settee near the fireplace.

  END SCENE

  How Jane Came to the Punk Opera in Her Head

  One time Vernon was driving us to the mall. Seemed such an odd thing for him to do, but Henry was eager for cactus soil and Vernon was smoking a pipe at the time and needed fancy tobacco he could only get at the store there. I was eleven, weeks from twelve. Henry was eight. It was a mere month or so before the pandemic locked us all up.

  Vernon kept coasting through stop signs. And he never used his turn signals.

  I said, “Vernon, turn signal.”

  He said, “Jesus, Jane, you sound like your mother.”

  I said, “You still need to use your turn signal.”

  He said, “I’m a better driver than your mother, anyway.”

  I said, “Are you not using it now because I asked?”

  He said, “Yes, Jane. I am rebelling against you. We have switched roles. You are my mother now. I shall call you Punk Rock Jane and you shall spray the audience with menstrual blood and tell them all to go fuck themselves.”

  I said, “Jesus, Vernon.”

  He laughed and Henry laughed. I laughed, too. If I didn’t, I wasn’t sure what would happen.

  It was then, in the back of that car, that I decided that maybe being Punk Rock Jane wasn’t so bad. Not only would it annoy Vernon that I turned out like Mother, who had been completely confined to the System at that point for two years, but it would also annoy Mother that I was trying to be like her, probably. Vernon had already told me how insane she was. How negligent.

  I didn’t know that he’d spent all her money. I didn’t know about his deals with Finch or Marta or Milorad. I didn’t know about how utterly broke we all were, regardless of our posh Victorian lifestyle.

  I didn’t know anything.

  All I knew was that I had to do something to stay safe the older I got. The more I looked at the tubes, the more I had a terrible feeling that it would be me in there one day.

  MEET BRUTUS

  What you need to know is that I destroy things. It’s what I do. Once the funerals are over or the bulldozers have pushed the wreckage into piles, I am made stronger. Not muscles-stronger, but presence-stronger. We all have a presence, you know. Even rats.

  I have destroyed just about everything that can be destroyed. From reputations to whole people, I’ve decimated them. I’ve destroyed homes. I’ve destroyed families. I’ve destroyed cities. I’ve destroyed mothers and children. I’ve destroyed those most undeserving of destruction.

  I am a monster. Call me Algos. Call me Perses. Call me Shaitan. Call me Kali. Call me Satan. Whatever name you choose, know that I don’t care at all. You could call me ice cream and I’d still find the best thing about you and make you doubt it.

  Here’s what I see when I crawl around the Victorian home of Vernon Cook and Mina Placenta. I see weakness. I see greed. And I see splendor. I was born to burn it all down. Every piece of beauty and filigree—every gold-leafed accent—I was sent to crumble it. I am termites. I am tornadoes. I am floods and fires and sandstorms and cracks in the earth. I am the person who hates you for no reason. I am the person who bullies your mother. A tormentor. A sadist. I am every single rapist and every single child molester. I am every wife beater and every depraved nurse. I am the worst things you’ve ever daydreamed and every one of your fears. The scariest thing about me is that you can’t even fear me. Not now. Not ever. Made of myths, I am, to make you believe that I am an impossibility.

  But I live in the pool house with the Serbian who never sleeps.

  There is a reason I chose him. A reason he chose me.

  EXAM DAY

  Today is Tuesday, October 15, 2024

  Vernon doesn’t bother to get up early on exam days even though he makes such a huge deal out of us studying for them. While we wait for him to stumble downstairs, Henry and I look out the front window and watch children—some of our old friends—walk to real school. We do this most days between seven and eight, while Marta makes us breakfast.

  In the last three weeks I have [re]learned the countries and capitals of North and South America, the capitals of Canadian provinces and the capitals of American states, and the names of adjacent oceans and seas. I am sixteen and this is the stuff we did in seventh grade. And while Henry struggles through algebra at his grade level, Vernon hasn’t assigned him to read a novel since he was nine. If I had a way to do it, I’d write to the school district and tell them they have a duty to rescue us.

  It is soon time for me to argue with Vernon about it again. Instead of answering on-topic, Vernon talks endlessly about how one day I’ll find a man and live happily ever after. He makes it sound delicious—“You’ll land in the lap of luxury, for certain. I mean, look at you.”

  Indeed. Look at me. Long legged, brunette, porcelain tone, perfect teeth, dimples. Lap of luxury for certain, old boy.

  “Is that Peyton?” I ask Henry.

  “He’s so tall now.”

  “Wow. So that must be Anna. Shit,” I say. “She’s, um, grown up.”

  I look left only to see Henry scowling at me—all of twelve. “That’s what people do,” he says. “They grow up.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I can’t get a grip on time anymore.”

  Henry sighs. “Please, Jane. It’s not like you’re incarcerated.”

  I look over to the tube in the corner of the room. It’s empty now. I don’t think Henry understands any of this. I suppose he will never have to. I go to the kitchen and leave him staring at his old friends through the window.

  I flop myself into the nearest chair to the tube in the kitchen, put my elbows on the table, and sigh.

  “I should be at school like a normal teenager,” I say. I balance my chin in my hands.

  Marta moves around the kitchen and puts a cup of hot chocolate in front of me and then uncaps a whipped cream container and puts as much as she can on top of the hot chocolate. “Soon you’ll be old enough to do what you want,” she says.

  “I don’t even know how to be sixteen.”

  “You’re doing pretty great at it,” she says.

  I roll my eyes. “Please.”

  The System whirs itself awake. Marta looks relieved. Twenty seconds pass and Mother arrives in the kitchen tube. Henry joins us.

  She smiles at us and mouths a hello. She has pillow creases on her face and her hair is frizzy in every direction. Marta looks around for the two-way attachment for the tube. Vernon must have fitted the one-way attachment here yesterday.

  “You’re still in your pajamas,” I say.

  She smiles and gestures to her pajamas.

  Marta says to her, “You’re staying up way too late. You need rest before tour.”

  Mother nods. She leaves on Friday.

  “Today is exam day!” Henry tells her. “I know how to diagram sentences now.”

  She blows him a kiss for good luck.

  “And I know all the capitals of the Americas…same as I did in seventh grade and I should be in the high school with my friends experiencing my sophomore year,” I say.

  Before she can blow me a kiss, and before Marta can fit the two-way attachment, the back door to the kitchen slams. It’s Aunt Finch.

  “Complaining again, Jane?” she asks.

  I don’t answer.

  She knocks obnoxiously on Mother’s tube. “Hello, sister!” she yells. “How’s the weather in there?”

  Mother stretches her arms and rolls her neck. Henry seems panicked about what to do. He looks at his hands, which are folded on the table.

  “Nobody’s rescued you yet, huh?” Finch yells toward Mother.

  I watch her move around in her tiny capsule. I don’t understand why she doesn’t just escape. I’m not allowed to think this, let alone say it aloud. She is there because she wants to be there, Vernon says. “If she wanted to be your mother, she’d have found a way out,” Vernon always says. “And she’d have quit music” is the refrain sung by Finch, Vernon’s chorus.

  “Mind if I take your place this morning?” Finch yells.

  Mother looks into my eyes. She reaches up and presses the green button. The fan whirs. The capsule shoots down and out of sight, leaving the tube empty and Finch smirking.

  Marta goes to the far smaller tube next to the System—a pneumatic dumbwaiter—and puts Mother’s breakfast tray into it.

  “Was that porridge?” Finch asks.

  “Yep,” Marta says.

  “I want some.”

  “Okay,” Marta replies.

  Finch claps her hands together and then rubs them. Looks at me. “How much do you know about Brazil?”

  “Capital is Brasilia,” I say. “Biggest country in South America. Fifth largest in the world. They speak Portuguese.” I try to remember anything else. “Biggest Carnival in the world in Rio de Janeiro, and green anaconda snakes. I think that’s it.”

  Finch nods.

  “It has four time zones!” Henry says. He’s our in-house time-zone calculator. Anytime Mother is on tour, he can figure out what time it is where she is.

  “Why?” I ask.

  Finch shrugs casually. “I’m thinking of going back. I need to talk to Vernon about it.”

  Marta serves me and Henry French toast and we both dive into it. Finch isn’t ever here to see us. She’s only here to see Vernon.

  “I need to get my rightful half of this house first,” she finishes.

  As I eat my French toast, I try to count the number of times Finch has said a variation of this to me and Henry. I’m not sure why she bothers. Clearly, Henry and I have no say over what Mother does. Or even what we do.

  “She’s making so much money. Hides it all from us, you know. Even from you two,” she says. Marta places a bowl of porridge in front of her.

  “Why Brazil?” Henry says. “You’ve lived all over the world!”

  “And why so soon?” Marta adds. “You haven’t even been in that apartment nine months!”

  “I think I’m just a rolling stone,” Finch answers. “Plus, the view is infuriating!”

  The view is our house. She lives up on the hill, where she can see everything we do.

  The Ballad of Vernon and Finch

  I do not lie to God and I will not start now. My father, Vernon, has had a yearslong relationship with his wife’s sister, my aunt Finch.

  Always presented to us as an exciting world-traveling bachelor-type, dropping in whenever she happened to be in town, Finch commanded certain respect back when Mother wasn’t locked up all the time. The two of them used to play dreadfully competitive croquet games, and we’d pick sides based on who’d given us the most candy that day. It was always Finch because—even back when she was free to roam—Mother was controlled by Vernon’s sighs and glares and subtle shakes of the head and Finch had an endless pocketful of Tootsie Rolls.

  Back then, Henry and I adored Aunt Finch because, as it was told to us, Mother was an impossible and annoying woman and her sister was the cure to Vernon’s ills as well as our own—even if she wasn’t particularly kind or caring.

  In the six years since Mother has been locked up, Finch comes around a lot more, usually with a six-pack of beer, and she no longer hides her road-rash personality, though she is almost always staring into the screen of her cellphone.

  A failed musician and failed poet, she buys every one of Mother’s albums and listens carefully enough to hear everything she hates about Mother. Most recently, she hates that Mother has “all this space!” and won’t “just stay home!” because she’s “so busy out there getting rich.”