The Weeping
Domestic Gothic Realism by NJ Fiction
This story is one of five featured in SUM FLUX, V.3: “Plumbing.” Our mission is to spotlight the finest writers on Substack, curating a dynamic collection of original fiction. See the full contents page here.
It started with a gentle tip tap on the day baby Friya died. It was a cool day, and summer was coming to an end when her tiny heart stopped beating. The medical examiner could not determine the cause of death.
The mystery of it sunk into Draya and Maurice, her parents, a poisoned claw making a home in their flesh.
At night, Draya found that she could not sleep. She often found herself pacing the hallways, making an ever-so-subtle dent in the wood floors of the house.
Ever so often, Maurice would step into the dark hallway and shush her, for her mumbling grew louder and louder as the night wore on. He did not want her to wake his mother. He did not want her weeping well into the late hours of the night or the early hours of the morning. Mostly, he did not want her reminding him of Friya lying dead and all the things he might have done differently to keep her alive. So he shushed her. Still—night after night—her tears found a place on the soft wood of the hallway. The house listened.
The first morning after Friya’s burial, Draya was shocked to see her mother-in-law standing in the hallway. She hadn't been out of her room without assistance for many years. Overwhelmed with grief, Draya did not linger on this occurrence, she was doing her best to keep herself from disintegrating into a pool of despair. The lady said nothing; she simply stood at the door holding tightly to the handle, staring at Draya.
***
That evening, as Draya sat in the tub in the scorching hot water trying to feel alive again, she realized between sniffles that the pipe in the sink and the pipe in the tub were drip dropping in unison. She stopped her sniffling and counted “one… two… three… four” drip drip.
“One two three four” drip drip.
“One two three” drip drip.
“One two three” drip drip.
The synchronization struck her as odd, so she yelled to Maurice to come. He entered and listened to her concern. She counted. The pipes plopped fat drops of water in unison. She counted. They plopped in unison again.
“Isn’t that odd, Maurice?”
“I mean, maybe, but it’s just water. I think you should get some rest. Too many sleepless nights. Yeah?” He said, stooping down to meet her eyes, and placing a kiss on her forehead.
“But—“
“I promise I’ll take a look tomorrow and check the faucet or replace the cartridges if I need to… okay?”
She nodded. He put his hand out for her. She stepped out and he wrapped her in her towel, then kissed her shoulder. She could feel some of the burden she had carried lighten.
The next morning, her mother-in-law sat at the kitchen table. It had been well over a year since she had seen her there. It scared her a little. The woman did not speak even when Draya said good morning or asked how she’d managed to get down there. She was so distracted by her at first that she did not recognize the kitchen pipe’s persistent trickle.
When she texted Maurice about his mother’s miraculous return to strength, he did not believe her until she sent a photo. She complained about the pipe in the kitchen too and insisted that he get a plumber to take a look at whatever the fuck was going on with their pipes. He agreed and told her he’d organize a visit by the end of the week.
By the time the plumber arrived, Draya had set up buckets and large pans to collect the plops. You could not go very few steps without stumbling into a bucket or pan full of water. She was surprised every day to see her mother-in-law gain more and more strength. She had even begun making her breakfast, creased hands moving with the calm certainty of a shark. This morning, she watched her crack and egg into a small frying pan and scramble the yolk, moving the spatula across the pan with steady precision.
***
The plumber’s knock took Draya’s attention from the lady’s cooking. When she opened the door, she was struck by his height. He was sturdy, quite handsome, with a soft, polite smile. She offered him a beverage, which he refused, and she marched him around the house, showing him all the leaky pipes that had worsened over the last few days. She left him to his own devices, but it did not take long for him to return, face contorted in confusion.
“Hey, miss, there’s some funky stuff going on with your pipes. I tried to shut the water off, but even that didn’t work. This might be a bigger problem than your husband explained. I suggest getting the water company to come take a look, miss.”
“There’s nothing? Nothing at all you could do?”
He shook his head no, then saw his way out.
Between the grief and frustration, Draya found herself pacing the hallway to keep from crying. The tears came anyway. She crumbled in the hallway, damp face pressed to the wood. Between sobs, she whispered Friya’s name— reciting a rosary for grief. The floorboards creaked, joining in her prayer, at least that’s what she told herself. Maurice found her asleep there, supple brown skin pressed into the flesh of the house. He carried her into the room and placed her in bed. She curled up the way a fetus would.
He watched her, a sadness settled nestling itself into his chest. He wanted more than anything to take Draya’s pain away. He wanted more than anything to have Friya back. The thought was a spiral staircase of all the things he might’ve done to save her, and it took him down, down, down into despair. In the bathroom before bed, he cried in the shower, shoulders trembling with the helplessness of grief. He let the water wash over him. He pretended that all the thoughts of all the ways he could’ve saved Friya washed down the drain. Pretended the drain was swallowing the guilt and grief.
***
Draya found herself awake again at 1:00 a.m She tried to go back to sleep. She dragged her body to Maurice’s. Took giant inhales of his amber cinnamon scent. She closed her eyes and counted, but nothing worked. She had decided to give up when she heard it, the faint cries that had imprinted itself into her soul. It was a loud and powerful bawling sound that could only be her tiny Friya. She sat very still, digging her fingernails into her palms. It could not be her. It couldn’t. She crawled out of bed. Shook Maurice twice. On the second shake, he grumbled but did not wake. She abandoned the room for the hallway.
It was quite dark, so she did not see that she was stepping into a hallway full of water. She stepped back into her bedroom, yelping so loud it woke Maurice. They turned on the hallway light and saw in front of their door a tiny doll made of burlap floating in the water. The thing was quite ugly. A black string ran from one side of the belly to the other side. Maurice kicked it over with his foot and saw that the thing had another face instead of a back. It made him shudder. The thing was just wrong. They followed the flow of the water to his mother’s bedroom. The two felt a great resistance against the door. When they finally managed to open it, they found that the water in the woman’s room was waist high, and she was floating face down—a lifeless puppet.
Even then, water leaked from the walls of the room.
“The walls…,” Draya whispered.
“They are weeping,” Maurice added. The two realized then that the house had been watching. The house must have known truths only watching walls could know.
It had watched enough of human life to know there was nothing like jealousy and resentment to turn a spirit. It had watched as the old lady had sewn the doll shut, having stuffed it with Friya’s hair and her own. It watched and listened to the wicked things she had whispered over the doll as she needled the thick, dark, tacky thread from one side of the doll to the next. It had creaked and groaned while it watched, mere hours later, as Friya’s soul fled her body and her youthful essence slipped away into her vicious grandmother. Then it had wept and wept some tears of its own, but so many of them, Draya’s and Maurice’s, that it had absorbed. It had wept until the origin of its sorrows had suffered a fate worse than Friya’s.
Maurice could not bring any tears to his eyes for his mother’s death. Draya had wrung herself dry just hours before. The two closed the space between each other, wrapping limbs–two sentient puzzle pieces remembering they fit together.
“It wasn’t your fault…”
“It wasn’t.”
The house listened.
Volume 3 SUM FLUX
SUM FLUX is elated to announce the five (yes, just five) writers chosen for our next volume. These five stars will each be responding to our new prompt:
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Lovely ending, I adore that the house was grieving. Your stories always keep me guessing and surprise me, they follow a logic purely of their own. This was wonderful to read!
Heartrending & beautiful. NJ, you've done the seemingly impossible: written a plumbing story that plucks at the heartstrings. You are a true master of the craft.