Pomegranate Seeds

I often dream of killing my father. Not always in the most sensible way. Sometimes he stands there as I drive a knife through his neck. He doesn’t move, but he does scream. And I cry when he dies in my arms. I tell him I’m sorry. I ask for his forgiveness, but he never says a word. Sometimes he is already dead, a simple concept I am stuck trying to bring back to life in one way or another. Either through making a deal with the devil or pouring him into a mould, trying to shape him back into being. I always fail. And though I cry and apologise, he’s not there to listen. He’s dead. I call out to the heavens, full of anger and hate. I beg for them to give him back, but in a dream there is no one but myself to listen.

In the most inconvenient of dreams, the stranger ones where I am barely aware of myself, my father, or my surroundings, my father is a thing at the bottom of my foot. He has no shape, no consciousness. He doesn’t even seem human. Those days, I wake up sobbing, feeling his bones still crushed beneath my sole. I can hear him still, groaning beneath me as the ground pushes up against him. But I do not beg for his forgiveness.

I’ve never wanted him dead. Gone, maybe. But not dead. We weren’t friendly. He was a stranger who lived in my house, slept in my mother’s bedroom, ate at the dinner table, and fell asleep on the couch while the tv was on. He was loud, and had a strange smell that stuck to his skin. He didn’t know my name, nor my birthday. He couldn’t recall a single thing I liked, nor something as simple as whether I ate meat or not, even though I’d become a vegetarian when I was thirteen and had never changed since. He was the man who I remembered best for striking my cheek after I’d said, “I’ve already finished my homework, why can’t I watch some tv?” ( My mother had later held me close and said, “Forgive him. He’s just had a bad day today.”) But even so, I never wished him dead.

He had passed away a few months after my mother. Six months, to be exact. The official cause of death was a ‘heart attack’. The coroner had come and found nothing wrong. But I was there by his side when he died. The dreams came after we put him in the ground. First, he went limp. He’d been sitting on the couch, as usual, and had told me to join him. Then he’d sort of just… melted into the couch. His head fell back and his arms were at his side. They seemed to have popped out of place. His eyes had gone wide open but empty. Lost somewhere in the distance. His mouth then opened, drool falling out from the corner of his lips. I’d called his name, once or twice.

Then, he’d gone pale. Too pale. His skin turned a deadly white not too different from ash, and his lips seemed blue. He’d tried to talk during that, but nothing came out except a couple of grunts and moans. And though I’d wanted to move I didn’t. I couldn’t. I’d found myself unable to lift a finger or pull my eyes away from him as his skin turned white, and then the white of his eyes yellow. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, I could not move.

I remember crying. My lips had been sealed tight, but cries still tried to force their way through the flesh and my teeth. And tears burned as they made their way down my cheeks. I had tried. I really did try to move. I’d screamed and begged someone, anyone, to let my legs pry themselves away from the couch. But it didn’t matter. His eyes began to bulge, they pushed against the edges until they rolled out of their sockets. They’d fallen onto the couch and landed by his arms. He wasn’t alive after that. And I was allowed to breathe. I’d peeled myself off of the couch and towards the phone. It creaked when I did.

I’m afraid I too will die, just as he did. After all, he’d told me the day before of dreams plaguing him in his sleep. I’d caught him, awake in the middle of the night nursing a drink and watching a screen full of static. And since we were trying our best to talk, I asked if he was okay. And he’d said, “No. Not really.” And because he was drunk, he elaborated.

He’d said he dreamt of my mother often, after she’d died. That he killed her over and over in his dreams, sometimes with a knife to the chest and in others with his hands around her neck. He’d said they were always too real, and that he woke up sweating, shaking, and afraid. Always asking why she’d left him alone (I tried not to smirk.) And now, as I face him in my sleep, I worry that soon they too will write on my death certificate the date, six months away from him- to the second;

Oct 31st, 2:00 pm. Cause of death: a heart attack.

I’m afraid. I am worried. Mostly about who will find me once it happens. If the trick or treaters would even notice something is amiss. I doubt it. The house will be dark, empty. And since it’s just me now, it might take months before someone comes around. My father’s siblings and family had all passed away before I was born, some from heart attacks, others from an unknown sickness, and a few in accidents that my father liked to believe could’ve been preventable. And my mother was a single child, born to a single mother, who had died a few days before my fourteenth birthday. Now it’s just me.

I never know which lights to keep on, so that the house feels a little bit more lived in than it actually is. I try to keep the lights on where my parents would have been. So that it feels like they are still here. My mother in her bedroom. My father in front of the TV, half asleep. An empty bottle at his feet.

It’s going to be Halloween soon.

When I was younger, my mother liked to sit outside on the front porch. She wore a large mask over her face made out of wood. Shaped like a fox, with two large holes in place of eyes, so that her own could peek through. She said it was her mother’s, and her mother’s before her. Built to hide you from ghosts and evil spirits (she always had a smile when she said that, like it wasn’t entirely false but also not entirely true).

She sat on a rocking chair my father had made when he was younger and spry and still full of want. She sat there, a shawl wrapped around her body and a basket on her lap, filled with some sort of fruit. Apples, if her uni friend from a few towns up had sent her a box. Plums, if they were in season at the supermarket. Persimmons, if the neighbour’s tree had had a good year. And pomegranates, if my father managed to find her a bag.

She liked pomegranates the best. She pulled them apart and popped the seeds into her mouth. She held the fruit above the folds of her skirt and watched the leaves on the trees rustle in the wind. And when children came by, she’d drop some pomegranate seeds into their palms. Then gave them candy from the bag she usually kept at her side and said, “Happy Halloween!” I dreamt of my mother a few days before Halloween. It was the first time in months that she appeared in my dreams. In it, she was outside the house with pomegranates on her lap. I could not see her face or eyes beneath the fox mask. And she said, lifting a pomegranate from her lap, “Do you want some?”

I refused it, afraid that my father would somehow be the fruit. That I would kill him, yet again. This time crushing him down in between my teeth. “It’s not him. He’s not here. Not today. Just me.” She stated, and though the fruit looked tempting and I was starving, I said no. I thanked her, but no. I sat beside her, on the ground.

“I’m sorry about your father,” she said. She set the open pomegranate on the floor and began to work on another.

I shrugged and drew my legs close to my chest. She set a pomegranate by my feet. “I think I’m going to die soon,” I told her. She hummed in agreement and her chair creaked. A pomegranate fell from her lap. “I tried to think of someone who could come find me, but I couldn’t come up with anybody.”

“Preparing for your death, already?” She asked. “Don’t you want to survive?”

I did, but how could I win against an illness that no one knew anything about. That baffled doctors and morticians, and left men questioning what to do with the body.

“No one even knows what it is.”

She continued, “Shall I tell you how to live?”

“I can live?”

She nodded, and set a hand on my head. Her fingers were soft. “Do you love your father?”

“I don’t know him.”

Her hand stilled for a second before it went back to playing with my hair. “It comes through your father’s blood, you know. Through guilt and hatred. A curse passed down from parent to child.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No. I suppose you don’t. Could you forgive him, love?” I bit down on my lower lip. “He did only what he was taught.”

“He only ever tried to know me… to talk to me after you died.” My eyes stung and my chest felt heavy. “And now he’s dead. He’s dead and he’s left me all alone.” My mother’s fingers pushed through my hair. They set some strands behind my ear and I could not tell what she looked like behind the mask. “Isn’t that funny?” Drops fell onto my knees. They soaked through the fabric and my mother wiped a tear from my cheek. “Why didn’t he try earlier?”

“He couldn’t.”

“Why?”

“He thought it was enough to provide,” She explained. In the same way she did back when I was young. “That’s what he was told when he was young. That’s what everyone around him always said. And by the time he realised it wasn’t, it was too late.”

The stars in the sky seemed bright. It seemed like she was smiling beneath the mask. “Do I have to forgive him?” I asked. I dug my hands into a pomegranate, picked at the seeds.

“No, you don’t have to,” She said.

“But, if I don’t?” I asked. “Am I going to die like him?”

She laughed. She removed the mask from her face and set it on my own. “Do you remember the story of Sisyphus?”

“It didn’t end well for him.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, but her smile was still kind. “Do you trust me?” She asked.

“I do.”

She told me what to do.

On Halloween, I’ll wear her mask. To hide myself from my father’s curse. From sunrise to sunset. I’ll find myself in the tv room, unable to do anything else but wait, my body shivering and my palms sweaty. And then, if what she said was right, at three pm I’ll find my skin normal and my eyes still white and brown and in their place.

“How long should I wear the mask for?” I asked my mother. And she smiled, offering pomegranate seeds in her palm to me. I picked some out, dropped them into my mouth.

“As long as you want,” She laughed. The seeds felt small in between my teeth, and soft. They melted away against my tongue. “For as long as it feels right. But remember, we’re just chasing away death. That thing, it’s not leaving you on its own. It’s hungry, love. And it has to eat.” She stopped. “You don’t always have to forgive, you know. Sometimes, you only have to understand and accept. It helps stop it from consuming you.”

“Will it work?”

“Of course it will,” she said. “You’re not just his, love.” Her voice was soft, barely higher than a whisper. “You’re my child, too.”

I laid my head against her leg and held onto her. “I miss you,” I whispered. She patted my head, ruffled my hair. “I really miss you.” The sun was already setting, behind the houses and the trees, when I woke up.