I Know Why the Monster Cries

I Know Why the Monster Cries

At night, I lay awake. I could hear the laughter from the sitcom my parents watch on TV, the hum of the air conditioner, Ms. Jane’s tiny, annoying dogs yapping every now and then, and sometimes, I could hear the neighbor make her youngest daughter giggle next door. But these aren’t the noises that kept me up. When the world and I are silent, I could hear him above me. Our own monster in the attic. He had heavy steps, but that wasn’t what kept me away.  It was the fact that he cried nearly every night.

“Why does the monster in the attic cry?”

I asked my mother this question one morning while eating cereal. She stopped cutting the apples I asked to bring for lunch. At first, she looked at me funny. The corners of her lips turned downward, but not like when she was sad or angry. Her eyebrows made a ‘v’ shape.

“A monster in the attic? Monsters aren’t real, sweetie,” she reassured me and went back to cutting the apples, “You probably just dreamed it. Besides, we don’t have an attic.”

“But I hear him at night. He does it all the time.”

She turned back to me again. This time, she looked angry, but I wasn’t quite sure why.

“That’s enough, young man. Hurry up, you’ll be late,” she said. I got extra chores when I came back home from school that day.

I didn’t meet the monster until we went to church the following Sunday. Everyone was dressed up in their finest clothes since there weren’t many things to do in our small town. Church takes forever. I knelt and put my hands together, looking like I was praying really hard for God to bless our family or help me with school when I was actually praying to sit back down. My knees were hurting. The pastor then asked us to pray for a special someone, he does this from time to time. Usually, it’s an old person who got sick or a wife whose husband left her and their kids, but this time it was that little girl, Lillian.

With that special prayer, church was over. I held my mother’s hand as we left the chapel. We were almost out of the church when she was pulled into a conversation with some of our neighbors, every one of them went to this church. Another neighborly gossip session. My mother always joined in, even though she told me time and time again that talking badly about others behind their backs is a terrible sin. Ms. Jane, the plump woman with the yappy dogs, touched my mother’s arm to get her attention, “Did you hear about the man who lives above you, Louisa?”

“Yes! It’s insane. I couldn’t believe the rumors were true,” my mother’s hand flew to her heart.

“God, I can’t believe he got behind the wheel in his state,” Ms. Beverly, the resident piano teacher, shook her head and clicked her tongue, “He should be in prison!”

My mother nodded, “So, I thought. I mean, his own daughter, for god’s sake. How could he endanger his own child like that?”

“Oh, but… from what I remember on the news, it wasn’t his fault, right? Sure, he had a bit to drink, but another car hit them. He didn’t really do anything wrong. He’d never mean to hurt–,” Ms. Julia, the youngest of them, finally spoke up. Her voice was much softer. She sounded like me when I tried arguing against my father.

All the women whipped their heads to look at her. My mother nearly snarled, “How can you defend that monster, Julia? He put himself, his daughter, all drivers at risk!”

“He would’ve been more vigilant if he hadn’t been drinking,” Ms. Beverly argued while wagging a finger in poor Ms. Julia’s face, “It slows the reflexes.”

My mother and Ms. Jane agreed while Ms. Julia shrunk into herself in shame. Her head bowed down slightly, and she never spoke up again. Ms. Beverly looked up and her face paled. All heads turned to see who she was looking at, and all of the attention switched to the limping man. The women fell silent and looked in different directions, not acknowledging him. I looked directly at him. Was this the monster they were talking about?

He didn’t look that monstrous to me. I had pictured a large, towering bearlike man with eyes glowing red, a face riddled with scars, and sharp pointed teeth. I was right, somewhat. He had red streaks in his eyes like the thin rivers I see on maps of my classroom walls, but they didn’t glow. He hunched over so he was closer to Ms. Julia’s height than that of a bear. He had a long stretch of stitches going from his forehead, through his eyebrow, and ending on the side of his eye. To me, he just seemed like a strange, worn-out man.

He tipped his hat and gave all of us a sad smile, showing us his very crooked, non-pointed teeth, “Good afternoon, ladies.”

None of them said anything, but Ms. Julia greeted him with a small wave. As he passed by us, I scrunched my nose and noticed the others do the same. He looked like a normal man, but definitely smelled like a monster. He walked down the church steps, using the railway more than my grandmother did when she came to visit us last summer. I could hear him breathing hard as he climbed down the stairway. When he had ventured far enough away, the women went back to talking about him.

“He doesn’t look well,” my mother commented.

“Good. He deserves to rot,” Ms. Beverly glared in the man’s direction. She reminded me of the new word I learned in science class, venomous.

My mother sent me on an errand the next day.

“Take this to Ms. Julia, it got mixed up in our mail, again. Once you’re done, go play outside in the courtyard. You spend too much time inside; you need some sun.” She handed me a couple of letters all addressed to Ms. Julia. Some of them had red stamps with words in all capital letters on them. I did what I was told. Ms. Julia was very happy to get her missing letters.

“I can’t afford to miss another payment,” she sighed but smiled when she turned back to me, “For your troubles.”

She handed me a piece of chocolate candy. “And don’t tell your mother,” she added.

I was sitting on the steps, eating the piece of chocolate, when that cat appeared. It was that cat from before. Funnily enough, I had been doing the same thing when I saw it the first time.

It was two weeks ago when my mother noticed a couple letters addressed to Ms. Julia in our mail. Ms. Julia’s mail always got mixed in with ours. Perhaps she put down our address on purpose; it happened often enough. My mother always clicked her tongue and sent me to deliver the letters. Ms. Julia was relieved and gave me a piece of candy, making me promise I wouldn’t say anything to my mother. It was like a little ritual at this point.

I sat on the fourth-floor steps and ate my candy. I felt something soft and warm rub along my back. I turned around, expecting to see one of Ms. Jane’s annoying little dogs, but it was a cat. A green-eyed calico. It seemed to be challenging me to a staring contest. I reached out to pet it behind the ears. It closed its eyes and purred, leaning into my hand. Where did you come from?

A small voice rang out through the stairway, “Fiona!”

The cat meowed and trotted off, taking the stairs to the top floor. I followed it, wondering who the cat belonged to. The cat made its way to door 503, the apartment directly above mine. I stayed on the steps, standing on my toes to get a look at the owner between the railings. A young girl with dark curls bent over to pick up the cat.

“There you are Fiona, it’s time for supper,” the girl announced. She looked my way and waved, “Hi! Did Fiona bring you here?”

I ran off.

I never saw the girl again. My mother brought her up once while washing the dishes. She wasn’t talking to me but to my father, who wasn’t really paying attention.

“The girl should’ve been staying with her mother. He had no business being in her life and look what happened. She left him, she should’ve known what he was like, that he was incompetent,” my mother went on and on about how the girl’s mother should be the one taking care of her, not the monster who lived above us.

That night, the monster began to cry.

I hadn’t seen the cat since that day. It was probably supper time; the girl would’ve been calling for Fiona by now. I got up and pet the cat. She purred and rubbed against my hand. I picked her up and headed to room 503.

It was after I knocked on his door that the nerves got to me. This is terrible idea. Why did I do this? What if he really is a monster? But it was too late, the door opened. The only light in the room came from whatever was playing on TV and the cigarette hanging in his mouth.

“What do you want?”

A million questions came to mind. I want to know, why do you cry at night? Why does everyone call you a monster? Why do you have stitches and limp around and rely on the stairs’ railway so much? Why are you hunched over? What happened to you? But I couldn’t say any of that.

“It’s supper time,” I held up the cat even higher, “for Fiona?”

The monster’s jaw moved from side to side, the cigarette swaying the same way.

“Come on in, I’ll need some help,” the monster let me inside.

He closed the door behind him as I walked into the living room. The TV was playing what looked like an old home video of a little girl laughing and smiling while making a snow angel. I sat on the floor to watch. The monster slumped in the armchair and smothered the cigarette in a small glass bowl next to him. He then propped up his foot on the stool in front of him. His foot was swollen and purple.

“There. That’s Fiona’s food,” he pointed to a container in the corner, “I’d do it myself, but I can’t bend down, so… you’ll have to get out a couple of scoops.”

I did as he asked. Fiona meowed and rubbed against my legs. I gave her two big scoops of kibble. She crouched down to eat her food. The monster had been watching me the entire time.

“You know, Lillian named that damn cat. Begged me to keep her. Fiona only loved that kid, she scratched and hissed at me…” the monster chuckled, “but now that she’s gone, Fiona likes to sit with me. She never used to do that.”

The monster lit another cigarette. My mother would’ve made him smush it in a glass bowl. She always did that when guests smoked around me. But I’m not my mother. I stayed quiet about it. I watched the girl smiling and dancing in the videos then looked back at him. The images reflected in his glassy eyes. Seeing him like this made my heart hurt, “What happened?”

“Oh, how does a monster like me explain his sorrows to a child?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that. It was like one of those questions mothers and teachers ask but they don’t really expect an answer. I hated those questions. They made me feel dumb. I frowned and waited, hoping he would answer that question himself, but he never did. Perhaps he thought I was too young to know or that I wouldn’t understand. I let it go.

I looked back to the TV screen, “She likes dancing.”

“Oh, she loved dancing. Dancing, painting, photography. She was my little artist. I knew she saw the world differently than I did,” the monster sighed. He looked at the bookshelf, “Boy, hand me that large green book there.”

I brought over the heavy book to him. He smothered the new cigarette and opened the green album in his lap. I stood next to him as the monster flipped through the pages. It was filled with Polaroids, drawings, and photos of different things: broken windows, wilting roses, and Fiona waiting to pounce. With every page he flipped, the monster’s hands would shake more and more. He stopped a drawing of a boy flying, balloons carried him high above the city.

“She’s very good at drawing,” I commented.

“Yeah, she was. Imaginative, too. I’d get so mad at her for wasting paper or going through the film so quickly, but… it made her so happy,” the monster sniffled.

That’s how the rest of the night went. He showed me his daughter’s life through photos and videos because he couldn’t quite make it through the stories. He’d start but his voice would do something funny a sentence or two in. Then he’d excuse himself, take a moment, and just go back to making small comments about the videos or the albums. And I would just sit and watch and listen. He had a lot to show me.

A clock chimed. The monster gripped the arms of the chair to hoist himself up. He turned off the TV, “I think I’ve taken up enough of your time. You should be heading back now.”

I got up and went to the front door, giving Fiona one last scratch behind the ear. The monster opened the front door. I looked up at him. His eyes were redder than before.

“I’ll come again,” I promised.

“I’d like that,” the monster smiled, careful to hide his teeth this time.

“What should I call you? I can’t call you a monster forever.”

The monster let out a small, sad chuckle and shook his head, “Those crazy women. I’m Mr. Timothy to you, boy. Best remember that.”

“Alright then, Mr. Timothy, have a nice night.”

“Good night.”

I stepped through the door, went straight home. Straight to bed.

Now I know why Mr. Timothy cries, so when I hear him at night, I feel my heart start hurting, and I catch myself crying with him.