I was 15 years old when my mother decided to become a vampire. The week before, she’d picked me up from school and said nothing to me the whole ride. Usually we would run errands together, going to the market to buy fresh greens for the week. She taught me how to pick out the good apples from the bad ones. “You have to learn how to do this for your own family one day,” she would say. But this time, instead of driving us to the parking lot of the supermarket, she turned into a road I’d never seen before.
“Where are we going?” I asked, and she ignored me.
When we came to a stop, we were in front of Casket Emporium. There was a huge sign that said, Open 24 Hours: Same Day Delivery. I guess merchants of death worked quicker than Amazon Prime.
“Did someone die?” I asked, horrified.
“Me,” she said with a small smile. A pale man in a dark suit showed us around the coffin shop. He smelled of wood and barely spoke above a whisper, as if the room was full of the dead.
“You can shop by category: wood, metal, eco-friendly.” He went on about how bamboo and seagrass caskets were all the rage these days. “Better for the environment,” he said, nodding like he’d said something wise.
“What are we doing here?” I hissed at my mother. She refused to meet my eye.
My mother pointed at a casket in the corner and said, “That one.”
“Ah the Mother Casket,” he said. “A fine choice.” The casket was pink with bronze and lilac tones. The interior was fully lined with baby pink bedding, a matching soft pillow and throw. The word “Mother” was embroidered in the head panel.
She scribbled down an address that wasn’t home. “I want it delivered tonight,” she told him as she climbed into the coffin.
“Mom—”
“Veneka,” she said, cutting me off. I looked at her, confused.
“My name is Veneka,” she declared before slamming the lid shut.
The casket cost three thousand dollars. My mother didn’t have that kind of money, of course. She quit her job when she became a pastor’s wife and had me. By the time she was ready to go back on the job market after three kids, no one would hire a middle aged woman at entry level. That was the year my father had an affair. He wanted more sons, he told her, shrugging. God had told him in a dream to be fruitful. So he multiplied and got three more sons, brought them to our house for my mother to raise. “Their mothers aren’t good women like you,” he said. My mother ate her rage.
We learned that my mother took the money for her casket from our church fundraiser group. Each month, the women in church pulled together money to donate to causes of their choosing, like feeding the orphans and grieving widows. As the pastor’s wife, my mother was the most trustworthy person in church, so she’d been in charge of keeping the money for fifteen years. On the day my mother decided to become a vampire, the mob of church ladies descended on our house, demanding their money. They moved and spoke as if they were a singular mind, wearing the same colorful large hats atop their heads like crowns, narrowing their eyes and sucking in their teeth at the same pitch. My mother had been in sync with them once, moved with the same grace and fury. All their teeth were straight, the bite filed out of their fangs to make perfect pearly white smiles. Sometimes I practiced being them in the mirror, tucking my lips over the pointy bits, softening my sharpness.
“Where is she?” they demanded.
My father threw his hands up in the air and said, “She is gone.” The church ladies gasped. Suppressing the thirst was like breathing. There was nothing more base than a woman who hungered.
“What kind of mother abandons her family?” The church ladies’ collective scowls morphed into pitiful glances, their heads tilting in my direction. I squirmed under their gaze, afraid that they could see a truth I’d starved out of my body. “You must be strong now,” they said to me. “Now more than ever.”
They took turns bringing tupperware of steaming home cooked meals to my father. Some who were widows or unmarried lingered longer to watch my father lick his plate clean. He never wanted for company.
We lived in a house of God so He was always watching. Our sleeping quarters were in the tower at the top of the cathedral. The cathedral was at the center of town, its spires so tall that it almost touched the sky. Sometimes I wished I could be nailed to the spires. I wasn’t worthy of a cross but perhaps that would show my devotion. Would they make a saint? Would they carve my likeness into marble and place me next to Mary? I’d never seen a saint with an Afro and broad nose before.
Whenever I did something wrong, my punishment was to spend the night praying in the chapel downstairs. The stained glass window, the gargoyles, and the pale marble statues of saints would look down on me, judging. I hated spending the night in the chapel, the wind howling outside like screams. My father always said God was watching, that God dwelled in this house. I imagined His eyes in the walls watching my every move. Whenever I was tempted to put more than two sugars in my rooibos tea, the scarlet red of the tea licking the porcelain cup, I remembered that I always had an audience.
My father was quite useless around the house, breaking into tears when my little brother asked for help with ironing his uniform. I learned to cook all his favorite meals, throwing away the lunchboxes the church ladies left for us before my father got back home from seminary. The church ladies were ravenous intruders and their lunchboxes were the bait to hook themselves into our house. I always watched my father from the moment I put the plate in front of him. He picked up the salt shaker, releasing a vigorous stream of salt until the dish was dusted in fine white granules. He never tasted the dish before adding salt. Once he’d emptied the shaker into a beef stew before tasting it. That always irked my mother. The last fight they’d had the night before my mother went in search of a coffin was over salt.
“A real man always adds salt,” he said.
“Even when the dish is perfectly seasoned?” My mother snapped back. “Nothing is ever enough for you.”
The salt didn’t bother me. What I disliked was the way he ate. He ate like someone who’d never been denied—with his whole mouth open, his tongue flicking like a great serpent. My father had an intimate relationship with his burp. If eating was a sentence the burp was the period, an exclamation point. A meal was not complete without it.
I wondered where my mother ran off to and what she was doing with her coffin. Did she sleep in it during the day and come out at night? Was she happier in a pink box made for rotting? I tried to imagine what it was like to be her. Sometimes when no one was watching I would grab the car keys, unlock the trunk, and climb in. I couldn’t understand why being closed in with the darkness called to her. Was she happier because it was a box she’d chosen for herself?
After three weeks, my father went in search of my mother, determined to bring her back. The plan was to musengabere. In the old days, when a man loved a girl who didn’t want him back, he would wait until she went to the river to fetch water and snatch her up and put her over his shoulders. Once he took her home, she was considered by custom his wife and could not return to her father’s house. My father took with him a large sack, which he would use to enclose my mother in there and bring her home. I wondered if all marriages were musengabere? When my father returned, the sack was ripped open and the only thing he had to show was the scratches, bruises, and bite marks all over his body.
“She’s not coming back,” was all he offered as an explanation. “She’s a vampire now.” Sometimes good apples rot.
“Does mama drink blood now?” my brothers asked. We were on our knees saying our evening prayers before bed. “Baba said she’s a vampire.” I imagined Mama dangling from a tree like a bat, wings stretched and talons sharp to snatch people away. The last bedtime story I read to my brothers was of the tikoloshe. Tikoloshe didn’t feed on blood, but energy. What I didn’t tell them was that a tikoloshe’s favorite feast was the taste of a woman climaxing. It sought out this delicacy by climbing into beds at night. That’s why all our beds were raised: the tikoloshe was small in stature and couldn’t reach a raised bed. I pulled my legs closer together and shivered. It was whispered that some girls liked to lower their beds in the middle of the night, whimpering into their pillows. The tikoloshe savored the secrets between their legs.
I decided to read another bedtime story to my little brothers. This one was about pumpkins turning into carriages. Could mothers turn into monsters? Stories always ended with the girl turning into a princess but Ever-after had a long middle. Sometimes butterflies emerged from the cocoon that was motherhood, sometimes something else. Butterflies were just worms with wings.
“Are you going to become a vampire one day too?” My brothers asked.
“I’m not that kind of woman,” I insisted.
“Father says all women have Eve’s curse,” my brothers said. “That’s why you bleed every month.”
I remember the day when I took off my underwear and saw red for the first time. My mother helped me wash off the blood and told me, “This is the most dangerous time for us. The hunger only grows.” In church we prayed it away. Together we read of Eve and her wicked tongue which tasted the world into ruin. I was always curious about that first bite, breaking into skin, and tasting the flood of sweetness in her open mouth. I punished myself for my curiosity. There was nothing more base than a woman who hungered, we repeated to each other and it quenched us. But now my mother had betrayed us and followed the path of Eve.
With mother gone, I started packing my brother’s lunches, helping them with their homework, walking them to school, and putting them to bed. One day I was slicing fruit and nicked my finger with the blade. The blood teased me as it spilled onto the cutting board. I washed it away in the sink and watched the blood disappear down the drain, baptizing myself clean of the intoxication. I grabbed disinfectant wipes and scrubbed the counters until I could see my face in it. My pupils were dilated.
On Sundays, I couldn’t stand the pitiful glances and whispers in church so I strived to be the opposite of my mother. Whenever someone was needed to make cakes for the bake sales, my hand shot up first. I led youth bible study and babysat for church members. I was always first one in the church service and last one out. It was as if my mother left behind a glass slipper and I needed to stretch my feet to fill her shoes. A year passed and my mother’s absence was soon forgotten. The glass slipper fit so tight and snug that I forgot the blisters.
One year stretched into two. My mother didn’t return. I was seventeen now, and all the girls my age in church pairing up with boys in marriages blessed by my father. All the boys avoided approaching me, afraid that I’d inherited my mother’s hunger. One afternoon, a church lady who’d always made it a point to compete with my mother broke the news to us: my mother had been spotted in town.
I tossed and turned in bed that night, knowing my mother was so close. My father told us to give up on her, that she was dead to us. The moonlight shone through my windows, penetrating the room with its soft glow. I always preferred the sun. The moon was an accomplice of the darkness. Most people often thought of the moon as a woman, but in the Shona creation story, the moon is the first man. The moon was created by the god Mwari in a deep pool of water. He grew restless and lonely and begged Mwari to let him live on land. Mwari obliged and sent him a partner, the morning star, on the condition that she would leave after two years. The couple gave birth to all the trees and flowers on earth, their lovemaking an endless spring. After two years, the morning star returned to god and a long winter descended upon the land. So the moon petitioned for another wife and was given the evening star. Together they gave birth to every bird in the sky and reptile in the ground, and the earth crawled with life again. The evening star, Venekatsvimborume, refused to leave after two years and brought the first sin upon the world. She mated with a snake, marking the dawn of all human suffering. My mother shared a name with the evening star. She was my Pandora. I blamed her for every ill. I read somewhere that Pandora actually didn’t have a box, that the word clay jar had been mistranslated to a box. I imagined Pandora holding a jar with all the world’s sins pickled inside it. The ancient Greeks also used these jars as coffins. Perhaps it was only fitting that my mother chose to return to a coffin.
Sleep eluded me so I got up to pee. In the bathroom, I made sure not to look in the mirror as I washed my hands. I avoided mirrors these days because my reflection reminded me so much of my mother. How much of my mother was inside me? I turned the hot water up to the max and rubbed my hands vigorously underneath the scalding deluge. I could baptize the parts of myself that came from her, but there was always the nagging question at the back of mind—where did she end and where did I begin? Did any part of me truly belong to me? When I returned to my room I thought of the tikoloshe, of the girls that lowered their beds for it at night. I knew now that my mother was one of those women, that this is what she must have done the night before she left us. I wondered what it was like to let a tikoloshe in. I was stronger than my mother. I would show her that I could look temptation in the eye and resist it. I lowered the bed and climbed in, laying on my back with my legs open. I wanted to know why my mother had chosen this over us, over me. I wanted to show God that I could make a different choice. I called upon God to come watch, to come see me tested like our savior in the desert. I closed my eyes and went to sleep.
In the middle of the night, I was awoken by a low growl. My window was open, a cold draft rustling the curtains. The hot breath against my thighs made my blood run cold. I dared not look down. I stared up at the ceiling, at the wall paper of pale cherubs on clouds plucking harps. A moist tongue flicked out, found a spot in between my legs and my body eased into the touch, like an itch I’d been carrying my whole life had finally been scratched. A wave of pleasure washed over me as the tongue picked up a steady circular rhythm. I writhed like a snake, biting into a pillow to stop from moaning. A tikoloshe was between my legs and I was enjoying it. The tikoloshe fed on energy—the more pleasure the tikoloshe gave me, the more I satisfied it. How could I enjoy something so monstrous? The higher the bed the closer to God, and I had lowered my bed. How many lowered beds were in my bloodline? I imagined my mother and the many women before her laying like this with their legs open just like this. I wasn’t like her, I was nothing like her, I screamed at myself. I raised my legs and kicked the tikoloshe and it howled in pain. “Get away from me you monster!” I screamed at it. The tikoloshe slinked away into the shadows and out the window. The wetness between my legs was a betrayal. I’d failed. I fled from my bed and jumped out the window and into the night, anger and revulsion at war with each other. My body was a temple and I’d let a monster into the house of God.
My mother was rumored to frequent a bar at the edge of town every Friday night. I stood outside for hours hiding behind a dumpster, watching people coming in and out of the bar. I saw her come in but couldn’t muster up the courage to approach her. I shook with anger that she would rather be there than at home with us. I swatted at the mosquitoes taking their fill of me. I caught one in my hands, squeezed it until a tiny splatter of crimson colored my palm. My mouth watered and I screamed at myself to wipe it off. I wanted to wipe it off, I wanted to be better than my mother, I wanted to be good. I inhaled the faint rustiness and my tongue grew an appetite of its own. I licked my palm clean, closing my eyes to savor the tangy sweetness of the blood. The rage stormed inside me at my body, betraying me. This was all my mother’s fault. I stormed into the bar, scanning the room for her. My mother was seated at the bar with a group of other women, one of them was nipping at her neck. My mother was throwing her head back in laughter. I’d never seen my mother laugh with her whole chest, like she was holding fireflies in her body and they were all twinkling at once. My mother had always been anxious, unable to sit still for too long. Even when the house was spotless, she would refold the laundry and wipe down the counters until her hands bruised red. A whiff of Lysol followed her everywhere she walked. Now, there was a lightness about her, like she’d made stillness her home and she smelled of something sweet and forbidden. I knew that the woman I was looking at wasn’t my mother. This was Veneka.
Veneka was drinking a cocktail, its color the scarlet of a wild strawberry. My mouth watered and I swallowed back the thing I craved. The woman next to her raised her bloody glass toward me. An invitation. I declined. Vampires needed a yes to enter.
“Please come back home,” I said to my mother.
“No,” she said.
“I will never forgive you,” I said.
“No one ever forgives their mother,” she said, shrugging. “Fathers yes, but a mother never.”
“What kind of mother abandons her children?” I screamed at her. The women around her barred their teeth at me in warning.
“Being a good woman will eat you alive,” she said. “Every day it takes a piece of you. A chunk here, a chunk there until there is nothing left.” She chugged the cocktail, her gulps sending waves of nausea rippling through my body. I clutched my throat, dry as a raisin in the sun, but I would not give in to the thirst. I was better than that. I was better than her. I would never be like her.
She licked the last drop of her drink off her lips, her teeth glinting in the low light. She’d stopped filing her teeth.
She dismissed me with a wave of the hand, “Be a good girl and run along now.” I turned to leave, bolting towards the door. “And one more thing,” she shouted back at me. “They’ve already begun to drain you too. So ask yourself, “Do you want to be good or do you want to be whole?”
My mother continued to quench her thirst as I fled in the opposite direction, my throat closing in on itself.
