The Monkey


Keith was a young boy, age nine. He lived in a small house with his mother and father and two sisters, ages four and five. His mother was ill. Years ago, even before Keith was born, his mother was told she was sick. For weeks at a time, Keith's mother would lie in bed and move barely an inch. It was Keith's job to take care of her, because his father worked thirteen hours a day in a shoe factory.
Keith would feed her soup and read her stories from his book of fairy tales. Her favorite part of every story was the end, because all the stories ended "happily ever after". They made her so happy that she cried.
Keith also was put in charge of his sisters. They were so noisy! Sometimes Keith wanted to shut them in the closet, but his father told him to always watch over them. Keith did as he was told. He fed them yoghurt and cheese, and covered his ears when they screamed "No! We don't want to eat!" He read them stories from his book, but they wanted to go to the cinema like their schoolmates. He bathed them and put them to bed before seven o'clock.
Keith's father returned home at ten o'clock at night every night of the week. He would come in the house, sit down, and ask Keith to fetch him a glass of milk. Then, he would climb into bed with Mother and fall asleep.
Keith's sisters often woke up screaming, pointing outside their window and crying that they saw a monkey with "long arms and black eyes," but Keith never saw such a thing. He simply told them to go to bed like good children, and he would do the same.
One day, when Keith's mother was bedridden with a terrible fever and chill, he was feeding her soup, as he always did when she was sick. He heard both his sisters scream.
"The monkey! The monkey is in our room!"
Keith had quite enough on his hands as it was, and shouted back, "tell it to come back some other time!"
But his sisters continued screaming, and his mother looked so worried that Keith got off the bed and stomped to his sisters' room. He looked around the room.
"Now see here, Mother is feeling very poorly! Please don't bother me with the monkey."
His younger sister said "The monkey is under the bed!"
His youngest sister said "The monkey is in our armoire!"
Keith threw open the armoire and looked under the bed. "The monkey is not in this room at all. You are both simply foolish and selfish children." He stomped out of the room and climbed back on Mother's bed.
For a time after that, Mother was well and happy. She walked around the house, and tended to the garden, and read books to herself, and even roasted a whole chicken. When Father came home after work, Mother was there, waiting with his glass of milk. Keith was happy as well. When Mother was well, he was free to do as he wished, which was to draw mazes. He drew on every scrap of paper- reciepts, notes, newspapers, but he left his books alone.
At the center of each maze he drew a heart. He would draw a maze, set it aside for a month, then return to it and try to solve it. When he reached the heart in the center, he would whisper "I love you" to no one in particular. When he could not solve his own maze, he became very agitated indeed. He would pull on his hair, scream angrily, and tear the paper up. Once he managed to make himself so frustrated he pounded his fists on his head until he fell unconscious. Not long after that, Mother became sicker. She would lie in bed, and not even wake up to be read to. She would open her mouth for soup, but she never spoke or smiled, or even opened her eyes. Keith would lie on the ground next to her bed and imagine mazes on the ceiling. He moved his finger through the invisible labyrinth and imagined the heart at the middle.
"I love you," he spoke aloud when he reached it.

Four months after the progression , and sixteen days after Keith's tenth birthday, Mother died. Father didn't even know until he came home for milk. He threw Mother's favorite vase out the window and poured all the milk down the sink. They could not afford a funeral; Mother was buried in their yard, next to the tomato vines. Father said that at least there she could be with her garden.
Father stopped going to work. "It's so noisy there," he complained. Somehow, he managed to bring home bread and cheese whenever he went out. Keith's sisters awoke nearly every night, shrieking and pointing at a face Keith could not see. Keith began going to school. He had never been. They placed him in a remedial class, with a teacher whose voice sounded like a great locomotive. Mister Hains. Every day at school Keith was handed a worksheet. He was meant to copy the letters of the alphabet, but Keith drew mazes. The walls curved around the B's belly, and zigzagged over M's crests. False routes coiled around the center like the tentacles of a jellyfish. In the center was the heart. But Keith did not try to reach it. He simply drew more and more ways to go the wrong way, to get stuck, to be trapped in an endless loop.
"Keith, you're meant to copy the letters," said Mister Hains.
"I know," said Keith.
"But you drew mazes," said Mister Hains.
"I know," said Keith.
Mister Hains opened the cabinet and piled up all the sheets Keith hadn't filled out properly.
"I want you to finish these before you go home. All of them." He gave the sheets to Keith and sat down at his desk. Keith didn't finish until it was dark outside. It took all he had to not draw a maze. In fact, he drew little hearts in the holes of the letters. Mister Hains looked at them with disappointment.
"Keith, this isn't right..." he sighed. "You'll just have to do them again tomorrow."
When Keith arrived home, his sisters immediately began to scream. He rushed into their room, knowing what they saw.
"The monkey is inside our toy chest!"
"The monkey is inside the paint set!"
Keith overturned the toy chest and scattered the paints all over the room.
"There! Do you still see your monkey?"
"The monkey is hiding underneath the radiator!"
Keith rattled a toy train around underneath the radiator.
"Where is it now, then?"
His sisters were quiet. Keith left the room angrily and lay down to draw a maze. It was the most complex one he had ever made. There were eight points of entry, each one leading to a network of corridors that curved around the heart, three petals pointed towards the center, all composed of complex submazes. He set the maze atop the ice chest to solve later.






Over the next few days, Father began bringing a woman home with him. Keith's sisters asked if they were getting a new mother. Father flatly said "no." The woman's name was Lanette, and she was nothing like Mother. She smelled old and her hair was greasy and she slept nearly all day. When father went to work, Lanette would lie on the couch and read magazines or just sleep. Keith had on several occasions asked her if she enjoyed mazes, but every time, she would ignore him. Sometimes friends from her old home visited. They and Lanette spoke privately in Mother's room.
When Father came home, he did not drink milk. He and Lanette simply went to bed when he returned. The milk in the ice chest spoiled, and Keith threw it out. After that, there was no milk at all.
School got harder. Because Keith was so behind, he was given worksheets to learn numbers. Four was especially hard for him. The angles reminded him of turns, and he often caught himself in the middle of filling up the paper with a maze. He was sent home by an angry Mister Hains.

















Father wasn't home. Lanette lay silently on the couch.
"I was sent home," said Keith.
"Mgh," replied Lanette.
"For drawing mazes."
"I have a headache, okay, kid?"
Keith retired to his room and searched for a maze. He found one folded up beneath his old fairy tale book. At the center of the maze was a heart. Two points of entry. Keith tried the top entrance. It zigged and zagged all around the page, but ultimately, all paths lead to a dead end. He tried the bottom entrance. The entrance lead to a corridor that split into six different paths, all with a complex sub-maze attached. Keith tried the first. Nothing. The second. It curved all the way around the page, but it ended at a wall. The third. The fourth. The fifth. The sixth maze was a frame around a drawing, a small portrait of Mother. Every time the maze curved around, Keith saw her. The maze ended at a wall just before touching Mother's face.











For months, things stayed the same. Keith went to school and drew mazes, and Lanette slept on the couch and had friends over. Father began losing weight. Once when he came home, Lanette joked that she should sell him to the circus, and he said that maybe she should. Keith didn't find that very funny. His sisters still screamed and wailed about the monkey. It had begun speaking to them- a strange, deep voice, they said. They could never remember what it said.
Father wasn't the only one getting skinnier. The whole family was. Father's outings had become less and less productive, and nowadays he brought back only an orange or a bread heel. Once, at school, Mister Hains asked Keith why he never ate lunch.
"I guess I'm just never hungry around this time," said Keith sharply. But he was hungry, and he often stole fruit from the market on the way home. His small pockets could only hold two pieces at a time, however. He ate one on the way home, and Lanette would snatch up the remaining piece when he arrived at home. Keith's sisters began to look like ghosts, they were so skinny. Keith gave them his share of whatever father brought home.
It was Easter, two years after Mother had died, when father didn't come home. Lanette complained, whining about being hungry, and not having enough water to drink. Keith gave her both pieces of fruit to make her be quiet. He drew a maze to distract from the hunger, but it came out looking like an apple and made him hungrier. His sisters called for him.
"The monkey is in little sister's bed!" They pointed under the covers at a raised lump in the bed. Keith stomped over to the bed and pulled off the covers with a flourish. There was a pillow lying in the center of the bed.
"You beasts! You absolute little beasts!" Shouted Keith. He gathered up their blankets and pillows and threw them out the window into the rain.
The next day, father was still gone. Lanette wanted breakfast, so Keith went out and stole a bag of citrus.
"These are lemons, you stupid kid!" Lanette threw the lemons at Keith until he locked himself in the closet. He could hear the lemons thumping against the closet door, but did not move. Eventually, Lanette grew bored and laid down on the couch again.
That night, Keith finally slipped out from the closet and crawled into bed. The wind blew cold air straight into his face. He covered the window with the petaled maze. As soon as the maze was secured, his sisters began screaming.
"You filthy little creatures, it is eleven o'clock!" Keith switched on the light.
On little sister's bed stood a monkey. It had black eyes and long arms. Keith screamed.