Sighting

Yesterday I was at my step-father's house, waiting for him to meet me. He's had this house since the mid-seventies, though he doesn't live in it anymore, unless he's fixing it up. He's getting ready to sell it, making many renovations throughout. It is my teenage home, the home I lived in when I was in the eighth grade, through graduation.

I saw that the gardenia planted near a fence that separates our yard from our neighbor's was in desparate need of dead-heading. It's blooming had been prolific, but now it was covered in tiny dried up brown balls, as a meatball bush might look bearing fruit. I started to methodically pluck at them, zoning out at the same time.

Just as I was about a third of the way through, I heard a door creak open at the neighbor's house. Now the couple that live next door, David and Patricia, are a very...unusual couple. My father has told me that he believes something terrible happened to Patricia when she was younger, (ike a rape, and that she simply stopped coming out of the house. Her husband, David, works a lot, and long hours, though you wouldn't know that he was making any money at all by looking at the condition of their house. It's got weeds in the grass that more often than not grows knee deep, grape vines and honeysuckle are covering most of a couple of trees on the fence side, the roof of the porch is caving in and holds water, other parts of the trim are falling off, the paint is chipping off on the parts that weren't covered in vinyl siding, and there are a couple of cars in the driveway that never leave. One of our other neighbors reported banging on the door one time (he was supposed to meet David there to discuss selling his property, which he never intends to though he talks about it all the time. He'd have to sell Patricia with the house, and I don't think that would go over well on the buyer's market) and when Patricia finally cracked the door open a half an inch, he said the smell almost made him sit down, it was so rank.

Now, I've heard people, including David, bang on that door for a good hour or so and NOT gain an audience, so I was amazed that she opened the door for him at all, but that smell wasn't a good sign. So when the door creaked open while I was tending the gardenia, my ears tuned in and I slowed my movements down so as not to make any undue noise. My eyes locked on the bush at hand while I used my peripheral vision to track the motion on the porch without full-on staring.

Patricia moved out onto the porch like a wild animal sniffing out someplace new. (I considered she might be wary of that porch roof finally giving way...) And with a tunnel-vision type of approach she headed down the driveway. I lost sight of her for a moment, but then she appeared on the other side of the gardenia blocking my view, and she moved silently with only very faint shufflings of her white and blue and pink flowered slippers. I stared at her openly once she couldn't see me doing so, and noted her paleness, a white skin that almost glowed, with her white hair bundled up in a haphazard twist/ponytail. She wore a thin, faded nightgown with a shift underneath it. Her movements were stiff- she did not swing her arms or look from side to side or dally next to the shrubs to see what was eating the leaves. She was on a mission to the mailbox, and nothing would stop her. I felt like I was watching an apparition and didn't want to disturb it, lest it disentegrate into thin air. I didn't realize it, but I was holding my breath.

Once she had the mail in hand, closing the box very gently and noiselessly, she turned slowly back to the house and then I saw her lift her face to glance around, a frown imbedded on her mouth, her eyes gaunt and dark, almost all black except for a little white sclera in either corner. I wanted to look away, so that I wouldn't freak her out by her finding someone staring at her on her one venture out of the house in June, but I couldn't. I was mezmerized by her eyes. I wanted her to make eye contact with me and join me in a neighborly smile. Part of me wanted to see if she'd spot me and scream, mail flying through the air and her bolting for the sanctity of her house, leaving one frazzled slipper by the dead blue ford's back tire and a torn piece of nightgown on the overgrown rose bush leading up the porch stair.

Well, she did spot me, I think. But neither scenario took place. She saw me, and then her eyes looked right through me, and then she turned her head away slowly, as though I were invisible (I smiled to see if she would return the gesture, which she did not.) and silently shuffled back up to the house, through I noticed she was moving much faster than before. In her own way, she was bolting. She forced herself to close the door almost silently, though it took more time.

It left me feeling as though I'd just sighted a ghost. Though I wouldn't wish it on anyone, I have often wondered if Patricia would be one of those spirits that will linger after death. She is almost a ghost while she still lives. It's eerie and sad, how she moves through her world as if whomever attacked her when she was young might still be lingering in her bushes or in the broken-down cars that litter her driveway, waiting for the right moment to finish her off. I want to take her by the shoulders and make her look at me, focus on me, and tell her...Patricia, they're gone. You can come out now and enjoy the sun.

Intimidation

I started this, and now I've not found the right 'moment' to write in it? I'm a total chicken.

My son turns six tomorrow. I'm so proud of who he has become. He's very down-to-earth, yet has an insane streak as wide as his mother's. He reads like a fiend. He laughs easy and loves with all his being. Gods how I love that boy.

His father's not so bad either. I'm truly blessed. I've come far from that lanky, stringy-haired girl I used to be. (Still am, deep down inside.) But she never knew she would grow up and surround herself with a family full of love. She never knew that there could be a bit of peace in her household, that she would grow up and be able to come home without dread or remorse. I owed that to her, and I'm so glad I could come through for her. I wanted to say 'she deserved better than her first father'...but as I wrote it, I knew it was a lie. No one deserves anything-- we get what we get, no tricks, no failings of fate, no sick twists of destiny. It's just the way it is. And I survived him, as did my mom. We both moved on to bigger and better things and never forget what we mean to each other, brought so close like we were by those times in our past.

Let the intimidation pass...

Not For Everyone

This blog is dedicated to do exactly what the name suggests... be a fresh air vent. I am thirty-something years old, and as time goes on, there are places in the attic that get musty, smelly, smolder with dust and decay, and need a little fresh air. Some things have not seen the light of day ever since they happened.

I don't know if you could say that time heals all wounds. Well, I'm sure it heals MOST of them. I just don't know...it feels like some wounds will never dry up, no matter how much you ignore them. I'm going to try to pick at them instead, open them up to the fresh air. I also understand blogging is cheaper than therapy. We'll see if it works any better.

This will also be a place where the mind gets to capture some of the things happening around me, things that I notice that get tossed around in my mental sea, looking for a place to land. So maybe we can keep this from being the 'doom and gloom' page. Although honestly, I make the rest of my life fairly doom and gloom free, so maybe this one place, this one tiny bit of space can be for the darker things. The things that itch in the night...