I told you I have no memory. I forgot one of the cool things about my trip East, when we went to visit the house where I grew up. Mom dropped Anna and me off in front so we could walk around. It’s a corner house so you can peek in from three sides. Five or so kids — some of the current occupants — immediately ran toward us, friendly and chatty. They listened with interest as I described the inside of their house, room by room. I should’ve pretended I was a passing psychic. I told them about my room. It’s at the top of the stairs past the bathroom, where that long hallway is, and to the right. It’s got windows that you can climb out, onto the roof over the dining room in the back yard— A little girl skipped forward. That’s my room!
I wondered aloud if their parents would mind if we looked around inside. They led us past the garage (where their bumper sticker identified them as ultra-conservative Catholics, which explains the bunch of kids) and into the back yard where the mom was having a beer and cigarette with a friend. She waved us inside, so off Anna and I went, just the two of us, into my past. I stopped for two pictures. First, the landing, one of my favorite parts of the house. We’d hide in the old, hinged window seats at the base of its stained glass windows.
At some point in history, there were doorbells around the house. When they’d ring, this device would indicate from whence the signal was coming.
Poor Anna, having to listen to my excited monologue as I led her past all the bedrooms, up into the attic, showing her where I was standing when my mother surprised with me a doll when I was six, and where the bats lived, and where I used to sneak cigarettes.
Arriving back on the first floor I noticed a familiar face through the glass of the side door. How surreal to see my mother, once the heart of this house, to be outside looking in, and for me to be the one admitting her. Strange, too, for it to be forty years later when neither of us belongs there any more.
She was miffed that I’d invited myself into our old house and she wanted me to leave right away. But I couldn’t. I had two floors to go. I promised, against my will, to hurry. Over the steady drone of my recollections, Anna and I examined the first floor, and finally the basement. I showed her where Dad’s workbench had been, and the place next to it where he’d built one for me. We visited the now-rusted and lightless fallout shelter. I pointed out to the resident kids where Dad had drilled a hole in the wall and put a slide projector behind it so he could subtly change the “wallpaper” opposite, with scenes he’d photographed over the years.
On an unrelated subject, Anna documented how alike are a girl and her mother.
Did you look under the old ping pong table, in the room where your father used to make beer? Did you happen to notice a trapdoor there, leading to a cast iron city? Just curious.