Between and alone

Here's a little vignette of fiction for you:

Behind the sofa,
under the stairs,
in the old wood shed,
in the rotten attic.

These were the places he sought refuge. Sometimes sleeping, often reading, or making up his own stories. At nine years old he was good at finding places to be "out of the way". It didn't take much to entertain him, and besides he loved reading best of all anyway. His bark-brown hair often had cobwebs stuck in it from the hiding places he chose to do his reading in.

Honestly, he would have enjoyed doing his reading and pretending in the living room just as well, but whenever he tried he was met with instructions like these:

"Go play." One of them would say to him.

"Leave us alone, can't you see we're talking?", was another familiar refrain.

And yet once gone to one of his many hiding places, they would invariably call him back with questions of:

"What were you doing?"

"Where did you go off to?"

And of course, the nonsensical, "Don't go off like that."

It seemed at times like these that he was a yo-yo and his mother and aunt held the string. He understood that his role was set. He couldn't please them.

He lived in the house his mother and aunt had grown up in. Scarcely one year apart in age the two adults in the house were more like twins than simply sisters.  When he would watch them from the kitchen table at breakfast-time it seemed to him that they were two people sharing a common mind. They were so perfectly in sync with each other that their movements appeared to have been choreographed. His mother worked at the stove and his aunt worked at the counter and they always seemed to come together at just the right moment in the center of the kitchen. It was always his aunt who held out the plate while his mother spooned oatmeal or eggs from the pan in her hand. When she finished serving, his mother would take the plate from his aunt with one hand while placing the pan back on the stove with the other and then she would lay the plate down in front of him while patting his head. The routine never changed and perhaps that was why it took on the spectre of an elaborate dance.

In the house he was clearly a foreign species. The only male, he realized that his mother and aunt were an inseparable unit. They had always been together and he would always be the fly in the ointment. They never mentioned the existence of his father, at least not in his presence. Truthfully, it was only when he started school and the other children were talking about their fathers, that he even noticed that his family was different. And yet the fact that his father had never been mentioned convinced him that it was a topic not to be brought up. Instead he would make-up stories about why his father wasn't around to placate the curiosity of the school children. And although he would have given his eye-teeth to have some knowledge of the man who had fathered him, he also knew in his heart that he would never ask the questions he wanted the answers to most of all.

And so they danced. They sent him out and they called him back. He always obliged although it was true that sometimes he pretended that he didn't hear them.

When the weather was cold or when he was in an inquisitive mood, he tried to make himself invisible in their midst. He would climb down between the heavy green armchair and the wall and make himself a little nest there with his book and a pillow from his bed. He knew that when his mother and aunt did not think he was around they would talk more freely. He had to be careful during those times to turn the pages of his book very carefully so as to not make any noise. If they discovered him hiding so close by, it would be many months before they would let their guard down again.

It made him feel strange to hear them talk at these times. It was clear to him even at his young age that they enjoyed each other's company much more than his.  He could hear the animation in their voices and the excited gasps when they shared bits of gossip. They tended to finish each others sentences and then laugh like the girls in his class afterward.

It was in this way that he learned of the unplanned and unwanted pregnancy of the woman who worked at the corner store. He learned of the woman's plight with her lazy husband who was good for nothing but making babies, and how her last child who was still an infant seemed to be just a little wrong in the head. He heard about her pleas to his mother to stop the pregnancy and end the growing creature inside her that she was sure would kill her. He wondered what his mother could do to help this woman, but of course he could never ask. So he listened some more but it didn't help him understand.

His mother and aunt had no other siblings. His grandmother had died, he was told, when she heard the news of his birth. His aunt had told him once of her father, who had left the family when she and her sister were still very young. She had never seen him again and what memories she had of him were dim. She listened patiently to the questions he launched at her about his grandfather, but all she was able to supply him with in return were the vague impressions that remained from the memory of her four year old self. Tall, with big hands, never yelled and smelled like pine pitch and the gingersnap cookies that his mom still made at Christmas. Her recollections did little to satisfy his desire to know the only other male that had lived in the house as far as he knew. But when he asked more questions his aunt replied that she was tired she would tell him more later. Each time he asked, on different days and at different times he was met with another excuse, until finally he understood that she was not going to tell him any more. His mother was unable to confirm the details from his aunt or add anything to the image of his grandfather in his head. She had been three to her sister's four years when he left and as she put it, "All my memories of him swept out the door with him." He would have to be content to eat her gingersnaps at Christmas and imagine his grandfather doing the same.

It was a lonely life he had, and between school and home he had perfected the stance of the outsider. The loner who does not wish to have friends or be approached. It wasn't true, of course, but it helped to have a rigid framework for who you are. The structure of his outsider persona allowed him to move through school with little difficulty. And at home it just reflected his role in the family.

And yet his mother and aunt indulged him. They didn't complain about torn and dirty clothes. They accepted the turtle he brought home from the pond and his mother even took him to the pet store to buy a tank and the equipment that the pet store manager had said was necessary for a turtle. Sure they  put up a fuss when frogs were found in the bathtub, but wasn't that his point? It had taken him all morning to catch fifteen frogs from the pond down the hill, and he had been laughing to himself the whole time thinking of their reaction when his mother went to take her usual afternoon bath. They didn't punish him though. He had never been grounded. In fact his aunt held the bucket with the cookie tin on top, as he collected the slippery frogs from the tub, and his mother gave him soapy water and a sponge to clean up the mess when he was through. They were laughing as he cleaned, but they warned him through their laughter that he was never to do that again.

He was loved, he knew that. But he was still an outsider, unable to penetrate their love for each other, or to viewed as more than a diversion.

Photo by jimfrazier.

Comments

[Brooke]

He hid and read. You hide and write.Thank goodness that you do.

[Glennia]

That was beautiful. Thank you.