On a short dirt road lined with tiny houses we lived.
In my memory there are eight houses lined up side by side on one side of the street, the other side of the street quickly giving way to swamp and dampness.
Maybe seven houses?
Hold on.
Oh my god . . .
And now? I am stepping into quicksand.
Hold on. I need a minute.
I just went over to Google Maps, thinking that I would type in the name of the street on which I used to live. Click. Satellite view . . . click.
See if I can count the houses.
Street view? Sure . . . click.
And suddenly? And heart-stoppingly? It is as though I am standing at the top of our road, just where the pavement of the larger street ends and our small dirt road begins. At my school-bus stop, where the mailboxes are lined up in a messy row.
It looks just the same. And I am sinking into the past.
And the desire to walk down that small dirt road? Is overwhelming and frightening in its intensity. I am here to count houses in the name of accuracy, but suddenly?
I am here.
The desire to walk down that road is overwhelming.
My heart will not stop racing.
Jesus.
Ok, let’s just get this over with.
Click.
No amount of clicking will make the virtual me walk down that dirt road.
No . . . amount . . . of . . . clicking.
I stare at the image before me, and I can see what is just beyond the edge of this view.
My childhood.
This is where I lost it, just past the edge of this screen.
Fuck.
So on the small dirt road on which we lived, there were seven or maybe eight tiny houses, all lined up in a row on one side of the street. Facing the swampy dampness.
On one side of us lived a woman alone.
I will call her Mabel because that was her name, and because I can’t think of a reason not to use it here.
As best I can remember? Our relationship with Mabel first turned on the fact that she had a phone and we did not. I remember my parents making small bargains with her for the use of the phone.
She didn’t seem to like us kids very much, but she would sometimes call us over. She would pay us small amounts of change to run errands or do chores for her. I wanted the money, but I hated going to her house. She terrified me.
But the lure of those jingling coins was strong, and I would sometimes approach.
All business with Mabel? Was conducted within her house. That was understood.
Her house was always far too warm, and stepping through her doorway into the heavy warmth within? Felt like an unwanted sweaty embrace. Too much . . . in every way. The air was redolent with the scent of rotten apples and sweetness and decay and a flowery fragrant oil she applied to her hair.
And woman. She just filled the space around her with the smell of sweat and sex and desire. I was over-aware of every fold of flesh and what might lie beyond.
She was a huge woman, and she wore flimsy house-dresses that did little to hide her nakedness beneath. She moved slowly, almost ruined by age and illness.
Moved slowly . . . toward me.
I wanted those coins badly, glinting on a small round table in the middle of her living room.
She would stand too close as I tried not to breathe her in, and she would issue directions about the shopping to be done or the garbage to be collected or the dishes to be washed.
That was the best-case scenario.
As time passed, however? There were fewer requests for assistance and more requests for information.
About my father.
And there was an intimacy and an urgency to her questions about my father that upset me. She behaved as though she wanted answers to her questions, but also? She behaved as though she already had the answers and just wanted to torture me with the realization that she knew my family’s secrets. Knew my father.
That she knew my father.
I was never certain what she meant to say. What lay beneath the folds in her words.
She invited confidences even as her face told me others had already confided.
In exchange for a few small jingling coins.
I wanted those coins badly, but in the end?
Not a bargain I was willing to strike.
I missed having the money for candy.
But sometimes others?
Would share theirs.
Purchased with a few jingly coins.
From Mabel.
The desire to walk down this road?
Surprises me.
Your ability to write a story so well that for an instant it feels like my own memory is remarkable. I could smell the dirt from the road…taste the dust in my mouth…feel the grit on my skin.
I’m familiar with that desire to walk down that road.
Oh, how I love Saturdays here at Pretty All True.
That for even an instant, this felt like your memory?
I am overwhelmed at the loveliness of that compliment.
Thank you.
Wow… Here I was sitting, kids tucked in, cheerfully checking my email… Oh cool, a new post from Kris. Yay, I said (well, inside anyway)!! And then… quicksand.. Oh boy… Any more ice cream left???
Always good, even if I have to go take a shower now to get the sweaty, dirty, stinky perfume off!!
Thank you.
I believe I do have some ice cream left!
I will share.
Although Nigel and I used the last of the whipped cream.
Ahem.
Showers all round!
Thanks for sharing.
ummm.. Used but not eaten?? Hmm.. I’m not going any further with that except to say if you don’t take a shower you both will smell like rancid milk.
Just sayin’..
Ummm . . . there was eating.
But showers?
Are still required.
Snort.
You sooo TOTALLY rock!!! Going to use some whipped cream on MY sweetie now..
Hey, marriage could be legal on CA on Thursday. Want to come to a city hall wedding?!?!
Shhhh . . . I am not sure Nigel is all comfy with terms of endearment like sweetie yet.
Shhhhh . . . .
The CA-legal wedding, though? That news should be shouted from the rooftops!
CONGRATULATIONS!
Of course, not say that Nigel is your “sweetie” or anything… Umm.. I’m just saying what I’m going to do with my sweetie – NOT yours.. But maybe Mark would like it… dunno
Oh geez…
Snort!
Nigel? He is all hot sex and funny here in make-believe land.
Mark? Is all real, but with less whipped cream.
SNORT!
You and your sweetie?
Have big real fun.
Much love.
Thank you!! I will shout it – maybe you’ll hear it in OR!!
Shhh… got it. I’m going now before I get into trouble!
There is no trouble here on Pretty All True.
Except of the sort I cause.
Hee hee!
Now . . . go!
Another hauntingly brilliant piece of work.
I am in a great place in my life now, but oddly for me, there are no ‘others’ in it.
Like when you look at someone and you can see that little bit of darkness shimmering on the edges? Your eyes meet and you both know.
I love reading your stories about your life and your family.
For me?
Just so you know.
The times in my life when I thought there were no “others?”
Were times when I wasn’t prepared to share that part of myself with them.
But that’s just me.
Plus also?
I see you.
every time you write about your past, my heart hurts for you. i want to hold your hand, make you dinner, watch steam from too-hot-out-of-the-oven cookies pinken your face as we try to eat them before they cool. i imagine your impatience rivals mine.
and though each story saddens or scares or makes my heart swell, i want to hear you tell them, with my eyes closed, sitting on the floor, seeing the pictures in my head. every time.
I do like cookies.
And I am so glad you are here to listen.
yikes.
You are almost speechless, then?
apparently.
My Mabel? Wasn’t a woman named Mabel. He was a man named Beau. He was not content for information for those jangling coins…or that candy bar…or that bottle of Coke with the sweat dripping down the side…
I don’t need Google maps to see my Mabel, I only need to see a slender man in horn-rimmed glasses smoking a cigarette.
My Mabel didn’t scare me or hurt me as much as he could have. For that I’m grateful.
I’m also grateful for you – the one who says so many times things that also happen to be inside of me that I never knew needed to get out.
Love you.
I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to connect with you.
So happy.
Love you.
It blows my mind how women have always been and forever will be intrigued by the sleaze balls. What is that?!
Smells often connect me to so many of my long forgotten memories. Some fantastical and some not so much. Weird how that works.
Oh, damn. Tim is mowing with his shirt off and all his manly sleazy tattoos showing. Gotta go.
(I had to retype that last sentence like 33 times because of the shirtlessness)
Shirtless man mowing?
GO!
At first, I couldn’t comment. I didn’t know what to say, so even though I read this on Saturday, I had no words.
But I’m back. I’m still not entirely sure I know how to say what I want to say, but I will try.
There have been Mabel’s in my life before. The biggest Mabel is perhaps my oldest brother. I both loved him and feared him immensely. Not for the same reasons as you did Mabel, but for reasons just as unsettling. And while Mabel is mostly just in your past (hopefully!), I continue to see my brother on a semi-regular basis. And it’s always that unsettling feeling that comes back.
Here in the secrets of my comments?
I will tell you that Mabel was a small figure indeed in my childhood.
And that the fear? Came from elsewhere.
And then I will just hold your hand.
And be quiet.
Kris, thanks for sucking me into your vivid stories yet again. :)
I have always wondered about certain things in my childhood. Things that I’ll never have answered because I’ll never have the guts to ask the questions because I know that the very act of being a child warps truth in so many ways.
Single Dad Laughing
You?
Are way smart.
Childhood does warp truth.
But then, for that child? As she grows?
The truth that is warped?
Is her reality.
And her truth.