[Ponine]

I could work on it for anotehr week and not be pleased.... I'm just impressed I finally wrote something.




The last box.
It’s not a large box, not really a small box, just large enough maybe to hold the cat comfortably. Providing of course she wasn’t already packed in her carrier safe at the motel.
I keep wandering though the house. My home. I found one of Annie’s stuffed toys we missed on the top shelf of the closet. A package of batteries in the bathroom, a penny for good luck on the kitchen floor.
When James and I moved in twleve years ago, we thought this would be our forever home. At the very least, our home till we could afford a real house. We could do without the yard; all we needed was each other. We could do without a porch, what would we use it for in this neighborhood anyway?

The walls were pristine and white, and the carpet new when we moved in. Now the walls are the yellowish color of dust and age, the carpet worn in places with an occasional glimpse of its old glamour.

I remember that first week in “our” place. No furniture, no bed. James and I decided that the living room carpet, with its soft pile, and new carpet smell was as good as anywhere else to sleep. We had Chinese food on a cardboard box in the corner, lit by one candle, and enjoyed the sounds of silence, and each other.
Annie came here from the hospital; to this, her first home.
She spent her birthday evenings in the kitchen nook where I kept my mothers breakfast table.
On her 8th birthday she squealed when her gift contained her very first kitten.
I bandaged her knee on this kitchen counter.
The same counter where we made cookies for Christmas.

That seems like so long ago now. Annie is still the same little girl she always was. There’s a chip in the tile from the day she climbed the counter by herself to get a cookie. I remember running into the kitchen after hearing the most awful sounds; coming in to see my angel on the counter clutching a cookie in each hand, all around her pieces of cookie jar, more cookies, and hundreds of pieces of china, never to be used again. I was never so thankful for that thrift store china as I was that day.
Today, Annie is about to slip out of her cocoon and become a young woman before my eyes. But for now, stuffed toys are still her best friends, her sparkling silver Mary Jane’s her must have fashion accessory.

I can almost feel the pulse of the memories in the wood of our home. Right here, where I marked Annie’s height, I was standing in this doorway the day James told me he had moved in with someone else. Kids were never in his life plan he said. Come to think of it, I was standing right here the day the doctor called to say I was pregnant.

Sweep it under the carpet. Annie and I have to find our path. I thought we could stay here and let Annie find her way through school, through life. I didn’t predict the building getting condemned. How could I? This was my home.
Sure, there are cracks in the walls; the stairs are cracked and missing pieces. It was still home. Throw my keys in the box, I won’t need them anymore. There’s nothing else left in our home to lock up.

I’m the last one to leave the building. Annie spent the night with a friend last night. She said the house felt ‘funny’ without our things in it. I can’t argue with that.
My last time down the stairs, step over the 15th step that’s been missing ever since the Williams dropped their refrigerator on it. They moved out last week, Mrs. Gonzalez the week before. Her kids sent a moving truck. I hope they’ll take care of her. Keep walking down the stairs, all the way down to the lobby. The last box tucked under my arm.

Out the door to the street. I reach up; place my hand on the handprints that have been on the building since the day we moved in. James used to say that some jerk rested while he should have been working. That never sat well with me. Then one day at the ripe old age of seven, Annie said, “Those are angel handprints. That’s why they’re white. They protect all of us here.”

At the time, I thought nothing more of it than a childs fancy. Now I think, maybe she was right. Then again, maybe I just believed my daughters wish because I wanted to. There are worse things to believe in after all.


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