We Bring Our Lairs With Us

Off I went with the neighbor boy, Dana, behind the abandoned A&P grocery store across the street. I don’t know where you were. Somewhere with your new life without me. Before I even met Dana, I often escaped there to what seemed like an ancient tree, wise with bark and leaves, that stood behind the building, next to the railroad tracks. My sanctuary. When there by myself, I wrote poems or brooded like any cerebral child. Squat but wide, the tree’s branches reached in different, climbable directions. I didn’t care for Dana too much, but he was someone to hang out with. We often hung out at the tree before hopping on our bikes to ride around town. He unbuckled his jeans and proceeded to piss on the tree. Annoyed by him, I took refuge in the higher branches where he could barely see me and where I had a better view of street litter and the pale-colored homes on the other side of the tracks. My brother’s having sex with his girlfriend right now, he said as he put it back in his pants. I didn’t respond because I didn’t care, and because I was shy. I knew that you were having sex, too, on a regular basis. I sat on a branch and looked down at him. He looked up into the tree, squinting his eyes, and found mine in a space between leaves. Ya got hair down there yet?

Always a seeker of sanctuary, be it in the dark recesses of the warm living room closet where I discovered boxes of books that I still love and own today or in my Beauty and the Beast tent pitched in my bedroom. I often took refuge under your bed or in your closet without your knowing. Your ankles, thin. Your toenails, always painted. Sometimes I grabbed your ankles, scaring the shit out of you. I grew accustomed to hearing you from a distance, to seeing parts of you through slats, bent blinds, or cracks in doorways. I opened your Caboodle as if it were a treasure chest, amazed by all the makeup and nail files that I would never in my later years have interest in. I knew where you kept your pads. I revered your collection of ceramic masks that hung above your closet. You always got a new one when we vacationed in Nags Head. You talked with your best friend or a boy on the phone. You hung a giant pin on your bedroom wall that said One Way, My Way. Your bedroom door, plastered with New Kids on the Block, was always shut. There was another door in your room, though, that led to my room. It stayed permanently shut, my bed blocking the entrance. Late at night, I sat in bed with my ear to the door, listening to you talk on the phone. I don’t know if you knew, but you were everything to me.

As a child, I hid behind your legs. When upset, I ran to you, screaming my grievances into your belly. Your soft hands cradled my head. If I could, I would have curled up into your small belly and stayed there. Instead, you left. And not only did you leave to live with a strange man, but shortly afterwards, a small child did live in your belly. And then another. I moved into your bedroom and fretfully slept where you slept. Already an anxious child, insomnia overcame me to the point where mom put me on the phone with you late at night when I couldn’t sleep. It didn’t help. Sometimes I visited you and spent the night. You metamorphosed into someone who sat complacent on a couch in front of the TV, eating quarter pounder cheeseburgers from McDonald’s. My room in your new home was a tiny Narnia closet with a small mattress (or was it a bean bag?) on the floor. I remember Styrofoam beans spilling everywhere. I loved the small space from which I could watch you in case you did anything interesting.

Living without you, I found refuge and lairs in dark, liminal places. I pulled grass away from sidewalks, exposing pill bugs and little cream-colored slugs in repose. Sometimes I picked them up, empathizing with the helpless pill bugs, stuck on their backs, their legs wiggling. They curled into themselves and I never understood something so completely. As you sat in your house with a baby or two, I wandered down to the river, which they say is never the same thing twice. There, I explored the riparian life, mesmerized by plants, tiny shells, and river rock. I poked at a dead pig floating against the shore. As you moved from house to house and from man to man, I wandered to the nearby abandoned glass factory. I collected ephemera from this liminal place—accounting notebooks, old receipts. I climbed rusty ladders to operative areas with dials and switches. I flipped switches but only I turned on. And from there, I ventured beyond, to a riverside trail where a rail bed once lay. There, I marveled at beautiful riverside havens so bright and green with plants. Sometimes it flooded so I’d take off my shoes and wade in the flood zone, amazed by how warm the water felt. I also discovered fox dens, their scat all over the rocks. When on this trail, I found a slit in the earthen hillside deeper in the woods. Trusting the earth, I got down on my stomach and slid myself into it, feet first. A reverse birth.

I continued to grow and so did your children. I struggled with knowing when they were too big to carry. Sometimes when trouble brewed in your paradise, you said you were moving back home. I uncurled out of myself in excitement, spending time preparing for you and the kids to come home to me. I put baby clothes in drawers and waited to hear more news of the move from mom. But you only moved back home once. At that point, you were a grandmother.

When at my desk at work, sometimes I turn around to look her in the face as she talks. While listening, my eyes often fall to her hands. They’re soft, thin-skinned, and creamy like yours. Her nails are always painted. I often imagine them cradling my head. I don’t know if my colleague has ever noticed me staring at her hands. I don’t know if she has ever noticed the struggle in my expression as I turn back around to do my work.

This morning before getting ready to head out into the cold to get my oil changed, I pulled oracle cards. I don’t do it all the time, but I have them when I feel like guiding my thoughts in interesting directions. I don’t know if you knew of oracle cards when you were alive, but they’re themed decks of cards and each card represents a certain totem, symbol, character, or what-have-you. The decks come with booklets that explain the meanings of the cards. Some people use oracle cards to look inward, some to look outward. I don’t cater to any specific use but today I pulled Dead Man’s Fingers (a type of mushroom) and Earthworm. Earthworm challenged me to break down big emotions. Nothing specific about Dead Man’s Fingers resonated with me, but I sat there holding the card in my hand, remembering you, your hands. You have been dead for six years today.

I am 37 years old. I continue to marvel at the earth and enter lairs in unknown and liminal spaces. When you left me when I was a child, and again as an adult, I continued to find your small, warm belly in the forest. Six years ago, in your childhood bedroom, mom opened the window after you passed so that you could be released into your own liminal space.