The Bayou and the Clutter, Part II

Chapter II: Home, as it was.

She didn’t immediately recognize where she was when she woke up. The place seemed unfamiliar, strange. With sleep still in her eyes, Iliana sat up in her childhood room with the bright yellow walls and the keyboard by the door. She loved that keyboard. It had 88 keys and hundreds of instruments programmed into it, but Iliana usually kept it on the grand piano setting. Playing music had gotten her though the roughest of times. This morning, she had an almost unbearable urge to play.

Beethoven flowed from her fingertips and floated through the house that was never her home. Iliana loved the raw passion and emotion of Beethoven’s music. It heavily influenced her own creations, catharses when every built-up thing threatened to boil over. She had played one of these creations for a high school talent show; she was so shaky her fingers could barely hit the right keys. It was the only time she ever really performed. Music was one of the only expressions of emotion Iliana allowed herself at home. Any other form was frowned upon, and risked retaliation. Music was beautiful; conflict was hellish and intense, and to be avoided at all costs. Healthy expression of emotion was not a learned behavior in this household.

Suddenly, from below, there came loud music—not from Iliana’s keyboard. It was bad rap music, played as loudly as possible. Iliana remembered why she left. She couldn’t concentrate on anything with that racket all around her. She stopped playing. Over the years, the forced music, the yelling, it had taken the music off her fingertips like acid on the prints. Iliana hadn’t left because she hated her father. She left because she loved what he had been when she was a child, what he was not now nor would ever be again. She left to preserve her sanity and what little precious respect she still had for him. She left because she did not want to hate him. Memories flooded her mind, as abrupt as the loud music; memories of a time when he encouraged her to make her own music. He bought her guitars, keyboards, percussion instruments for school. Everything she needed to teach herself how to play each one. And so Iliana learned how to play songs by ear; with her schooling she learned how to read sheet music but rarely used it outside of class. She regretted not writing down all the songs she had written but they were all in the moment, rainbows she chased across her mind’s eye until they faded, all too quickly.

Being forced to listen to loud music was torture. It made her skin crawl. And it lasted for hours. So Iliana did what she did best. She got in the car and drove off, without anyone bothering to notice her absence. Where she was driving, she did not know. That is, indeed, how she ended up many states north over her years of peace away from home. But this time, she wanted to say goodbye to her father. He was dying, she reminded herself. And she made a mental note to return home within two hours.

South Carolina coastal backroads are the loneliest and longest backroads in the state. One could drive a whole hour on just one of the roads without passing anything so much as a speed limit sign, much less any convenient stores. It was a form of commitment turning onto one such road. Iliana chose carefully. And what I mean by that is, she counted two and then turned left on the third. This is how she continued for an hour and a half, making carefully chosen left turns until she ended up somewhere familiar. Begrudgingly, she made the turn onto the road that would lead back home. Her speedometer crept lower and lower as she neared the house, as if her body was manifesting her apprehension subconsciously. And there, as she pulled into the long drive, were blue lights.