One Down Seven

My brother and I were only 13 months apart, practically twins in the eyes of our parents. We laughed loudly and obnoxiously at the same ridiculous things. We argued mercilessly everyday, about even more ridiculous things. We even found a way to communicate with one another, with slight taps on the paper thin wall that separated our bedrooms, long past our bedtime. Every Saturday morning we tapped on the adjoining wall to determine if the other was up, and if so, how we could quietly negotiate escaping to the living room, downstairs, to watch the Saturday morning cartoon marathon. The same line-up of shows, in a particular order, helped us tell what time it was and how long we had been watching, in case our parents asked once they woke up. We never had cable, but didn’t even know what there was to miss, ‘Pepper Anne’, ‘Doug’ and ’Recess’ kept us far too entertained to care what Nickelodeon was.

Our weekend routine was pretty predictable. After Saturday morning cartoons and showers, we would take what little money we had and venture to the corner store to buy whatever a dollar would get us, and quickly return home, no detours. We would bargain for a few minutes on our bikes,if they weren’t stolen out of our garages, but in our neighborhood, our mom would only allow us to go to the red stairs down the street, still within her line of sight. In the late afternoon, when the sun wasn’t too hot, but not too low, our dad would take us to the “nice” neighborhoods, where we would “oooh” and “ahhh” at the beautiful homes that we would smile and admire from the back seat. All of us genuinely happy to just get a glimpse of what could be. Our heads peered out of the open window, enough to get a closer look as well as enough air to make up for the lack of AC. On our way home, we would grab fast food and eat in front of the TV until our unconventionally early bedtime. Each night, we would shout goodnights at one another, until our dad popped his head in either of our rooms to hush us. Those were simple days, and peaceful nights.

Depending on what we had snuck to watch the night before, we might share the same nightmare that we had at the breakfast table or talk about the random sound that we heard in the middle of the night, or how many seconds the helicopter light shined in our front yard. We would banter back and forth about what short story we would write later, or what games we would play at Grandmommy’s house after church on Sunday.

As summer came and went, I had noticed more often that my parents talked less, and that my mom would rarely join us at church, or even for Sunday dinner at my grandma’s house. Changing what I thought would be a lifelong routine. No one ever made mention of it, my brother didn’t even seem to notice or care. Maybe because I was older, more mature. I missed seeing her at Grandmommy's, but liked coming home to her waiting in the living room. Every night I wondered what this new dynamic meant. Was she sad, was she tired, were they mad. I had never heard a fight or disagreement, outside of short responses, or cold car rides to school. Where she had to drape us in blankets in the backseat, because the heat wasn’t working, and warm Suzuki had gotten repoed.

That cold Saturday night we exchanged good nights loudly through the wall and chuckled softly until we drifted off to sleep. This night I closed my eyes and the back of my eyelids were filled with tiny squares of colorful lights. I jolted my eyes open and blinked them quickly, rubbing them harshly in confusion. I waited a moment and shut them again, and there it was still. A wall of colorful lights, several tiny squares, each square containing a new color, none were exactly the same, even if just a shade lighter or darker than the next. For the parts of my dream that I remembered, I stayed in front of that wall, mesmerized by the color and confused by what to do in this dream space. In the morning I ventured down to the kitchen table, showered and in my church clothes, my brother already seated at the table, pouring a bowl of cereal. I sat down patiently waiting for my turn to pour a bowl, and anxious to tell him about this peculiar dream. Before I could tell him, he began talking between bites. “I saw you there last night”, I stopped pouring my bowl of cereal and my dad looked up from his paper. “Where”, I replied, “One down seven”, he smiled, “I was calling you but you never came in.” My dad looked back and forth in confusion, “what is one down seven?”. My brother explained that it was a dream space that you could go to at night, almost like an amusement park. Apparently you could stay there all night if you wanted to, nothing bad ever happened, and it was always fun. My dad smiled and shrugged it off as another weird conversation or imaginative situation we had created, and got up from the table, before letting us know that we had five minutes before we had to leave.

On the ride to church we sat in the backseat, side by side, practically sharing a seatbelt, so that we could speak discreetly about this new found dreamland. “I have been going Jones, I’ve been waiting for you to come, why didn’t you come in?” I leaned in closer than I already was, almost embarrassed to admit, “I don’t know how to get in”. He nodded, as if to say, it happens to everyone. “Ok, you start at the first square at the top of the wall” he paused to make sure I was following, “then you go over one and down seven, and you push the square that has a green light”. I nodded, taking mental notes, “then what?” Before he could answer we made what felt like an abrupt stop and were ushered out of the car into the church sanctuary. For the past few Sundays, my mom had stayed home and my dad often sang in the choir, so we practically had the entire service to whisper about ‘One Down Seven” and when we would see each other later.

By the time night had settled in, we didn’t need to be hushed, sleep couldn’t come quick enough. This time I closed my eyes and was greeted once again by the wall of lights, but I knew what to do, almost muttering to myself the instructions my brother had given me a few hours before. “Over one, down-” , there it was the green light he had talked about. I hesitantly pushed it, and suddenly there he was. “Jones!! You got in”. I could feel my cheeks get hot from smiling so wide, he was there, we were there. It wasn’t just our imagination, it was a real place, we could actually play, it was happy, it was hard to describe. To this day, I can’t exactly say what was there or why it was fun, or why it felt like freedom or an escape, or a distraction.

Every morning we talked at the breakfast table, or in the car ride to school about how fun it had been and how cool it was. So much so that my dad began separating us first thing in the morning to get an accounting of ‘One down seven’ and if our stories aligned, and they always did. Our dad was a very practical person, conservative and scoffed at the consideration of magic, or visions, or spirits outside of the holy ghost, but by the look on his face, I think he believed us, or was at least curious. We knew we had found some sort of dream dimension, where even in sleep we could be inseparable and at peace, tucked away from whatever disruptions and tension was surrounding us in our home. It was unexplainable, but it felt very real.