The Door

I remember blowing out the candles on my sixth birthday. I remember the color of the curtain behind my chair and the way my brother turned his head to look at me from his highchair. My mother plastered on a fake grin while the family was there and my stepfather grabbed another beer from the fridge. My grandmother standing in front of me, the smallest woman with more power than most anyone I have ever met. I remember my grandfather standing beside her. The room smelled of grocery store candles and helium balloons. This wish was going to be my most grown-up wish yet. After all, I am six years old now.

I sat in that wooden chair resting myself on my calves as I leaned my hands gripping on the table and as I blew out each and every candle I thought to myself, “There has got to be a way out of here.”

Even though, at the mere age of six, I knew I could never really go anywhere. Even if the magic did exist in which a burly man would come through my door and tell me that I belonged to a magical realm, I would have to send him on his way. My sister, though a year older than me, had absolutely no idea how to manage anything on her own. My brother, the poor dope, was bound to a highchair and someone had to remember to feed him. Someone had to clean up the beer cans at night after The Man passed out on the peeling red recliner. Someone had to sign the papers when Mom came home in another neck brace from falling asleep at the wheel again. Someone had to make the ramen with only a half packet of seasoning.

I could never just leave. If the troubles of the day found out about the troubles of the night, then Mom would leave. We would leave shortly after and then I would have to make a new street my own. Honestly, even at the age of six I had already begun the preparations to make this neighborhood the perfect place to live. No depressed, deranged mother or alcoholic stepfather was going to take that away from me. I was finally tall enough to get on the purple bike in the basement. I had Grandma and her books two houses down, Aunt M and her storyful walks one house down, my protector and honorary big brother another two houses down and my two best friends in the neighborhood down the street.

We had a store where we didn’t have to cross a busy intersection down the road from the house where I could get milk for the baby and food for me and my sister when the seventeenth night in a row of macaroni and cheese was no longer cutting it for us. We had the best sledding hill right across the street with neighbors that let us use it whenever we please. I know that all these reasons may seem mundane to an adult but when you're a six year old girl who has real monsters in her room every night then the little joys that the day brings have to make that worth it. This story is not about the monsters, this story is about the wish I made on my sixth birthday.

I knew that a wish made on candles from aisle four at the IGA were not really meant to solve all of my problems but I still give credit to what happens next to the wish I made on my sixth birthday candles. I remember waking up the next morning. It was a Sunday and as usual I had awoken with the sun before the rest of the house was even making a sound. It was the best time of day. There was no yelling, no arguments, simply a stillness that I worked every morning to meet the vibration of. I sat up and touched the top of the bunk bed above me to feel if there was any movement where my sister laid her head. I stepped quietly out of bed and slipped my fingers into the door where the doorknob should have been but little girls should never expect privacy. I paused to listen for my baby brother in the next room but only heard the silent coos of his sleep.

I stepped into the hallway that seemed so big then until I could make it to the mud room to find my shoes. I grabbed the blanket off of The Man’s red recliner and quietly made my way out the back door. The world was just awakening. The sun had barely risen to meet me and even though it was spring, Connecticut always smelled crisp to me. I walked quickly on silent feet down to the back yard where the trails in our woods lie and cut across to my sitting rock that looked over to my aunt and grandmother’s house. This was my place. The one place where I could ground and just be six years old. I danced upon the rock pretending to be the characters that lived on the pages of the books in my room till I nearly fell into the tree that stood beside me. As I regained my balance I held the tree and felt my fingertips that rounded the other side nearly grasping something. I quickly jumped down from the rock to look at the other side of the tree. Stuck between the knot of the tree was the hard spine of a little black book. I had come here every single day and I had never seen this book.

I quickly looked around me to see if I was being watched. Was someone trying to reach out to me in some way. I had told no one about this place, not even my best friends. I reached up and gripped the bottom corner or the book and pulled so hard that when the book finally came out, I shot myself backward to the ground. The book seemed to be shaking in my hands. I was almost too scared to open it but too curious to leave it alone. I put my hand on the spine and flipped the cover of the book open and felt a pull like someone was grabbing at my chest and then everything went dark.

I came to, opening my eyes to a room I had never seen before. How did I get here? I looked around me and jumped at the realization that there were no doors in this room. I was trapped! Then I noticed the little black book sitting at a desk across the room. I ran over thinking that if opening the book brought me here then maybe the book was my ticket back as well. I sat down in the cold metal chair in front of the desk and opened the book bracing myself for the pull. There was no pull. On the first page of the little black book, the word “hello,” had been written. I felt frozen and for the first time in a long time, I wanted my mom.

There was an old fountain pen next to the book. I remember seeing a similar pen in the movie, “Rigoletto,” that I watched with my grandmother. I took the quill and dipped the ink and with the best writing I could muster, I wrote, “Hello.” I stood up and felt useless. Why? Why did I think that writing back in the book was going to solve anything. I was probably kidnapped and sitting in someone’s crazy room but then again that never happened in my town. Nothing happened in my town, nothing ever happened to me at all. All of a sudden the darkness in the room was illuminated by the pages of the little black book. I hurried over and sunk heavy into the chair reading in fresh ink on the page in front of me, “Hello Avalynn.”

How did this book or whoever it was know my name. No, there had to be another way out of the room. I searched and searched for what felt like hours and could not find anything. So, I sat down at the desk and again picked up the quill to try to communicate with whatever was trying to reach out to me.

“Who are you?”

“It’s me, Avalynn.”

“Who?”

“No, Avalynn. I am you.”

“You can’t be me.” None of this made sense. What did this book mean? The pages started to glow again.

“I sent this book back. Who else would have known where to send it Avalynn?”

“Why would I send myself a book?”

“I have seen how everything plays out. I spent most of our life building this room so that I could give myself the chance I wished for.”

“What chance?”

“Open the top drawer in the desk.”

I put my hand on the handle trying to figure out what could possibly make this any more confusing. As the drawer slid open, two doors appeared on either side of the room as if triggered. In the drawer was an envelope.

“It’s just an envelope. Where did the doors come from? How do I get home?” God knows how long I had been gone at this point. I needed to get back. Everything would fall apart if I did not find somewhere to get home. “So, how do I get home? Which door is it? Tell me!”

The pages began to light as the words appeared. “That is up to you. The envelope you are holding in your hand holds twenty thousand dollars. If you take the door to your left, you can go home. Maybe, finally get mom and the kids out of there too. Get her help. She will never admit she needs it.”

“What happens if I go through the door to the right?”

“If you take the door to the right, you will walk into a new house, a new street. There is enough money in the house to get you through and your family will not remember you but you will be free. I never had the choice. I needed to give myself the choice.”

“How do you know I will make the right choice?”

“Because you are me and there is only one choice that is right to make.”

I grabbed the envelope and closed the book. I did not need to hear anymore. I tucked the little black book into my blanket and walked out the door.