Open Mind

There’s no feeling like the creeping realization that we will all one day be dead. Everyone that ever was and ever will be is destined to bite it -- to feed the ungrateful worms beneath us that have no idea how lucky they have it. Has a worm ever wondered, ‘I sure hope there’s a God out there to greet me when I’ve eaten my last dirt clod?’ I doubt it. I’ve spent a lot more time as a 17 year old girl contemplating death than is probably healthy for someone my age. It’s not a fascination or a fear, really.

It’s a panic.

It’s the same heart-pounding, stomach-churning feeling that you get when you realize you overslept for some important, one-in-a-lifetime thing. It’s the feeling when you lock your keys in the car when you’re already running late. It’s the feeling when you accidentally text a picture of your trouser-worm to your devout Catholic grandmother.

Or so I’ve heard.

You realize in that instant that there’s no turning back. Everything that has happened is over and the rest of the time is a waiting game for that last breath. But for most people, it passes. Some other fleeting thought comes in to sweep the panic under the rug. The iPhone buzzes and a notification whisks the dark, inevitable thoughts from the mind.

I no longer have that luxury. I can’t escape from the darkness that creeps in every corner of my thoughts. I can’t shut my eyes tight and think of ponies or puppies or some other fluffy shit to make put my mind at ease. Every day I live with this inevitable shadow, and every day I wish I could take back the choices that led me down this path.

All of the choices, except for one.

The day I told them to piss off.

I promised them that one day I’d tell everything about me. I promised that one day they’d know every part of me, as if it were their own. I said some other cheesy shit that probably sounded really beautiful and poetic to a bleeding heart, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get that chance again.

This may be my only chance.

I wish I didn’t have to tell it this way. I wish I could see the look on their face if they ever get the chance to read this. I wish I could see the way their nose would crinkle as they laughed at the funny bits, the way their dark eyes would grow wide and they’d slap my arm when I offended them, the way their pale skin would glow red when I’d give even an ounce of flattery.

But where to start?

I remember them once asking me over lunch how I ended up the way that I am. I feigned surprise and offense as they fumbled over panicked apologies. I never gave an answer to that, in hindsight. They jokingly suggested that my earliest memories were probably pretty messed up.

They weren’t wrong.

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My earliest memories were at my Grandma Helen’s old house. The house was once an elegant plantation house -- one of too many all-too-familiar relics of the Civil War era scattered across the Bootheel of Missouri. Her husband, Abner, was one of seven brothers and sisters who grew up on the plantation, and he left the plantation to his wife when he passed. When he was alive, my grandfather, Abner, kept the house in pristine condition.

“The least I could do, considering all the work my family put into building it,” he’d said to my father when he was younger. I have my doubts that our family lifted a single lily-white finger to build the place, but who’s to say for sure? Maybe he knew deep down that he owed a debt to his father’s beleaguered African servants that he’d never be able to repay -- maybe maintaining the home they’d built and maintained through years of abuse was his way of honoring their memory.

That’s what I would have said if my grandfather hadn’t been a member of the Klan. He painted that house white every year for a reason. It wasn’t until his passing that my grandmother finally relinquished the last black person from their ties to our family’s awful history.

“Francesca listens better than those … other ones ever did,” she said to my mother. “Your people know the value of hard work.” My mother scoffed and rolled her eyes. My grandmother called for the caretaker as she coughed violently.

“Yes, Mrs. Miller?”

“Wheel me to my study. I’m much too tired for any more talk.” She wiped her penciled brow wearily and let out a dramatic sigh. Francesca nodded and grabbed the handles of Grandma Helen’s wheelchair. Mom muttered something in Spanish under her breath to Francesca, and she chuckled in response. To this day, I can still hear the irritating squeaking of the rubber tires as Francesca wheeled her away -- a sound which Grandma could not hear and therefore could not be bothered to fix.

My mother looked down at me and smiled weakly. I could not have been more than three or four years old, but I’ve seen that same look so many times since then. Her face was much more angular and smooth than it is now -- older age eventually replaced her edges with rounded, pudgy features instead -- but the look was the same.

“Dad should be finished with fixing the kitchen sink any minute now, Skylar. Go play and I’ll come get you in a little bit.”

I nodded. I returned to the pile of Lincoln logs I had scattered across the soft, red rug in the living room. I never had a sibling or cousin my own age. My brother left home to join the military when he was 17, and he was never around when I was young and he was living at home. I learned to be content with my own company.

“Hey hun,” called my mother from the plastic-wrapped leather sofa.

“Yeah, Deb,” my father shouted from the kitchen. His booming voice was dripping with irritation.

“You about done in there?”

“God willing, Deb.”

“You know, if you’d put this much work into our new house, we’d be moved in by now, hun.”

“Unless you wanna bankroll the new place, I’m gonna get back to fixing this damn sink.”

“Love you.”

There was a pause.

“Love you, too. Now leave me alone.”

Mom chuckled to herself and picked back up one of the romance novels that Grandma Helen collected. I’d overheard Mom making jokes about it to Dad, but he would tell her that she’s “just a lonely lady looking for release,” which was a phrase I wish I had never come to understand as I’ve grown.

I rolled one of the long, three-notch pieces of log around in my hand. I was growing bored of building the same lame log cabin over and over. Grandma’s set was likely assembled during President Lincoln’s actual term, and there were hardly any pieces left. The fire raging in the hearth grabbed my attention, and the thought that crossed my mind could not be uncrossed. Without a second to second-guess, I tossed one of the logs into the fire. It popped and spit fiery embers into the living room, narrowly missing my head.

Mom gasped and jumped from the couch with a squeak of plastic against her leather pants. She ripped me from the rug and pulled me behind her. She took a sharp breath as one final spark jumped from the fireplace. She slapped the other log from my hand and scowled.

“Go find something else to do, Skylar.”

I shrugged. I was perfectly content with finding something else to occupy my time. I clicked my sneakers together and summoned a neon light show from the soles of my shoes. My focus shifted back to the fireplace, and my mother noticed.

“Something else, and somewhere else.”

I spun away from her with an indignant huff. “I wasn’t going to do anything.” I clicked my heels again with a burst of neon light and waddled down the hallway. I could hear my mother sigh behind me as she settled back onto the sofa.

The hallway was a small entryway that connected the living room to my grandfather’s old study. One of my favorite places to explore as a child was a tiny hideaway room that he had installed some time in the aftermath of the Civil War. In the many times that Grandma Helen shouted at me to get out of it, she referred to it as the “Bunker.” Despite the mysterious allure of the room, it really wasn’t all that interesting in hindsight. Dad had long since burned the white robes that had hung in the Bunker in the past, despite my grandmother’s pleas for him to save the “legacy” of the family. All that remained in the tiny room were bookshelves filled with romance novels, metal holiday cookie tins with long-neglected sewing needles and thread, and various papers and folders scattered around the floor.

Unbeknownst to Grandma Helen, the walk-in closet -- lined with dusty old jackets and coats -- had a wall that connected to the Bunker, and in that wall was a small trap-door -- a door that was likely installed as a means of escape in cases of emergency. I had only recently discovered the trap door during one of my imaginative trips into the Cave of Coats. The lock that held the trapdoor shut had long since rusted out, and all it took was a little maneuvering with a butter knife to break the lock.

I thought that the Bunker would be the perfect place to put on a sneaker-light performance unlike anyone had ever seen. Without any windows, the Bunker was pitch-black when the doors were closed. I laid on my stomach and bear-crawled through the rows of hanging jackets, the musk of stale tobacco and weed threatening to choke my tiny lungs. I pushed my way back to the trapdoor, forced it open with a grunt, and slipped through the hole in the wall.

I emerged on the other side. It was as perfectly dark as I’d hoped. I couldn’t see a single thing, and I couldn’t have been more pleased. I listened intently through the wall to determine if Grandma Helen was in the room next door. I could hear her muffled voice calling to Francesca and knew that I would need to be as quiet as possible. Grandma Helen may not have been able to hear me, but Francesca most certainly would have. I spread my arms wide to feel in the darkness around me, but I could feel nothing.

I clicked my heels together and the entire room illuminated in a dazzling rainbow of lights. I could briefly make out the stacks of books in the flickering lights. I clicked my heels again, and again the room lit up. A beat bubbled up in my mind and I started to dance, tapping my heels against the hardwood as I moved, putting on a show in my mind for no one but the completed works of Jude Deveraux.

I nearly tripped over my own shoelaces, which made my heart skip a beat. The lights continued to flicker as I caught my breath. I released a noiseless laugh. I knelt on the ground and fumbled with my laces in vain -- I couldn’t tie my laces at that age in a spotlight, let alone in the sporadic lights of my Sketchers. I resigned to lay on the floor. I lifted my legs so they were hovering over my body and clicked my sneakers together, summoning a disco ball of lights from my soles.

I laid like that for several minutes, my mind lost in chasing the patterns of the red, blue, and green dots scattered across the walls. Every time the lights would stop, I would simply slam my feet together to re-summon the light show. My legs grew tired after several minutes of this, and I could feel the blood draining from my toes. I let my feet fall with a thud, which of course resulted in more lights.

Suddenly, I felt something touching my leg. I sat up with a shock and looked down to find a huge rat sprawled out across my left thigh. He must have sensed my muscles tense because he dug his claws into my thigh, which made me cry out and scramble backwards. I used one hand to pull my body back as I used the other hand to swat at the rat. I felt it jump from my leg and I rolled onto my stomach. I could hear the squealing of Grandma Helen’s wheelchair growing closer. I reached out in front of me, searching for the trapdoor. I pulled down stacks of books that crashed all around me as I struggled to find the door. I could just barely make out a thin line of light from the closet as I continued to kick my feet and crawl towards it. My hand reached out and I felt the small knob of the trapdoor. I threw it upwards and scurried inside as I heard the bunker door open. The trapdoor slammed shut behind me as I pulled my feet through the opening.

Once I was safely back inside the closet space, I spun around and looked through the grates of the trapdoor. The bunker was bathed in light from Grandma’s study room. Francesca did not appear to be with her, since she was wheeling herself around the study. She cried out in frustration as she realized the mess of books scattered all across the bunker.

I gasped as I watched the rat emerge from a pile of novels. His fur was matted and he was sickly-looking. It was hard telling how long that rat had been trapped in the bunker, but he seemed to be suffering by the way his body heaved with each tiny breath. The rat sat motionless, seeming to watch my grandmother as she spun around the room frantically. After a few moments, my grandmother wore herself out from the panic and stopped spinning. The rat took this opportunity to climb up Grandma Helen’s gown and onto her thigh.

Grandma looked down at the rat, and to my shock, a rare smile came across her powdery face. The caked-on foundation cracked as her cheeks moved in ways they likely hadn’t in years. It was unsettling. She extended her arm feebly, and the rat jumped into the palm of her hand. She slowly lifted her shaking hand to her face to get a better look at the nasty creature in her hand.

For a fleeting moment, I thought she might realize what she was holding and scream, but she did not. She pressed the tiny head of the rat to her lips and gave it a kiss with her deep-purple lipstick. She looked on it fondly for several moments, but then a realization dawned on her. Her smile drooped and she pulled the rat from her lips. She did her best to hold the rat out in front of her and studied it with mounting anger. The frail muscles in her forearm contracted and she clenched her jaw. Her palm closed and her thin fingers wrapped around the rat and squeezed as hard as she could manage. The rat let out a panicked squeak, but it did not bite.

The rat continued to squirm for another few moments before becoming frighteningly still. The rat turned its beady eyes towards my grandmother and squeaked five more times -- not frenzied, like before, but calm and intentional. It seemed like the rat was speaking to her, as a person speaks to another person. My grandmother considered the rat and tilted her head. A tear formed at the crinkled corners of her dark eyes as she listened, but it was not long before her softened expression returned again to rage.

“That’s not good enough, Abner!” she screeched before throwing the rat across the room. He hit the opposite wall of the bunker with a sickening thud before falling to the ground lifelessly. Grandma Helen took a few ragged breaths before the reality of what she had done settled in on her, and she screamed. She rushed over to the rat and pushed herself out of the wheelchair. She collapsed on the body of the rat, laying motionless on a messy pile of books, sobbing and apologizing.

I could hear my mother calling for me from the kitchen, but I could not tear my eyes away from the scene. Not once had I ever seen my grandmother express anything but disdain for another human being, but in a private moment of weakness, she was sobbing for a dirty rat. I could hear my mother throwing open the door of the broom-closet and I scurried out of the cave and back down the hallway to the living room.