Quiet Noise at Night

A shotgun house is what they called it in New Orleans, La. As an only child I was just me and my grandmother. My mother passed away when I was just a toddler at the age of 3 years old. She died from lupus way back in the early 1960's, I was born in 1958. My mother asked her mother/my grandmother to raise me because my mother knew she was not going to be on this earth to raise me.

Surely, my mother passed away, the funeral was upon us. There I was at the funeral with all these people looking at my mother in the coffin, I called it a bed, what do I know I was only 3 years old. Looking at all the people staring at my mother in the coffin, I yelled out in the church "get up Audrey, get up out of that bed". She did not move, I yelled out once again, "get up out of bed Audrey", my grandmother said the entire church broke down in tears.

As the years went by, I grew up in the same shotgun house my own mother and uncles were raised in. This house was long, straight, creepy and airy. Beautiful, inside and outside the house was groomed and well kept. But, at night was terrifying for me. The house was a 2-bedroom, 1 bathroom, a front room and a backroom. However, my grandmother and grandfather raised 4 boys and 2 girls in that house I would never know, but somehow it worked for them.

The night moves in, I am tired of watching cowboy movies and baseball games, we only had one television in the entire house, so, I had to watch whatever my step-grandfather was watching. (Boring). My eyelids start to get heavy at about 7:30pm. My grandmother tells me to get up and take my bath and go to bed. So, I did. I dreaded the fact of going to bed every night because I knew what was going to happen to me.

Deep into the night, the house was dark, the sheets on my bed were waving like the water on the ocean from the window fan that was blowing on high speed with every window throughout the house lifted and the sheer curtains blowing outwards touching the footboard of my bed. I slowly pulled the sheets over my head and did not move a muscle.

My bedroom was right beside the kitchen, I could just reach around the wall to turn the kitchen light off and on. Every night between 1am-4am the lights would flicker off and on and sometimes come on and stays on. I knew it was not my grandmother or my grandfather turning the light on because I could hear then snoring through the hallway of the shotgun house.

So, I get up enough nerve to ease myself up reach my hand around the wall, touch the light switch to turn it off. The light did not turn off, I clicked and clicked and clicked!!! The light remained on, my body got cold and so I eased myself back in bed, pulled the covers over my head and laid still throughout the rest of the night. This would happen several times a week. The next morning would be a test for me to click that light switch to see if the same would happen, the light switch click on and off like it should. I could never understand until this day at the age of 65 why this was happening to me.

I am grateful for life.