What the House Said

fiction

Another piece from the collection of fiction I’m working on. From the perspective of an old house. (Messy watercolor painted by me.)

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72-74 Poplar Ave.

They came in with so many ideas. They were going to turn me into an artist colony. They were going to tear out my middle wall and make one grand stairway out of two. They wanted to fill me with music and art and people who love history.

            I thought, We’ll see.

            She said, “About a hundred thousand dollars will do it, right? Over time?”

            Ha ha ha ha ha, even I thought that was funny. I was built in1860. My roof leaked. Starlings had built a nest in the attic that looked like Gandalf’s beard. There were so many old ghosts living inside me. And what about the portal in the garden in the front and the ley lines in the basement? The baby who died upstairs in the back room? And that man, that man. Whose children no longer speak to him.

            So, they came. They started working. They opened doors, painted walls.

            They fought. They worked together. She loved the old sink that was there from the late 1800s, the way the wallpaper had fallen off in the bedroom on the second floor. She painted around it, making it into a mural. “See?” she said. “It’s an ocean.” She drew a sea monster by the window. And a mermaid, who seemed happy to watch the creek at the end of the yard.

            They loved each other. The neighbors came and played music at their Christmas parties and everyone danced.

            I said, Here is the secret of me. Whatever energy you bring in here, I amplify.

            You want to fight? I’ll make your fights fantastic.

            You want to love? It will radiate out my windows, blowing out the streetlamps!

            Their fights and love shook the floorboards.

They laughed a LOT.

           

I remember the Halloween tree he made for her, the daybed they set up in the living room, how her son called it the daydreaming bed. I remember how she would sit in the light that poured in from the front windows and meditate and draw flowers and sing to her altars. I remember how sometimes in the middle of the night one of them would come downstairs and sit on that bed, watching the moonflowers their friend had planted in the front garden near the portal. (Those things bloomed like crazy.)

            They had a lot of dreams for me to hold. I did.

            The cats knew everything.

            I am a very proud building. Skilled hands did the moldings and the brickwork and the woodwork and I remember them. I have withstood hurricanes and flooding and I am a building people stop and stare at. I love this about myself.

          Then they left. New people moved in. They left treasures with me, polished rocks that sang their memories from other lands, tucked into the foundation. Bundles of dried flowers nestled between and underneath the floorboards. They weren’t the first ones to do this. There are offerings like this all over me, little jewels everywhere. If you look hard you can find them. It is why I have stood tall so many years. .

            But I remember that first party they threw, when a fiddler, banjo player, and guitarist came from the bar down the street, drunk and fired up and played for hours, spontaneous—an explosion of wild joy that filled me up. All those dancing feet on my old floorboards. That was a blessing. I knew it. They knew it. The old ghosts loved it.

            I remember the day she helped some of the old ghosts leave. One of them kept coming back, torn between this world and the next.

            I remember when she and I stayed up one night, talking. That was rare, and I liked being able to tell my story.

            Here is one thing: Think about who you let inside your house. If you open your doors to trouble, you are asking for a hard lesson. Houses hold everything.

And who among us doesn’t like trouble?

Sometimes, now, when my rooms are quiet I remember that explosion of music. I fill myself up with 150 years of light. I blow the darkness out my chimneys.

I say I will hold you, all of you, until the all the lights go out.