What My Childhood Home Was Thinking
i didn’t worry when they took the winter coats. winter was always hard on us anyway—we lived better together in warm weather. i didn’t worry when they stripped the beds, or when they took bleach to the little white handprints on the basement walls. i remember the girls decorated me with those the year they moved in. i didn’t worry when the china started going in boxes, but i was surprised at how white my cabinets were where the sun hadn’t touched them. i didn’t pause when they painted over the faded part of the banister where the children had swung down the stairs a million and one times. i always wore that patch with pride. i didn’t mind when they clipped the carpet where two different dogs had ripped the thread, and i didn’t even flinch when the couch went, its fabric faded with the sun i let in. i didn’t pause when they burned the last of the firewood—they usually only did that on Christmas—or when they left an envelope of keys on my kitchen counter. i just stood there as they checked the little blue bedroom one more time and hauled the last of a life together into the metal truck. i watched the mother pause at the door for a minute. she looked scared—i knew that look—so i tried to edge my walls a little closer. thank you, she said out loud, and that’s when it hit me. she shut the door one last time, heading out to the truck, and a car i didn’t recognize pulled up the driveway. i tried to stand tall in case they looked back, but inside, i felt colder than i usually did in April.
