Remember This

If I could do it all over again I would cry. That’s the one thing I didn’t do, was cry. Now before you get excited, nobody died. This isn’t nearly so tragic as that. This, though, was the death of an era, a time in my childhood. I sit here in my bedroom, in a life that’s slowly erasing that little girl. She had thick brown hair, glasses, braces, and an active, creative mind. She wasn’t exactly a social butterfly, but she sure thought she was. She was innocent, but she liked to think that she was some sort of street-smart and savvy. Sometimes she would sneak through the halls of the Smithville Arts Center and try to overhear conversations, though she never did hear anything important. Perhaps she gave up the habit too soon, because maybe if she’d snooped, she’d have had some sort of warning before the end. Unfortunately for her, she never did see it coming. One day, she left and never returned. 

What an idiot. I say it to myself and close my eyes, and suddenly I’m there. The little girl, little me, is alone in Studio 1-B, sorting dead markers, her younger sister in the connected room sharpening the colored pencils. 

Emma, come here. I think it, but she hears me. 

Why?

We’re taking a little tour of the building. 

What a naive little thing. I can’t believe I came with me. Doesn’t she know not to go with strange people? I guess it’s different if I’m her.

I take her to the hallway that leads to the bathrooms and show her the mural of the ocean. She shows me the teddy-fish, a fish shaped more like a teddy bear than a real fish, and tells me the story of how she and Maeve found it in the corner and named it. I smile along: of course I know the story. I was there when it happened.

We go next door, under the unique arched brick doorway. All the others are closed up, but this one isn’t.

Touch the bricks, I tell her. Remember it. She touches it obediently, a little confused. Oh, baby. You’ll be glad someday. 

Down the hall are Pottery A and B. Mrs. Chamber’s gourd rattles and globe, and her gloves and denim apron, sit in A. 

Smell the table. Smell her apron. She’s moving soon. Emma looks up at me, her eyes wide. I just nod. Remember this.

Matt is in Pottery B. We hover in the hallway until he’s done. Remember him.

I stroke the rack of aprons, and Emma does the same. She sits at “her” electric wheel, the one she’d claimed during her beginner’s throwing class. I sit at Sam’s kick wheel facing her. We silently take in the room. 

Done? She waits a moment, takes in the high windows and the emergency exit, the canvas covered tables and shelves full of pottery, and nods. 

We go up the stairs. I stop her at each of the framed pictures. The one with the kids on the bus. Remember this. The one of old Walnut Street School, before it got a new life as the Arts Center. This too. 

Look around the lobby and remember it. Those chairs, the high ceiling, the staircases. Joan at the desk. The brochures in the rack. We can’t stop here, but take a picture in your mind.

To the right, into the gallery, Gallery 2-A. The sunlight filters in golden, the mid-summer evening light catching on dust particles. There’s no exhibit right now, just the gold wooden floor and the white walls and the light, the blazing sun from the west-facing windows. 

Remember this?

I nod.

Down the hallway now. We skip Gallery 2-B and go straight down the hall past the glass display cases, all the way to the little music room at the end of the hallway, the one with the chalkboard with the staff on half of it. 

Now up the side steps, the metal ones that make a dull ringing sound with every step. At the top there’s a red-painted metal door to match. I open it into the darkened hallway. We go to the empty ballet studio, Studio 3-C. I make a few soft pirouettes and stop to study myself in the mirror. What does a girl trying to hold on look like? The windows face west and north, the same as my bedroom. We stand looking out into the parking lot and the playground across from it. 

 She leans up against the window sill. 

I’m never coming back, am I?

I give a small shake of the head. She can interpret it as no questions, not now or as no, you’re not. Either way, she’ll be hurt.

We go to the watercolor studio. I don’t tell her what to remember. She’s doing that all on her own now. The wood floor, the closet, the mirrors, the wooden painted folding chairs, the tiger patchwork-tapestry. 

She looks at me, expectant. Done. Are we done? 

Go, I tell her. Go wherever else you want to remember. I’m going to look around for a minute. I know she’ll do a good job, and cry while she’s at it.

I eventually make it down to the auditorium, which by some miracle isn’t locked. This room is cooler than the others, the high ceiling and eastern windows protecting it from the heat. I wander on the black-and-white checkered floor. We watched Monsters, Inc. on this floor one Halloween. We had guest speakers here. My sister and I danced on that stage, sometimes officially, sometimes when we snuck in. Someday in the future, grown-up little-me will attend a calling hours here, for her band director’s son. She, her boyfriend, and her sister will all walk in. She will be a stranger in a place she’d grown up in, and seeing it populated with her school teachers will knock her off kilter. She will shake her band director’s hand, be hugged by his daughter, and look at his wife, remembering that twelve years ago in a room just down the ramp and across the basement, she taught her the first things she ever knew about pottery. 

I pace. Why couldn’t we come back? Why can’t I let go? Why couldn’t the new director see the magic she was ruining? 

One angry tear leads to another, leads to sobs shaking my shoulders as I cry privately into my hands. I run up the steps onto the stage, spread my arms wide, and whisper to the empty room. My voice echoes back to me. Remember this, remember this, remember this. 

I sit on the stage, my tears out. I know I have to go soon. Soon there will be no place for me here. Just one more walk-through, that will be enough.

I open the auditorium door to a plain wall where there used to be students’ artwork. I go down the ramp. The ocean mural by the bathroom is painted over. Beige. Why beige? This is an Arts Center, and the best they could do was beige?

I walk faster. The brick archway is closed, covered by drywall. I break out in a soft, shuffling run. Pottery A. No trace of the globe or the beaded-gourd shakers. No denim apron. Pottery B. Sam’s kick wheel has moved out, and in its place sits another electric wheel. The kiln room door hangs open: Matt is gone too, then. He always, and I mean always, closed it.

Faster yet, I run up the stairs. There aren’t any photos on the wall.

 There’s modern furniture in the lobby and a peppy secretary-type at the front desk. She doesn’t tell me not to run. Joan always did. 

I pound my way up the steps to the top floor and run along the hallway in the dark. My sister and I always asked Brigette to chase us down this hallway in the dark. 

I stop. 

It’s all gone. You can’t hold on to it, dear. You never could. I drag my fingers along the smooth banister as I go down the steps. 

At the doorway I whisper again to the building. Remember me, I beg it. And then I step out onto the stone steps. 

The door slams behind me. I turn to the building, this glorious place that houses my summers and my childhood. I remember the windows, the benches, the trees with Matt’s clay bird houses hanging in them. I see in front of me the outdoor camp activities, the messy Jackson Pollock-ing on the sidewalk, the tag games in the yard. My mom, in all her organizational and creative brilliance. Owen, Mauve, Clara, Cameron, Allison, Betty, Hannah, Norah, Lyla, all the others whose names are lost to me… when I catch glimpses of our faces, we’re always smiling. 

That crying thing? Don’t remember me like that. Remember me like this. I smiled up at the kind building and gave a little twirl. Like that.