Buried

Familiar scenes flash by as I wind the rental car around the curve: there’s the cemetery on the left, the old tobacco barn on the right where I snuck my first kiss, and the little church on the corner where I sat daydreaming about it all through the service the next morning. It looks like someone’s finally put a fresh coat of paint on the steeple, and the downtown is buzzing with people filing in and out of shops and restaurants that didn’t exist ten years ago. 

I adjust the phone between my cheek and shoulder and click on my turn signal. “I think the house on Westwood is the one, Karen. It checks off all my boxes: two-bedrooms, quiet street, fenced-in yard, and all within budget. I absolutely love it.”

“Oh, I could tell. You were practically glowing standing there in the kitchen.” The slow-talking realtor pauses, and I can hear her shuffling paperwork. “Did you still want to see the one on Bradford Avenue? The showing’s at two.”

I turn the car down my childhood street and slow, my foot barely hovering over the gas pedal. “We might as well. I mean, that’s the pretty much whole reason I flew in. But I think after that, I’ll be ready to decide.”

“That’s what I like to hear. I’ll see you at two.”

I toss my phone into my purse, and my stomach flips. The last time I drove this road, my dinky Toyota was piled high with the contents of my bedroom packed into bins labeled “college.” That feels like a lifetime ago now.

The car dips and rocks on the gravel driveway, and I feel like I’m in a game trying to avoid all the potholes. The house comes into view, but my recognition of it lags behind.

The weeds have taken over; they’ve climbed up the shed and over the side of the big sun-bleached propane tank in the front yard. Vehicles in various degrees of dilapidation dot the lawn, the overgrown grass tickling their rusted underbellies. Two refrigerators frame the porch like lion statues posing at the entrance of some stately gated driveway. Come on in, the appliances seem to say with doors ajar. Just watch your step.

I throw the car in park and sit for minute, wondering if somehow, I took a wrong turn. Then I hear the creak of the screen door, and a woman in a sunflower dress steps out onto the porch, long hair trailing behind her.

My mother.

She waves to me, a wide smile on her face. It hadn’t been too long since I last saw her for Christmas at Ben and Jenna’s where she looked like an ornament in her sparkly sweater and jingle bell earrings, but here she’s thinner and grayer, like the overgrown weeds are creeping in and sucking the life out of her.

I high step through the grass and up the sagging porch steps and throw my arms around her. Then she rests her hands on my waist and tells me she’s so happy to see me. I’m happy to see her, too.

We stand on the porch for a while, and she tells me I should stop by and visit my friend Katie from high school who just had twins, and Jim Bob from the ice cream parlor where I used to work, and old Miss Mable from church. They’d love to see you, so grown up now. Then she talks about the neighbors: who’s moved away, who’s always on vacation, who just put in a swimming pool or a new mailbox.

A bead of sweat trickles down my spine. I pull a notebook from my purse and begin to fan myself.

She gestures to the door. “You can come in, if you’d like.” She inches backward. “I’m sorry it’s a bit messy. I’ve just been so busy.”

“It’s fine, Mom. I’m just glad to see you.”

I follow her through the threshold and immediately become engulfed in a layer of warm, stagnant air. It smells musty and sharp, like mold is hiding just behind the wallpaper. She flicks the switch on the wall, but only one lightbulb twitches to life in the coverless fixture on the ceiling. The room is dim and crowded, the sunlight blocked by stacks of boxes and heaps of clothing, some nearly as tall as me. A narrow path winds through the space, and I follow closely behind her. I don’t take off my shoes.

“You must be thirsty,” she says, leading me into the kitchen. But the kitchen is buried—suffocating under stuff. Every surface is littered with dirty dishes, paperwork, spoiled groceries, and take-out containers. This place used to be so open and bright: creamy walls, lace curtains, white countertops—at least I think they were white. I can’t even see them now.

I remember sitting on these same counters, legs swinging, waiting for the oven to beep and tell me the cake was done and ready to come out. With a house full of moody, sugar-addicted teenagers, it didn’t have to be anyone’s birthday to bake a cake; we could always find a reason to make something sweet, an excuse to lather something in frosting. Now, the oven door looks cloudy and stained, and I wonder when she last used it.

Something brushes my leg, and I jump, then let out a strong exhale when I see it’s just a dog—small and frizzy with a blue bow in its fur. It steps past me and curls up on a heap of crusted, wrinkled blankets in the corner. It stares up at me, black eyes seeming to narrow with a challenge: what are you looking at?

Her voice pulls me back in. “Would you like water? Or I can make tea or coffee.”

She shuffles over to the cabinet and slides a mug off the shelf. Behind her, something sleek, brown, and sig-legged crawls across the open cabinet door and disappears between a crack in the wall.

“No, thank you.” I step back. “I’m actually just going to go use the restroom.”

I weave through the piles, out of the kitchen and down the hall, and shut myself in the small bathroom. It’s a nightmare of overflowing trash, expired toiletries, and hardwater stains on every surface that was once white. The showerhead is being held on by rubber bands, and there’s a gaping hole in the plastic bottom of the bathtub. My bladder is screaming at me, and I can’t ignore it, though I don’t spend a second longer on the toilet than necessary. At the sink, the faucet spits and sputters as I scrub my hands, like the house is reluctant to part with a single drop of its tannin-saturated well water. I dry my hands on my own shirt.

I start weaving back through the hall but stop at the door on the left: my old room. Twisting the knob, the door doesn’t give more than a few inches, but through the crack, I can see the purple walls with their matching wallpaper border, exactly the same after all these years. Oh, yes, I’d almost forgotten about my purple obsession: lavender walls, violet curtains, a fluffy lilac rug the vacuum always choked on.

But I can’t tell if the rug is still there now because what looks like the entirety of a storage unit has exploded inside the room. I spy a boxy TV with a built in VCR player, shelves overflowing with books and nick-nacks, a desk buried under boxes, piles of magazines, a sewing machine, a dog crate filled with shoes, and bins labeled “baby clothes.” And in the rare gap of space along the floor, mousetraps lie poised and ready to receive any unwanted houseguests. One trap has already accomplished its purpose; between its metal bars is a dried-up rodent, its contorted body stiff and flat.

What happened to this place?

Something flutters in my peripherals; she shuffles over to me and pulls the door shut. “Oh, that’s a bit messy in there. But look, come see what I’ve done in this room.”

I step over a pile of clothes, a doorless microwave, and a pair of hockey skates and follow her into the next bedroom—one that used to be my brother’s. She clicks on a lamp and my eyes adjust to the weak, yellow light. It’s not as bad as my old room, but it’s not much better. Something growls at me from atop a mountain of winter coats: a bug-eyed terrier with a glittery pink collar.

Since when did she have two dogs?

“Won’t this be just perfect?” She walks to the corner, moving clothing and boxes aside to reveal what’s underneath. “I got this whole thing for ten dollars at a yard sale—mattress too. Can you believe that?”

Heat creeps up my chest as I stare at the old brown baby crib she’s shoved into this already bursting room. Bite marks decorate the wooden rim, and tired-looking stuffed animals sit propped in the corner, like they’re waiting for a playmate to come and spring them free. And through the bars, just inches from the crib, there’s an outlet on the wall with a missing cover, its wires exposed like a web of veins.

“Mom, what is all of this?”

She points to my stomach. “Well, it’s for when my grandbaby comes to stay, of course. He’ll need somewhere to sleep.”

I picture my unborn baby sleeping in this rickety, pre-chewed crib, lulled to sleep by the sound of hungry mice scurrying across the floors. I imagine him poking his little hand into the outlet box, live wires in his chubby fists. When I had considered the thought of moving back home, somewhere my child and I wouldn’t be so alone, this is not what I’d had in mind.

How did things get this bad?

 Bile rises in my throat, hot and acidic and not from the pregnancy-induced heartburn. But I’m spared from responding when something dense and bulky pushes against the back of my knees and knocks me into the pile of coats: a fat-headed yellow Labrador—no, two of them. One licks my face and the other pins me against the clutter with two muddy paws. I grapple for something to pull myself up with, but only end up ripping several coats down from their stack. The terrier in the pink collar comes down with them.

She sighs. “Oh, what a circus. Get out of here, you big mutts.” She pulls them from the room, apologizing, and then in a parade of women and dogs, we stumble through the maze of mess, out of the house, and into the front yard. The fresh air and blinding white daylight make my head spin. I don’t have to be at the next showing for several hours, but I can’t stay here another minute.

My mother’s dangling earrings swing and spin as she chatters, reminiscing about what a sweet baby I was and stretching out our goodbye. She tells me I used to love singing, and drawing, and playing with stuffed animals—that I had a favorite bunny I'd drag everywhere.

“I’m sure I’ve still got it around here somewhere.” She stares off into the distance. “You kids just grew up so fast. I had to hold on to every little bit of you I could.” Then she bends down and talks to my belly. “You be good to your mama, now. Try not to kick her too much in there.”

When we hug goodbye, her arms feel weightless and bony around my neck and I wish I could put her in my suitcase and take her with me—back to my place where the air is safe to breathe and the water comes out when you tell it to and you don’t have to worry about creatures with little feet scuttling across your coffee cups. And where nothing is going to electrocute you.

“Mom, you know I love you, right? And I’m always just a phone call away if you need anything.”

She pinches my cheek. “I love you too.”

When I pull out of the driveway and wave my last goodbye, I see two more dogs watching me through the chain-link fence, their brown heads cocked like they’re wondering why we didn’t get a chance to meet.

I fish my cellphone from my purse.

She answers on the first ring. “This is Karen.”

“Hi, Karen. I’m so sorry, but I won’t be making the two’ o clock showing.”

“Oh. Alright. Have you made a decision then?”

The city limits sign blurs by and becomes a speck in my rearview mirror. “Yes, I have.”