Nostalgia

It had been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same. Red brick tiles covered the driveway, leading up to an ornately carved wooden door behind a wrought-iron gate. The tiles continued down the left side of the house all the way to the back. The grass on the right side of the house, however, grew freely. Shirelle could still see the dent in the earth where her bike had got caught once, throwing her from it. That day, when she came to, screaming and crying from the pain, all the adults that had stopped by for a visit, rushed to her side and led her to the bedroom to lie down. She could have had a concussion for all they knew.

Along the fence between this house and the next, a passion fruit vine flourished, sporting supple fruits in between the curling twine and short leaves. She walked over and plucked a ripe one before bringing it to her nose for a sniff. It smelled like her childhood; lazy days of reading in the spacious living room, her grandmother calling for her from another part of the house only to ask where she was and what she was doing. A simpler time.

Unsure of whether she should peel the fruit with her teeth or not, Shirelle pocketed it and continued walking alongside the fence. There weren’t any curtains covering the windows, but with the doors leading to the verandas on either side closed, it was fairly dark inside. She could only just make out the fuzzy shape of the interlocking fake wood panelling on the floor that she would spend forever just admiring the pattern. Same went for the lines in between the ceiling tiles. Kids were amused by such simple things, she thought.

Moving on, she came to what used to be her grandmother’s garden. Granny used to have plants and flowers everywhere. Sometimes, she’d let Shirelle water them for her. More often than not, she’d just end up playing in the water herself.

The peas tree waved at her from the middle of the garden, its pods clacking together almost like they were saying hello. Next to it was a flowering plant she didn’t know the names of that bore small, pink tubular flowers that spiralled out into thin curling petals. Granny would have known what they were called.

As she walked, she saw one that she recognised: a hibiscus bush. It made her think about her school days. Perhaps a hibiscus was some metaphor for a character in a West Indian novel. She could never wrap her head around things like that. A flower was just a flower, not some kind of symbolic thing. Not unless she was explicitly told that it was and then, what was the point?

Shaking her head, she walked over to a tiny flight of stairs that led into another locked gallery. She remembered playing pretend out here, sitting on these steps that seemed so big back then. She wasn’t like the other girls her age. She wasn’t interested in dolls and makeup; she liked Power Rangers and anime. She would pretend that she was characters in whatever show she liked the most at the time and act out all the parts herself. Seeing as she didn’t have many friends, and no children were living nearby, she and her imagination were all she had. Playing pretend was best done alone. Either way, other people would always change the game to suit them instead of following her lead. She shook her head and stood up. She never considered herself a spoiled brat, but thinking back on it, she might have had a few tendencies.

Following the concrete drain down a slope, she came to the back of the house. Trees in this yard and the one beyond the fence sheltered the area from the sun and kept it a few degrees cooler than the rest. Choosing her steps carefully to avoid tripping on roots, she walked over to the old mango tree. She used to climb its short trunk and sit in an uncomfortable crook, fantasising about climbing higher but never actually doing it. Once she spent an entire hour working herself up to jump off, only to do so and end up scraping her knees. What was it with kids and scraping their knees?

Sadly, someone had cut the elderly tree had down. All that remained were the roots and a stump that stood as tall as her waist. It was inevitable. These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find a fruit tree growing in someone’s backyard. They were like flashing neon signs for thieves. Sighing, she sat on the mushroom and moss-covered stump and wrapped her arms around herself. Not everything was the same. She had hoped that out of all the things that could have been different, that this tree had remained. There was nothing as sweet as free fruit.

Just in front of her was the guest room that she used to use as her own when she had stayed here. It stuck out from the rest of the house like a cube-shaped aircraft suspended in the air. It had probably been an addition after they built the original house. Shirelle chuckled as a memory of large cupboards haunting her nights came to mind. She was afraid of everything back then; big cupboards, the dark, horror movies, disappointing her parents, being rejected by her friends, getting into trouble, being punished. Now, the only thing that she was afraid of was getting older.

Slowly pushing herself off of the stump, she told herself that she’d start exercising as soon as she got back home. Best way to stay young. Crunching on leaves from the neighbour’s tree that had fallen into this yard, she passed the stumps that used to be a banana and pomerac tree, respectively. What a waste. Suddenly aware of the passionfruit in her pocket, she pulled it out. There was some lint and an old receipt stuck to it. I really ought to empty my pockets before I leave the house, she said to herself.

Spotting a pipe up ahead, she trotted over and tried to open it. It took some effort to turn but eventually let out a sputtering of brown water. Her nose wrinkled at the rusty smell. After a minute or two of letting the water run, it turned clear. She held the fruit under the warm flowing liquid and rubbed dirt from her own hands as best as she could. Using the receipt, she closed the pipe and wiped her hands on her pants legs. Her grandmother would have had a fit. Clothes are not a substitute for hand towels! she’d say.

Back at the garage, Shirelle sat down in a half-moon alcove carved into the south wall and peeled the fruit with her teeth. Thankfully, the previous tenants had repainted it after she and her sister had dirtied it with their grubby little feet and hands so many years ago. She couldn’t even remember what they used to do there or why they had liked it so much. It was hard and had no back support. The chairs in the gallery would have been much more comfortable to sit in. She surmised that kids just enjoyed climbing and sitting on things they weren’t supposed to climb or sit on, like the front gate and this alcove. Her kids do much the same at her house now. She’d tired of telling them to stop.

What would they have thought of this place? This was the house she’d grown up in, where she wished she had stayed her entire life but couldn’t. When her great-grandfather died, her grandmother moved in with her great-aunt and she never saw the house again. It was at the bottom of a dead-end street in a gated community, not exactly somewhere she could drive by casually. She had thought about visiting it for years, thinking up things she could say if someone asked her what she was doing there that wouldn’t make it sound like she was showing up to rob the place. Would any of the people living nearby even recognise her after so many years had passed? Were they even alive anymore?

She had kept moving further and further away until she left the country altogether. There’s nothing left for me here, she told herself when she had got onto the plane; her face set with a determined scowl and her stomach doing gymnastics. She thought she had it all figured out, things would be better once she left. And they were better, eventually.

Migrating wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows like she thought it’d be. It took a long time for her to adjust to the new climate, new culture, new language. It was hard, harder than she had expected, but she did it.

Now she was here, at the place that once meant the most to her. She honestly didn’t even know why she had come. Maybe she couldn’t let go of her past, or maybe she just wanted to tick something off of her bucket list. She had always been prone to doing things and not really knowing the reason. Her mother never understood that about her, and frankly, neither did she. Whatever her reasons, she was glad that she had come, and that was all that mattered.