From Nowhere in Particular

From Nowhere in Particular

           “Well this sucks.” I knew my brother wasn’t really trying to diminish the scene unfolding in front of us, but for me the phase was too casual. It was something you said when you spilled ketchup on your shirt, or when you find out the concert you sort-of wanted to go too had sold out before you got tickets.

It did not cover this. There was no way in hell that it covered this. I stood there a scratchy blanket draped over my shoulders as my whole family watched our home burn to the ground. The firefighters weren’t even trying to save it. They were just spraying down what used to be the lawn and trying to keep the blaze away from the neighbor’s houses. They said it was too dangerous, that the structure was already engulfed and by now there was nothing left anyhow.

The roof caved in with a large groan and my mother stuffed her hand into her mouth to stifle a scream. I glanced at her and saw the flames reflected in her eyes. I couldn’t tear my eyes away, I couldn’t stop watching no matter how much I wanted too.

The smell of smoke was all around me, it clung to my skin and the inside of my nose. It invaded my brain and stung my eyes. I looked down to my bare feet. Perhaps I should have been cold, everyone thought I was cold. Every muscle in my body was trembling.

My brother had woken me up. The smoke had already been in the air. I didn’t even think to grab anything. I’ve stumbled over my shoes, my backpack, random other stuff. I didn’t pick any of it up. I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders.

“This really sucks.” Jacob repeated and I gritted my teeth. I wished he would stop saying that. I wished he would just watch in silent horror like the rest of us. Mom had buried her head in my step-father Rand’s shoulder. He had on his tough guy look, his hands were clenched into fists, but his lip trembled.

The house gave another sigh and fell further into itself. I pushed a piece of gravel back and forth under my big toe.

“This sucks.”

“Oh shut up!” I snarled and Mom peaked her head out to stare at me reproachfully.

“Maggie.” She half sobbed and I clenched my jaw to keep from crying.

“What?” I snarled with all the venom I could muster. My bottom lip started to quiver. “Our house is burning and all he can say is that it sucks. Yeah it sucks, it more than sucks. There is no what that, that covers it.” I angrily wiped away the tears that had sprung to my eyes. It was stupid I know, I mean yeah my family was all alright. Their lives were what mattered the most, and I don’t know maybe it was selfish or whatever, but I wanted my stuff. I wanted my bed and the stuffed animals I refused to let anyone throw away even though they had been under my bed collecting dust for years now. I wanted my clothes and my phone. I didn’t want to be standing here wrapped in a stranger’s blanket.

I felt empty, like I’d lost everything.

Mom unfolded herself from Rand and opened her arms for me. I stepped into them. Smoke clung to her too. “Don’t worry baby, we will get through this. Everything will be okay.” She soothed stroking my hair. I let my tears soak her shirt. I just wanted to go home.

You are home. A nasty little voice in the back of my head nagged and I felt compelled to look at it again. Not much left now.

Dad picked us up, which was really uncomfortable for Rand, but he just sat there stone-faced in the passenger seat of Dad’s truck as Mom, Jacob and I crowed into the back of the cab.

“Thanks for picking us up Jake.” Mom put her hand on his shoulder as Dad pulled away from what had been our house. Rand stiffened visibly, but Dad pretended not to notice.

“Of course Diana. I wasn’t going to just leave you like that.” I saw him frown in the rearview mirror. “You sure you don’t want to come back to my place?”

Mom just shook her head, “No. I already told my Dad we were coming.”

I swallowed hard, my throat felt clogged. I could still smell the smoke in my nose. Grandpa Finn was one of my least favorite people. He lived on this farm on the outskirts of a town I couldn’t name about a million miles from anywhere. He always smelled like sweat, old oil and cows. His hands were rough and his face so lined I had never been able to tell if it was from smiling or frowning. Mom said smiling, but I’d never seen him do it. Mom said he was just sad without Grandma. I never knew her, so I guess in a way I never knew him either.

The porch light was the only light on when Dad dropped us off. Mom opened the unlocked door and it creaked into the silent hallway. “Dad?”

A dog barked halfheartedly as we shuffled through the doorway and into the slightly shabby living room. “Good boy Harley.” Mom scratched the old bloodhound between the ears and I could hear his tail thumping against the wooden floor. A light flared into being and I blinked in the sudden brightness. Grandpa Finn came thumping down the stairs his hair was crushed on one side, but he was still dressed.

“Diana.”

Mom offered him a small smile that made my heart pound a bit harder in my chest, she looked ready to cry. Grandpa Finn clasped her shoulder for a moment before he turned to Rand and shook his hand stiffly.

“Randell.”

Grandpa Finn had never like Rand, he thought he was too…city, I guess was the word. He wasn’t like my dad who had grown up here in this no name town and knew what a hard day’s work actually meant or some other nonsense.

Rand just nodded in greeting, “Thank you for taking us in on such short notice Finn.”

Grandpa Finn’s mouth twisted up in a sort of grimace, “Couldn’t rightly leave my flesh and blood without a roof could I? Maybe things are different in your world Randell, but in mine we take care of our own.”

Rand’s hands clenched into fists, but he didn’t rise to the bait. Mom out her hand on Grandpa Finn’s chest and turned his attention back to her. “Dad be nice please.”

He caught her hand and his face softened. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

We were deposited in rooms that smelled like mothballs and disuse. There was still a couple of my aunt’s dolls on the dresser and when I sat down on the bed across from the one Jake had thrown himself onto a plume of dust erupted around me and I sneezed.

Jacob took a shower first and I pawed disinterestedly through the dresser. There were a few shirts from the 1970s and a pair of pants that looked like they’d maybe fit me. Everything felt rough under my fingertips, like I’d rubbed them raw to nerves and now I felt everything a million times more sharply. I looked down at my hands.

They looked the same.

I closed my eyes for a moment and snapped them open as smoke filled the space between my eyelids. No, I would not think about it. I would not think about it.

I would not cry. I would not cry. My eyes burned and I stared up into the humming ceiling bulb for a moment until the tightness in my chest diminished. I needed something to distract myself. I patted my pocket and panic flared for a moment before I remembered that my phone was still in my room.

I bit my lip hard.

Okay not the phone. What then? My eyes roamed the room endlessly, this had been my mom and aunt’s room when they had been kids. It looked like a shrine to a couple of teenagers who’d gone off to college and never come back. Dusty posters were tacked on the walls and at the end of the sloped ceiling there was a half-height door that opened into the attic storage area. Interest piqued I crossed the room and dropped to my knees as I slid the door open. The smell of mothballs was stronger here and I wrinkled my nose as I looked into the gloomy space. There was a small shoebox with the words Alexis’s private things, DO NOT TOUCH!!! I thought the three explanation points were excessive, but what did I know. I pulled the box free and crawled back to my borrowed bed.

Alexis had been my aunt. The truth was that only one daughter did return from college, and to hear the story my mom got married right after and got out of this house. She didn’t speak about her sister much, only to say that she had died while they were at school. They had been twins. Just like me and Jacob.

I opened the box and right on the top was a composition notebook with the name Alexis White scrawled neatly across the front. I lifted it from the box and thumbed open the first page. On it was a letter to my mother.

Diana,

           You know this is my diary. Get lost. Even twins need secrets.

Love you always,

Lex

I flipped to the next page.

It wasn’t a diary entry exactly, it was a poem.

History of No One

Who am I you may ask?

A shadow of the past,

Of those who bore my name before, or original.

Something unwitnessed by history.

Perhaps the answer is both, neither, for history remembers us indiscriminately,

Yet forgets us all the same.

Who am I, you may ask?

I may not answer

For fear of what I shall discover.

History is a beast,

It eats us all.

Leaving only ivory bones and

Bones all look the same in the end.

I flipped to the next page, there was another poem.  

Forgotten Beauty

In the process of hiding from ugliness we have forgotten beauty

Something that cannot be manufactured or cut from a template

Something that cannot be owned.

We have shaped the world to conform to our template

Always deluding ourselves into thinking that it is beautiful

Now in a world where everything is owned.

We’ve come to think that beauty can be owned

That it can be transferred onto the skin using a template

Everyone has their own definition of beauty.

Everything today is plastic, milled from an overused template

Having things makes you happy until you realize that it also makes you owned

All in the name of beauty. 

           There were hundreds, each page filled with words and prose. I flipped to the last page that had ink on it about two-thirds through the notebook. The last poem was titled, From Nowhere in Particular. I felt my heart quicken in my chest.  

“That was the last thing she ever wrote.” Mom’s voice said and I looked up sharply, guilt coloring my cheeks. Mom just crossed the room and held out her hand for the book. I handed it to her and she looked down at the page with an unreadable expression.

“To some the world is fire, to some ice. For me the world is nowhere where no one can see me. To some the sound is loud, to some soft. For me the sound is my heart beating in my chest. To some the laughter is hollow to some shallow. For me the laughter is painful like knifes against my skin. To some the urge to be someone is insurmountable, to some meaningless. For I am no one from nowhere. I have nothing to become.”

I tear traced down Mom’s cheek and dropped onto the page for a moment before she snapped the book shut. “It didn’t matter to me. It never would have mattered to me, but she didn’t ask me. She didn’t consider that I was no one from nowhere too. I’m sorry.” She wiped her hand across her face and then stared into the light like I had done before to stem the flow of tears.

I wanted to ask. I wanted so ask so badly, but I was frozen, transfixed by the words that seemed to answer the question for me. In my mind I could see our house burning again. I could see it crumbling into itself and blackening as the flames consumed it.

In the end it meant nothing, not really.

I stood up from Alexis’s bed and threw my arms around my sobbing mother. “Nowhere isn’t so bad a place to be. After all everyone I love is here too.” I whispered to her and she clung to me tighter.

I let go of that house and my stuff. I left behind my phone and school things and I clung to the one thing that actually mattered.