The blinding sun

I look back at the house, shielding my eyes with my palm. The sun has just risen above the rooftop, shining directly upon me, blinding me. I tell myself that this is the reason why my eyes are watering, why I cover them with a hand. It has absolutely nothing to do with the tears gathering in them, blurring my vision of the building. They sting because too much direct sunlight is bad for you. And they water because… well, I am only human, okay, and people’s eyes water when they look at the sun for too long.

Except it is not the sun I am looking at. It is, in fact, in my way of casting my one last glance at the house I grew up in. It rains so often here, almost every day, and yet today, of all days, the sun has decided to play peek-a-boo, meddling with my very emotional, very private goodbye.

I take a step back, trying to adjust my position so that the rooftop or maybe the old oak tree next to the front steps would cover the big mean glaring ball of fire. Just a little bit to the left, a half-step back and… there. Perfect. Narrowing my eyes just a little, I now have the perfect view of the building that I have called home for thirteen years.

So. Where to start?

“Honey?”

I try really hard not to growl under my breath when I turn to face my Mum who is approaching me with a sad smile on her face. Her eyes are red, I can see that. The smile isn’t really necessary but still, it’s there, an attempt at giving me strength in this difficult moment.

It doesn’t.

“Yeah?” I shift a little and there it is again, the giant yellow bully shooting rays at me. How is it everywhere I look?

“Are you sure you’ve packed everything?” Mum approaches me, lies a hand on my shoulder. I shrug it off, masking the gesture with attempting to adjust the straps of my rucksack.

“Just like I said two hundred and eighty-three times before,” it is a struggle to keep my voice calm. Even. “Yes.”

“Are you sure?” Apparently, my rucksack-adjusting trick was more convincing than I thought because Mum does it again. Places her palm on my right shoulder and squeezes.

I squeeze the straps of my rucksack.

“Got all of the little trinkets you kept hiding all around the house?” She inquires.

I roll my eyes. The last item I hid was a mouse-shaped rubber I’d placed on top of the bathroom cupboard two years ago. I used to have a habit of leaving little objects – special objects - all around the house. A bottle cap here, a plastic ring there, things that mattered enough to gain the status of treasure.

And what do you do with treasure? You hide it.

So, I hid mine. I a no longer a child so I don’t do that anymore but my parents have yet to notice.

They aren’t very observant, sometimes.

“Yes,” I lie. I have actually left them there, untouched. All of them. Whoever buys this house, if he or she finds them, they will know it had history. I want them to lie awake at night, wondering how that miniature figurine of a velociraptor has made its way into the little space where one of the skirting boards in the living room has fallen off, creating a gap, just big enough for that plastic dinosaur to fit in there.

“Okay, then,” with one last squeeze, Mum lets go and steps away. “It’s only a couple boxes more and then we’ll be all good to go.”

I nod absently, already redirecting my focus to the building. I take in its greyish façade, the tiny little stones embedded in it – my first memory is trying to dig one of those pebbles out, to no avail.

I look up at my window, overlooking the street, which I couldn’t really leave open at night because the noises from the outside would keep waking me. I trace the shadows cast by the oak’s branches on that window, think back to the many nights I have spent lying wide awake in my bed because the wind in those branches sounded a lot like howling and those shadows looked a lot like monsters.

The sun has lowered now so the new portion of tears in my eyes has nothing to do with being blinded when I gather the courage to say –

“You know, in our new house, your room overlooks the garden,” Dad says conversationally, propping an arm on my shoulder. I look from the arm to his face but he doesn’t notice, a proud smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. “It’s bigger than this one, too. Better.”

I don’t ask if he means the house or the garden. Asking questions would start a conversation and I do not want one right now.

“It’s in a good location, too,” he continues, growing taller and taller with every word. He seems like he might float right off the ground, and not stop until he touches the sun that has been annoying me earlier.

My Dad and the sun would have something in common, then.

“Lots of families with kids. You’ll make so many new friends.”

His words don’t reach me, not really. I have friends. I have Billy who lives right there, next door, and now he will be miles and miles away and we won’t be regularly seeing each other anymore until one of us – me, because I’m older – gets a driver’s license and will be driving every weekend to see him. See my old house, still there. With new people inside wondering about that velociraptor in the living room.

I’m jostled a little when Dad lets me go abruptly, yelling something at the moving crew. I move away from the commotion and closer to the house, so close that I now have to tip my head back and my chin up to fully see it. From here, I can count the tiny stones in the walls, can look through the kitchen window at the cupboards – a round pebble painted as a ladybird lying on top of one of them, ready to be discovered. To be questioned.

I say goodbye to that pebble, to all the other objects I’d hidden in various places all over the house before getting ready to say goodbye to the house itself –

“Out of the way!”

I barely manage to jump aside and avoid being squashed to a pulp by the wardrobe the two men are carrying through the door and out of the house. I watch them load that wardrobe into the back of the lorry and adjust it so that it doesn’t move during the long drive.

It is my parents’ wardrobe. I wasn’t allowed to take my bed with me, because apparently, it’s too small for me now. My Mum keeps complaining her and Dad’s wardrobe isn’t big enough for the two of them as well but for some reason, they were allowed to keep it anyway. I say goodbye to my bed and the oak leaf tucked safely under its mattress. Say goodbye to my room, to my parents’ bedroom, to the bathroom upstairs, to the one downstairs, to the kitchen –

“Honey, please, don’t stand there,” Dad’s exasperated sigh sounds over my head before he directs me away from the house – by grabbing both of my shoulders. He leaves me standing under the oak tree and moves to help the crew move the last boxes. It seems he’s not so proud anymore.

Laying my palm upon the rough bark, I say goodbye to the oak tree, to the time I’d fallen off one of its branches and broke my arm and couldn’t play outside with Billy for a long time. I say goodbye to the garden, where we liked to play the most because it has a little pond in it, a pond where you can drop many funny things. I say goodbye to the living room where the doors to the garden are, to the dining room next to it, to the –

“All, right, all done!” Dad’s excited should – he looks proud again – is accompanied by the sound of the lorry’s back closing. I look at him with wide eyes and he waves me over and I go. Mum is already holding the car’s door open for me and I take one last look over my shoulder before I slide in. Dad is not in the car yet, discussing something with the moving crew, but Mum is and she turns back to me.

“Are you excited?”

I nod, my eyes not on her but on the house. Its drainpipe.

“Did you go to the bathroom?” I nod again before she can add, “There’s a long drive ahead.”

I keep nodding as she asks more questions, shrugging the rucksack off my shoulders. I set it aside and fasten my seatbelt, never taking my gaze off the building.

I look at the few clouds slowly moving over it, the door with the number 36 on it, the crooked roof tiles. I’m looking at the SOLD sign looming over the pavement when Dad eventually jumps in the car, the sound of the door closing final. He says something and I nod, but I don’t listen.

I look. Look at the house start moving, then become smaller and smaller as I watch it from my window first, then the back window, watch it become small like a dog, then like a bird, then like a mouse, then like an ant, and it’s only after it is completely gone that I finally think it.

Goodbye, I mouth, turning back around. Settling into my seat. I look out the window and the cloud that has been shielding the sun from view moves and the sun is out once more, blinding me again.

And there is no stopping the tears this time. No blaming them on the sun, either.