AN ISLAND OF HER OWN

AN ISLAND OF HER OWN

“I’m not parting with it. I’ll squeeze it in somewhere even if I have to climb over it.”

“You’re being ridiculous.” Sonya’s sister-in- law was packing the nice dishes, carefully wrapping each item in newspaper.

Sonya was being allowed by her in-laws to keep the every-day dishes, the flatware, and her kitchen things that she had not already moved out. Her in-laws went through the house like vampires looking for blood. Sonya was allowed only the inexpensive, non-antique items. She clutched at the figurine that had been hers in childhood.

“You won’t have room for any of that – well, I’ll be nice and leave it at that. You’ll be living in some rat-trap little apartment now.” Sonya’s mother-in-law blamed her for ‘allowing’ what happened.

“The rest of the furniture and everything in this house that belonged to Ralph goes with the house; you have no . . . “

“We have every right,” her mother-in-law snapped. “We’re taking what belongs to Ralph. You divorced him – or have you forgotten?”

“I was awarded everything that I've taken; the rest goes with the house – and that’s because of his legal fees.” She wasn’t given a chance to add that he had no need for any of this in his prison cell.

“Well, at least his lawyer stood by him in his time of trouble.” His sister was wrapping the teacups.

“That’s fine for you two to say – you live on the other side of the country.” Sonya had already gone through the photo albums and removed the pictures of her childhood. She was the only surviving member of her immediate family and the photos were precious. She placed the albums on the table by the dishes and congratulated herself on packing out her pots and bakeware before they arrived - uninvited, unwelcome, insisting on the right to take whatever they considered to have been Ralph’s.

“There’s a stand-mixer that’s missing; get it. And the thirty-two-inch television.”

Sonya ignored her. Today, for her, was about collecting kitchen ware she’d missed or planned to take with her, her cleaning things, linens and the little items she’d missed last week. The storage unit was her secret; the key was on a chain around her neck, worn under her blouse. They’d clean that out too if they knew its location.

She could call the police and ask them to remove these thieves from the house, but she knew they would not be sympathetic. No, as allowed, she’d taken the bedroom suite from the spare room, her favorite living room chair and 2 end tables, the Formica-top kitchen table with its 2 chairs (the only antique items she’d managed to keep), the appliances, her books and crafting things, and her gardening tools. In truth, she wouldn’t be able to keep much more than she’d put in the storage unit last week and these small things that she was taking today. She hadn’t been given time to sell the rest of the furnishings in her seven-room house before the lawyer make his claim, so the rest was a loss to her one way or the other. Let them have it. She’d managed to keep what she needed to start over. 

So, Sonya took one more walk through, watching the two women snatching up her things, the things she’d worked for over the years, the things that represented her personality, her dreams. They’d be going to an auction or yard sale sponsored by her in-laws. Let them go. The past nine years weren’t worth keeping.

Sonya excused herself and rushed through the front door ahead of the men who’d been hired by her in-laws to take the furniture. It wouldn’t fit in my new home anyway.

Her new home: that was Sonya’s other secret. She couldn’t leave the state and keep her job, the job that allowed her to work from home. But she managed to put about a hundred and seventy miles between it and the house she had lost – the house she would never miss.

She handed the keys to the real-estate broker on her way out of town and explained about the intruders. Dealing with her in-laws was his problem now. She had met her eviction date. Ralph’s lawyer was owner of the property now – his only way of receiving payment for his services.

It had been obvious for the past several years that her marriage was a sham. He cheated, he lied, he verbally abused her, he was – thankfully – seldom home in the past few years. And so, Sonya had very carefully separated herself from all of his finances except the shared mortgage. He insisted his income was his business, not hers – fine, more than fine. If he was diving into debt, it wouldn’t be hers. She squirreled away every dollar she could after paying household expenses in an account kept secret from him. Most of it was from her own earnings. It wasn’t nearly enough now, but at least the judge had allowed her to keep it – in lieu of any part of the sale of the almost paid for house.

#

She turned the key in the door, flipped the light switch, and closed her eyes. Where to start? It was too late in the day to do it all, so she carried her broom, mop, bucket, and cleaning supplies to the hallway outside the bedroom. She’d be sleeping on the floor until her things were moved from the storage unit. At least it would be clean.

It was a small bedroom, only made comfortable by using a twin bed. It was enough. She cleaned her way down the short, narrow hall. She cleaned the bathroom. It was a necessity room only – no room for frills. It was enough.

Sonya folded her blankets to make a pallet on the bedroom floor, and there she sat, eating cold pizza and a cheap red wine, pretending to celebrate moving day and hoping she’d be able to sleep.

The real-estate agent had called this a two-bedroom home. Sonya chuckled the next day as she cleaned the second ‘bedroom’. Only a toddler could consider this a bedroom, but she didn’t need a toddler’s bedroom. Ralph had consistently refused to give her a child. “Not enough money”, “not the right time”, “lousy world” – well at least he wasn’t lying about that. He certainly did make it a lousy world. And she was beyond grateful that she did not have a child. What a horror it would be for a child!

She cleaned the room, dubbed it her storage room, and moved the small boxes in from her car. The living room, devoid of furniture, was an easy clean despite the filth she’d been left with. It was a small room, just big enough for that comfy chair, the two end tables, and the desk complete with bookcase and file cabinet that she’d bought from the Goodwill store. It would hold her computer – the judge had generously deemed it necessary for her self-supporting job. He didn’t seem to care that she had paid for it herself.

Sonya gnawed at a piece of leftover pizza as she cleaned the kitchen – a careful, thorough cleaning. It had been this kitchen, other than her finances, that had made her choose this home. There were other properties on secluded lots, but this one had a real kitchen. There was even enough room for her kitchen table in it. She would have no one to cook for except herself, but a kitchen made the home; it was the heart of the home. Like the little figurine, she couldn’t part with the concept of home.

The storage manager was quite willing to have her things moved for her tomorrow – as long as she realized that her excess three weeks-worth of rent was not refundable. She agreed, paid the moving charge, and provided the address. She went shopping and went home for a third night on the floor, with her milk and eggs in a cooler in the kitchen.

The movers arrived later than agreed on that forth day, but her home became complete. Her bedroom had a bed, her clothes were in the dresser and closet. Her toiletries were in the bathroom. Her living room set up as well as she had planned and was cozy comfortable. Her recipe books and the recipes copied on index cards, that she’d been collecting since her teen years, had their very own shelves in the little built-in bookcase by the kitchen – their very own space that they didn’t have to share with anything else, not even with the broken dreams.

The gas company needed to deliver propane and hook-up her stove; that couldn’t happen for several more days, so she couldn’t cook yet, but she could fill her nicely cleaned cabinets and shelves. The kettles and canning jars were relegated to the storage room. She needed shelving units, but that would have to wait indefinitely. Stacked, labeled boxes would do.

Somehow it didn’t feel like home. Perhaps it was because she couldn’t even make a cup of tea or a pot of soup. But there was yard work to be done. Days-worth of yard work. She even cut down two small trees that blocked her view of the lake. She didn’t make a big opening; the point was to allow her to look out at the water, not to let boaters look in. There wasn’t much worry of that. She only technically had lake front. The bank was steep, a mini cliff; the water beyond it was too shallow and rocky for either swimming or boating for a good fifty feet. But she didn’t want a boat and occasional wading would suffice. She cleared the left behind clutter out of the garage and offered thanks that she’d have a place for garden things.

When her phone and internet were connected, she set the answering machine and turned off the ringer. Sonya had no intention of answering the phone, or even using it, unless it involved work, and they would communicate almost entirely via email. Her computer was her workplace, and it was her entertainment. Using that television as her monitor and with a Firestick, she could relax and enjoy a movie on those evenings that her eyes were too tired to read. She could have taken the larger TV on that last day, but her in-laws wanted it, and it wasn’t worth an argument.

           Sonya sat at her table with her soup, bread, and pot of tea. She said grace. She began to feel at home. She began to feel safe. She’d taken her mother’s maiden name and her lawyer had been kind enough to ensure that information was kept private. She had nearly an acre and was surrounded by trees and horribly overgrown bushes that hid her from the outside world. A world she’d leave only once every five or six weeks to shop for groceries.

She had peace, privacy, bird song, and the lake. True, the closeness of the water made her home feel damp, but through that little opening in the trees she could see the water and the sky, and she could lose herself in it and push the nightmare memories out of her mind for an hour or two.

“She must have known.” “Why didn’t she stop him?” “She should have turned him in to the police – do you think she was complicit in those unspeakable things he did?” She heard it all through the trial. She heard it on the news. She heard it if she dared leave home, if she answered the phone. She was vilified by the marriage. Not even the vigorous investigations by the police and detectives that provided solid proof of her complete innocence, that were made public knowledge, spared her from the public conviction. Even her distant relatives closed ranks and doors. Sonya committed no crime, but she lost her house, most of her possessions, her comfortable routines, her reputation, and her friends. Her husband’s guilt spilled out over her making her a ‘persona non-grata’ wherever she went. The stares, the threats, the obscene comments, the graffiti – Sonya retreated, she hid; it was that or take her own life to escape the nightmare.

No man is an island? Sonya was. Sonya needed to be. She was given no choice. And now Sonya had her little ‘island’. She had the job, that provided a miserly income, that was returned to her after the investigations – but only because the nature of her work made her anonymous and she was very efficient - and because she begged.

Einstein said that time is not linear, it’s just a constant. Linier or not, it keeps moving. The sun comes up every morning whether or not you’re looking forward to it. Sonya worked a routine schedule at her computer, longer hours than necessary just in case of a power failure that meant a missed day. She budgeted every penny; she made extra principal payments on her mortgage; she’d made starting over harder by putting almost everything she had left after paying the lawyer’s fees into the down-payment. She rationed almost everything; she ate simple home-cooked meals, and the only extravagance she allowed herself was a small allowance to buy books, second-hand books. Shopping on-line at Thrift Books every first Monday of the month was her something to look forward to.

Going to the library was out of the question as someone might recognize her from the newspapers or the TV news. Even her grocery shopping – deliberately several towns away from home - became less and less frequent. Amazon shipped bulk items like flour and sugar and powdered milk. They shipped tea, yeast, #10 cans of dehydrated onions, spices, lentils – just about everything she needed. She scheduled for herself regular engine starts to prevent her car battery from dying and bought a charger to jump it from the house current in the event it did die from such infrequent use.

She trimmed out some bushes – carefully maintaining her privacy screen - and scratched a garden out of her rocky soil. It wasn’t a proper garden; she planted anywhere she could find soil enough. She grew potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, spinach, and green beans – staples, nothing more. A bag of fertilizer and some seeds each year meant a noticeable reduction in her grocery budget. Gradually she added flowers.

She researched on the internet and learned how to caulk, do simple plumbing fixes, and otherwise maintain her home. She did without air conditioning, making do with open windows for the lake breeze and one fan. In the winter the heat was set at 64. Her poorly insulated home was cold, so she wore a sweater under a long sleeve tee under a cardigan, double sox in oversized slippers, and leggings under her skirt. There were days when she wrapped her legs in a blanket while she worked. Very often in the winter the lake became angry. The blue turned to grey, and a frigid wind blew in, invading at every drafty opportunity. But she kept to her budget.

In twelve years, she had her mortgage paid in full, but they were hard years. She bought cement blocks and replaced the vinal skirting around the mobile home with a wall. The next winter the floors were warmer. Her roof was beyond her ability to DIY, so she hired a carpenter to seal it then build a roof over her home that overlapped on one side to provide a simple porch facing the lake. She even put forth a bit more financial effort and had him winterize the home in ways she had not been able to do herself.

She was still pinching pennies, but she was more comfortable. She still didn’t allow herself luxuries, but she worried less about getting by. Where there was a bit of money left after expenses, she saved toward the day when a social security check would be her income.

Rigidly self-sufficient, Sonya continued to avoid people. Sonya continued to fear people, continued to expect the self-righteous judgement, the accusations, the rejection. Were anyone to slip past the ‘private property’ sign at the end of her driveway, they’d have seen her little fairy villages built by her hands and scattered about the yard. They’d have seen the flowers she so carefully tended that spoke of her love of beauty. They’d have seen her simple and efficient lifestyle that kept her close to nature and out of debt. They’d have seen what was left of Sonya, of her loveliness, kindness, naiveite. But no one came.

#

She was almost home. It had become necessary to go shopping. She’d brought a list, plowed through her errands, head down, desperate to return to the safety of her ‘island’. The road was paved now; it had been gravel when she bought that undesirable property with no beach front or boat access and that small, pre-owned mobile home. The property’s very undesirable qualities had made it affordable. She had no idea that its value had sky-rocketed over the years. All she knew was that her home, down that winding road on the far outskirts of town, was a haven for the exiled.

“There goes that recluse.”

She heard the woman say it to someone as she drove past them.

Society had made her a recluse, and now it vilified her for being one.