The House

I forget the town we’re moving too until I see it’s fancy “Now Entering Hell” sign. Okay, that’s obviously not what it says. But it is pretty in an antique- rustic sort of way. I’ve been tediously observant of the town. All the possible pathways for jogging. I love running. By no means am I a pro though. I’ve thought about joining cross country or track but this move has completely shot that possibility out of the sky. The only non-negotiable thing is Drama. I refuse to take the class, the club however is fair game. It hasn’t even been a week since closing night of the summer production program and I’m already twitchy for the applause. When I’m on stage it’s like I can finally breathe again. Never having to think of what to say or do. Never an awkward moment unless it’s planned in advanced. If only life was that way. Honestly.

We pull up to a tan two-ish story building. From the outside you can tell it’s one of those houses with a downstairs. It has a two car garage and masonry all around the doors and the lower window peeking out from behind a small hill. Every window has a darker shade of tan shutters decorating the sides. I hate to say it. I love this house. The front yard is pretty small but I bet the back is huge. I can see a handful of trees swaying behind the house.

“Alright, alright. Let’s get to unloading.”

Mother McConaughey says after a noticeably long moment of silence and house gawking. With that  a wave of seatbelt clicks and smacks of handles commences. I’m stretching my legs as a set of my uncles pull up behind us with the U-haul. They must love us for driving all our s**t this far. My favorite twin uncles, Josh and Jake, engulf me in a twin sandwich. They smell of cigarettes and old beer. It’s a comforting smell. Uncle Jake is like a second father to me.( Or third?). When my mom was being reckless, he’s the one the took care of me the most alongside my grandma. I was the first grand baby, niece and daughter. My conception was a bit of a controversy in my family, seeing as my birth father is a black man. Really it was my grandpa (if you can even call him that. We don’t. we call him Tim.) who had pushed for my mom to get an abortion. I don’t know if it was because he’s racist or if it was the fact that my mom was only 15. Probably a mix of both. We don’t dwell on it. I love when my uncle gets a few beers in him and starts talking about when I was a baby. My favorite story is the time he and my grandma took me to the river on a hot summer day. A river they still take me to. They had run out of diapers for me so uncle Jake made one out of his shirt. After a little bit of walking across clay covered rocks, he started to feel something dripping down his back. If you haven’t guessed it yet, I peed all over him. My grandma and I crack up every time he tells the story. She always chimes in with “ He was screaming, ‘Get her off me! Get her off!’” I’m gonna miss seeing her practically every day.

“Hey kiddo, how was the ride with your siblings?” Uncle Josh asks, as I follow him to the back of the U-haul.

“Oh you know, pure torture and what not.” He gives me a laugh. It’s so easy to make the twins laugh. They’re the youngest out of the bunch of uncles.

He unhooks the door and tosses it up. I get out of the way so he can pull the ramp out and down. Glancing into the back I see out dinner table, couch and a few bed posts then I spot what I’m looking for.

“ Can you pass me that box? It says Olivia’s trophies.” I ask josh.

“You’ve got two working legs.” He says with a another laugh. I roll my eyes and with an exaggerated sigh I climb up and get my box. It’s not actually full of trophies. I think trophies are stupid, it’s the story and the telling of that story  that matters.

I meet my mom at the from door, box in hand. “We decided to  give you the room down stairs. I think you’ll like it.” She gives me a smile and quick peck on the cheek. Why does she make it so easy to love her? I can never stay mad. It wasn’t always like this. When my mother won custody of my sisters and I for the last time I was an angry but obedient child so, instead of talking back I would just growl. (I still do sometimes.)

The stairs and living room floor are carpeted. The patch of floor just in front of the door is a yellow tile. One stair at a time, I clomp down. There is a big living space at the bottom and just after it there’s a tiny half bathroom, next too that is my room. Wow. I enjoy the smell of a new house. I set my box down next to the door and take off my shoes, then crawl too the middle of the room. Laying down on my back I stretch my whole body out, pointing my toes and spreading my fingers. With a deep breathe out I relax. Small beams of light creep into my room. Showing me all the particles that dance in the air. For a while I just lay there. It's what I do when we move. I guess you could call it a tradition. That’s sad. To move so often to have a tradition like this. I try and listen to the house tell me it’s stories and warnings. Silly, I know. But like I said, it’s tradition.

Just as I’m about to get up, the air is knocked out of me as Suzie followed by Katy followed by Tanner all dog pile on top of me.

“Ohh-ho. Guys come on!” I pinch their legs. The general tickle spot of us all.

“Bub! Girls! Come help unload!” Moms voice faintly cuts through the screamed laughter. “Come on!”

I roll over onto my stomach and get up on my hands and knees, making a sad attempt to crawl away.

“Yay!! Horsie!” Oh, Tanner. Why! I start to nay and shake my head

In my horsie voice I nay that it’s time to go upstairs and to ‘get the hay off me.’

Once they finally do I collapse onto the floor, my new friend, and catch my breath. Being a big sister is a full time job.

…

After a few hours all the skeletons are in place. My boxes are in my living space along with my bed frame and two bookshelves. I talked my uncles into hauling my huge desk directly into my room. It’s a corner desk that took four months of chores to get. I put down the floor mat for my spinning chair and was in the middle of setting up my computer when my mom knocked on the doorframe making me jump.

“Oh. Hey mom.” I say, wide eyed. “You scared me!”

She sets a grilled cheese on my desk with a smile and sits on my mattress.

“How’s it going down here?” she asks, looking around.

“Pretty good, just setting up old burton Guster.” we both start laughing. Burton Guster is my favorite character in my favorite psychic detective show, ‘Psych’. It’s so ironic because Shawn, the psychic, is a fake and thats what he calls his ‘headquarters’ of sorts. I almost have the whole series on dvd and I always rewind the funny parts and make my mom watch them. Eventually she just started watching it with me since I was already making her watch practically the whole episode.

“Baz should be here soon.” she said with a tear making it’s way too her chin. Another prime example of my unoriginal naming skills. Baz is my solid black cat named after a vampire in my favorite book. My grandma decided to fly down and she wanted to spend time with Baz. His mom was my grandma’s cat. After two weeks of pleading with my mom Baz became mine.

“She just landed. We were thinking we’d have a bonfire when she got here.” She hesitated. Great. “So...some of the neighbors are gonna come with their kids.”

Exasperated, I say “ How do you and Dad manage to make friends so fast? I don’t want to meet new people. I want the old ones back.” My head started ringing and my ears began to burn. I went back to toying with guster. “Also, I’m not a kid.” Only a kid would say that.

“Well, you only get three weeks to settle in before school starts. You’re going to meet them sooner or later. Why not sooner?”

“ Because I want it to be my choice… Just, let me know when grandma gets here.” With a sigh I add, “Please? And thanks for the sandwich. ”

“Want help putting your bed together?”She blurts out, knowing full well that I want to be alone right now. But she left me alone the whole time we packed up our things. The whole car ride. I know she doesn’t like leaving things on a bad note.    “ Okay.” I say, because neither do I.

We start in silence. She ran upstairs to get her tool bag while I dug out my speaker and put on my classic rock station. That was our station when it was just me and her. It mostly plays all of our thumbed up songs now. It’s either that old of a station or we’ve liked all the songs it had in it’s database.

“I think a few bags of your clothes are upstairs.” she says over Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar On Me. I nod my response and go upstairs to grab my clothes.

All the windows are open. I hear the little kids outside

“Don’t shoot! No head shots TANNER!!” I guess he found his stash of nerf guns. How can a three year old be so… tyrannical? I smile to myself and look for my garbage bags of my not garbage clothing. I pop my head into the kitchen just to find uncle Josh installing the hanging pot rack. He doesn’t notice me. That’s good, I didn’t really want to socialize. I turn around only to hit my face against a wall. Wait. Oh God no! I take a quick step back and widen my eyes. A person. I ran into a person. A guy person too.

I manage a choppy “O-oh, I. Uh, didn’t see. You. There.” My palms are sweaty.

He laughs. “Yeah, I couldn’t help but pick up on that.” he looks me up and down. I can see he’s about to tell me his name.

I fire out a “Sorry!” and run back down the stairs, cheeks on fire. No, melting. I close the door behind me and let Journeys classic (Do I really need to tell you the name?) slow my breathing and my heart. I look to the corner of the room and see two shiny, stuffed to the brim garbage bags.

“Mom! What’s this?” I point to the bags. “ You set me up!”

Her shoulders start shaking with laughter at my disheveledness.

“Mom!” She throws her hands up in surrender as I point to the door.

“Oh honey come on!” She’s still fighting laughter. “ He was cute wasn’t he?”

“I wouldn’t know! I got a face full of chest!” I screamed “ I didn’t even look at his face!”

I can’t help but succumb to the hilarity of it all and it’s not too long till I too am shaking from repressed laughter. “Well, I guess it was pretty funny.” I’m still mad, but why not laugh for now?