The House. Death. Dad. Thank You.

By Diane René Christian

The photograph is of the house that I lived in with my father for 8 years. The house itself was originally an outbuilding to a main house but somewhere along the way the property was divided. At some time or another the building was used as an art studio. Before I lived in the house a dear friend of my grandmother’s resided there. Her name was Mildred.

I have vague memories of Mildred. I liked all of my grandmother’s friends so I am sure I must have like Mildred too. Mildred had polio (I believe?) and, in the midst of my parents’ divorce, Mildred passed away. She was sans kin and the house was left to my grandmother who subsequently gave it to my father and me to live in. I was thirteen years old.

What I do vividly remember about Mildred was her things. Mildred was a hoarder and nearly every inch from floor to ceiling was piled with her hoards. She was particulary fond of TV shopping but she never seemed to get around to opening the boxes. When we combed through her things, after her death, many of the boxes were still sealed. All of her wares went into an estate sale and it was quite a site to see those wares spread out and filling a banquet hall.

During the cleaning of Mildred’s house, as we prepared it to be ours, we unearthed a soiled canvas painted by the artist who some years earlier resided there too.

The house is 560 square feet. When you walk in the door you enter a garage which holds an unfinished bathroom with one exposed wall. When you walk up the stairs you enter a space that would hold a dining room table and six chairs max. But, there was never a dining room table but instead two recliners and a TV. Behind the recliners are a miniature stove, sink and cabinets. That is the sole living area.

My father and I each had a bedroom but originally our rooms were one. My dad put in a dividing wall making two perfectly even small rooms. I remember when the rooms were still one.

Before the room was converted we went to visit the house with a few of my dad’s friends and their three sons. One of the sons was a boy that I was sure that I was 'in 13 year old love with’. His moppy blonde hair and searching eyes and lean strong boy body were impossible to resist. We swam in rivers together and explored trails and forests and by him I felt understood.

Fortunately he deeply admired my father. Unfortunately he listened to my father’s warning to never lay a finger on me. Only once did he break my father’s rule. 

While my father and his friends were discussing how to rehabilitate our new home the kids entered a room that was to become two bedrooms but still remained one. We went in and for some reason we decided (probably because the house had a touch of a spooky feel) to hold a séance.

We sat on the floor in the dimly lit room and we all closed our eyes. Somebody started the séance and then I felt a hand grab on to mine and squeeze. It was his hand. He kept his hand inside of mine until we were all to open our eyes and then the hand was gone and it was like it never happened. But, it did. My body remembers it well. It never happened again.

Our house and the main house shared a driveway. As I grew up and grew into new relationships with boys I never let them into our home until they really knew me and things seemed serious. I am ashamed to admit this but I would stand at the end of the driveway and allow my date to infer that I was coming out of the main house. Most people assumed that our house was a garage. Indeed the realtor who has our house listed right now describes it as.

Tax Records call it a one story bungalow. I would consider it a converted barn or garage, dating back to 1929. Great potential as an artist’s studio. Enter from the rear into what appears to have been a garage.

If I could go back in time I would wait for every date by leaning against our house and take them inside to meet my Daddy.

The last time I saw my Dad he was sitting in his recliner upstairs. I kissed him goodbye and walked slowly down the stairs staring at him and him staring at me. I said- I love you Daddy. I will see you again soon.

He smiled back and I kept walking until I reached the door and made it outside. I nearly fell to the ground as a wave of fear gripped me and gobs of tears split my eyes. I must have known. Maybe he knew too.

Days later Dad collapsed on Gram’s floor. He wasn’t breathing.  At the hospital I spoke to a kind doctor who requested that I cease life support efforts for my father. She told me that he was gone and if he somehow came back... he wouldn’t really be here anyway. I said – Ok. You can stop.

I don’t really know how I said anything coherent at all but it was clear enough for my dad to be pronounced dead.

My Dad kept my bedroom exactly the same as it was the day I moved out in my late teens. It stayed that way until I cleared my childhood space in November of 2009. I was 37 years old.

I remember when I was teenager and I was going to the bathroom in the ‘garage’ bathroom with one wall missing. There was a spider that emerged but it wasn’t an ordinary spider it was a hairy spider of nightmare proportions.

I screamed to my dad upstairs that he needed to come down immediately.

He remained upstairs and screamed down at me- You need to take care of this yourself.

And I was furious. My dad was my hero. He was my rescuer. Why wasn’t he helping me now?

I managed to circumvent the spider beast and I found a broom. I whacked and whacked the broom and the spider alluded me until finally I dealt it a fatal blow.

I swept the beaten spider into a dust pan and plopped it into a Ziploc bag. Even in shrunken death it still seemed sizably frightening.

I put the sealed spider next to the kitchen sink and wrote a note to my Dad.

I did it.

And the next morning I found a written reply from my Dad.

Good for you.

 My father was not a verbal man but he always signed his letters to me xoxo- Dad.

xoxo to you Daddy. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Copyright © 2010 Diane René Christian. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Diane René Christian, author of An-Ya and Her Diary, is an award winning short story writer turned novelist. She was raised in Pennsylvania and spent her childhood years playing in the fields of Valley Forge Park.  She now resides in the Pacific Northwest with her two daughters. Visit her at http://anyadiary.blogspot.com/

Let the Music In

By Dawn Downey

I tore open the unexpected package from my brother and a curled photo dropped into my hand. A slow breath slipped through my lips, when I recognized the teenaged girl whose fragile image I held. The wrinkled collar of a tan shirt framed her sallow face. She looked away from the camera into the void. On the back of the picture, my mother’s handwriting noted, Dawn – 1966 Age 15. I longed to forget this girl. But the mysteries behind her gaze crept into focus like an uninvited song remembering itself.

“High yellow bitch,” high school classmates screamed as they followed me home.
“You ain’t shit,” they yelled. But I already knew it.
“Do somethin’ with that pitiful head!”

We’d moved that year from Des Moines to Pasadena, California. The other girls taunted me for reasons I didn’t understand, and called me names I’d never heard before. As I slunk home with my eyes focused on the sidewalk, the voices stalked me like a pack of feral dogs.

Threats and P.E. were the joyless bookends of my 10th grade existence. And the dismal luck of the draw gave me first period swimming. The water turned my hair to sheep’s wool. I hid it under a brown headscarf until the end of the day. Once home, I headed straight for the bathroom to fight my hair.

“Dawn, what are you doing in there?”
My mother would not leave me alone.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t you have homework?”
“No.”
10th grade was the year I got straight D’s.

So they shipped me off to Upward Bound, an academic summer camp for urban teenagers. We were destined to be the first in our families to make it to a university - that is, if we made it through high school. I lived at Occidental College in Los Angeles, with 49 other red, yellow and brown-skinned misfits. The federal government labeled us “high potential low achievers.” It was a kinder description than what I heard from my parents.

At Upward Bound, we spent our days in class, learning how to learn. We spent our evenings on field trips, learning how to live. One such journey introduced me to the ballet. When we stepped off our school bus at the Hollywood Bowl, the scent of night-blooming jasmine hung on the cool California air. The summer sky had not yet fully blackened. We marched, in too-tight shoes, to seats so far back that I couldn’t tell there were swans in Swan Lake. Miniature figures clad in bright colors leapt and flew and spun across the stage. Tchaikovsky seduced me. My tentative spirit unfolded to accept his embrace. At first I squinted to see the dance—then closed my eyes to imagine.

Worlds outside and inside me unfolded that summer. I released the breath I’d been holding all year.

Teachers introduced me to culture, but girlfriends introduced me to “cool.” They taught me the power of black eyeliner. They helped me cough my way through my first cigarette. I learned - if a boy smiled at me - to look at him sideways, scowl, and walk away—slowly.

On the afternoon of our first chaperoned party, we gathered in our lounge to trade clothes and do hair. We tossed skirts and dresses across the couches. Bottles, jars and shoes littered the floor. The room smelled of nail polish and perfumed lotions.

A dark-skinned junior from Jefferson High School turned my damaged “do” into a proud and towering Afro. I sat on the floor between her legs while her fingers danced across my head. When her knees pressed against my shoulders and her hands tug at my hair, the acerbic voices of the past year receded.

Conversation filled the room like soul music on a pricey stereo. Citified soprano sassiness played against the low slow rhythm of country drawl.
“You tender headed?”
“Gi-i-r-r-l-l that is so cute on you.”
“M-m-m, that boy is fi-i-i-ne.”

And then they taught me how to dance. On the radio Martha and the Vandellas wailed, "Nowhere to run to Baby, nowhere to hide," and everybody jumped up. With rollers in my hair and boys in my head, I stepped steps I never stepped before. The high yellow bitch disappeared. The feral dogs retreated

At the party that night, when Stevie Wonder sang I Was Made to Love Her, a short, skinny boy took me by the hand. He strutted onto the dance floor and I trailed behind him. When he turned to face me, the music told my body what to do. The borrowed dress swayed around my legs and I forgot to be afraid.

Decades later, I taped the photo to the frig and traced the sad, pre-Upward Bound cheek with my fingertip. The dancers-actors-writers I became whispered thank you—for those first brave steps that let the music in. I glimpsed my reflection in the glass cabinet door - the face lit by fiery crystal earrings and a scarlet blouse. Stevie Wonder played in my head and a molten rhythm oozed through my hips. I danced through the rest of my day.

First published in Skirt! Magazine. © Dawn Downey. All rights reserved.

Dawn Downey is the author of “Stumbling Toward the Buddha, Tripping Over my Principles on the Road to Transformation.” www.dawndowney.com