In limbo.

Most people just drive by without as much as a passing look at me perched up at the top of the hill. The years took away my color; it used to be yellow, not a shiny lemon but a deeper Ecru shade, like a well worn silk. The subtle luster is gone now replaced by brown streaks like wrinkles on an aging face. The front door carved in dark wood took the worse hitting by the passing years; the wood dried and lost its color. Still it stands there strong and proud willing to fulfill its mission and guard against unwanted intruders oblivious to the fact that there is no longer anyone to guard.

I still remember the day they left and closed the door behind them. It made a soft clicking sound the way it did every day for fifty years.  I was sure they will be back any minute. There was nothing different about them. They did not stand and look around the way I saw some people do when they try to etch the views into their head. They did not say anything different to each other.  True she did not stand with her back to the front door moving her eyes slowly along the burgundy rug and up the wooden staircase like she did anytime they left on a long trip. She used to do this ritual with the eyes and whisper under her breath something that sounded like a prayer for a good journey. She never missed it even when he, as always rushed, would scream already from the other side of the door “Come ‘on Eva, we are going to be late”. She smiled her special little smile and tucked her hair behind her ears, wave a half wave in no special direction and then turned around and walked through the door, not this time.

In the beginning I was sure she just forgot or was preoccupied, she looked distracted in the few months before they left, and unlike her usual meticulous habits kept leaving things like books and coffee mugs lying around. He more stressed than usual, kept giving her instructions. I thought nothing of it, they left so many things behind it did not make sense they were not going to come back for them.

But slowly as the quiet crept from one room to another I realized that this was it and the finality made me feel cold and frozen inside. Ice was covering everything outside that first winter and in some places got inside and I watched helplessly as it climbed on the front steps then under the door and through the window sills. The first window shattered in the middle of the winter. There was a loud noise as if something hard hit it and the sound of shattered glass filled my ears. It was the long painted glass window on the stairway and I thought how upset she is going to be when she’ll see it before remembering that she was not coming back. It was very cold after that and at night the wind spilled in and swirled around, at times just toying with papers and old newspapers moving them around and other times shrieking and blowing the curtains wildly.

And then one night late into the spring the rain came in and left small shining paddles everywhere on the kitchen floor. The burgundy rug turned deep blood color as it soaked the water. When the days became warmer the water evaporated but by that time the wood floor got all stained and warped. At night I could hear the soft crackling noises of the wood planks shifting, creating cracks that kept growing and widening until the basement could be seen from almost every spot on the first floor.

What upset me more than anything in that cold long winter and later as spring bloomed all around were the pictures. So many of them accumulating over the years, some framed and hanging on the walls and so many others in picture albums. She used to love leafing through them getting all excited over this one or the other. How could she leave them behind? Like kids that no one wants anymore they were looking from the walls and the wind kept toying with them. One by one they fell to the floor snapping into many pieces. The albums, after some neighborhood kids got into the house once the snow finally melted, were thrown all around with their open pages facing the ceiling.  

By the end of the second winter the kitchen floor caved into the basement and my whole body shifted violently. That it when it dawn on me, this was it, no one is going to come and fix things up. It was going to get worse and worse until there will be nothing left.

In those last days of winter when the weather was changing, alternating between warm spring like days and back to cold and freezing, I kept thinking of the good old days. I remembered being full with life, noise and laughter. Doors open and close, windows raised and lowered, bringing in the smell of the wood fire on the cold winter night, the rain tapping on my roof in spring and the wind swirling the leaves in the fall.

People don’t think that houses like me have a heart that can break; they don’t care to even look when they pass by me sitting up on the hill. All they see is the faded color and the twisted lines. All they see is a body without a soul.