Back in time

Today I read in the paper that a man was found dead, in a hoarder's house... they suspect that the man lived there, that it was his home though the city thought it was uninhabited.... 

It brought back so many memories.... people were saying that there was too much stuff to save the man, that they could hear him screaming for help but no one could get in... this made me sad, thinking of my mother... thinking of the child I was, rather than the child I pretended.... which got me thinking about what it was like in there....

I arrived at 1209 early in the day, it seem so dilapidated, the cream colour paint peeling, the brown missing in so many places the bare wood beneath it peeking through. Standing on the sidewalk in front of the pitiful little pear tree in the yard, the wild grass on the lawn looks as though someone once tried to cut it but it has become so overgrown it could have just been trampled by one of the half dozen or so kids hanging around. The blue tape on the front room window has been pulled off and replaced several times it's end flapping in the wind. As I begin walking up the gravel and rock driveway toward the make shift fence I see further damage to the house, the windows need a good cleaning. There is an old blue and silver station wagon filled with boxes and other items I dare not guess what they are. On the left there used to be a garden, the morning glories have grown so wild they choked the life out of anything else brave enough to attempt to grow. Behind the station wagon is a big garage that looks as though it was once a barn.

I'll tell you a secret. I don't want you to come to my house. I don't want you to come in, to have a peek of my home. I would rather go to your house, would that be ok with you? I like the way your mom makes cookies, how your house smells like lemons and pine sol. When I walk in your house, I am afraid to touch anything in case I break it, or mess it up or rub dirt on it. I will be on my best behaviour, show your parents that I am a sweet girl, a girl who tries and just needs someone who cares. I want to escape from my house. Is there any way that I can come over and maybe stay the night? No, I can't stay the night, then you might find out, might find out another secret that will take years for me to admit to anyone outside my family, but oh I want to, to have dinner at your table, to listen to your family share their lives with each other. At my house it's different.

I don't know if the home I remember is the home in which I was raised. I don't know if we really had to live like that.

When you walk in you will see my shame, I know you know, but if you don't come in then you won't know just how it is. Yes, yes that's my mom, please don't tell anyone you saw her. Oh lord, how do I go to school tomorrow, why can't she stop..... There are fleas, lots of them, there are other bugs too. Bugs scare me, things that go bump scare me, because I know what that skittering sound means. The dog is in the house, no, she doesn't come outside often, I don't know why. You could have come over before he left, when things were normal. The kitchen table was once a place that you could sit, we used to sit there and eat pea soup. I hate pea soup.

The first sense needed for this journey is that of smell. Go into your room, sit down and close your eyes. Now that you are there, you begin to notice a slight funky smell, the smell of sweat. Add to that the tang of urine, now the unmistakable stench of dog shit. Smell some curdled milk, the musk of mould on something wet. Keep your eyes closed and add sound. As your face scrunches up from the smell concentrate on the sound of your heart beat, and now your breathing. The buzzing sound in your mind isn't your breathing, it is the minute sound of a fruit fly, add another and another, add twenty flies, now do you hear it? Open your eyes, the sun is shining through the windows on the wall on your right. Turn to your right, a mustard yellow fridge , silver handle that makes the freezer look as though it is all one door, splashes of something on the front in the corner opposite you, then the windows, there are three in total, side by side, the kind of windows that open upwards. One of the windows has a board propping it open a little for the cats. You can see the plastic that was put on the outside two years ago swinging in the wind while the vacuum plastic inside is ripped in several places, the sills full of various things from plants to food containers, cat hair coating everything from the window. Turn further, see the sink full of dishes. There are dishes in a big round plastic “dishwasher” that has to be hand cranked. The dishes are all made of some kind of hard plastic substance. There is water in both sinks, something blocking the drain in one so that they both get plugged. The counter top is covered with more dishes, food in various stages of spoiling sticking them together. The cupboards are a cream color but are so dirty that they look like they ended up in the wrong end of a food fight. In the middle of the room is a 6 seat table, the surface of which is covered with pots and pans, plates, food in containers, the buzzing is coming from somewhere above, several sticky fly tapes weave in the breeze, the flies buzz as they try to escape eminent death. Walk a little further into the room, come closer to the table and see what is in this pot. I think it once was oatmeal but i don't know. Look closer, did you see that? See the oatmeal moving? Hold on, let me grab this spoon and pull back the top layer of oatmeal, see the eyes of the maggots as they writhe around in their home, you didn’t know that maggots moved like that did you? Directly across from you on the left side wall are still more cupboards and somewhere beneath the dishes, beneath the garbage there is a counter top, I think it used to be brown but I can’t be sure. There is an old stove next, brown and shiny. The oven is above the range, it doesn’t work anymore, I don’t remember when last it did. The range can be pushed in and pulled out but the sticky food on the surface has prevented it from going all the way in or all the way out leaving the two back burners almost touching the dials. There are pots on the range too, a pressure cooker once used for cooking, the contents trapped inside, the top gasket flew off one day hitting the ceiling, the pot too hot to touch was left there, the food by now inedible. Next to the range is the microwave, big in size, the timer must be turned past 20 to start the actual cooking. Mom built that little shelf next to it, the one where the deep fryer sits, the oil has been spilled many times, grease congealing on the wall and everything beneath it, splashing down the side of the old brown microwave. Below the deep fryer where the oil has spilled used to be where the cat litter box was, then, when Marmalade had her babies, we moved the box and she had her kittens there, they died from the fleas but the make shift bed still remains now covered in old, used oil. The deep fryer has seen better days, food and oil have been heated onto it. You can’t see it from this angle but the fryer used to be stainless steel. We recycle that oil, never replacing it until it is spilled down the wall, everything cooked in it has a slight burnt taste to it. Turn past the doorway, past the piles and pile of items in the room that once was the den. As you turn you might be able to see all the shelves that mom built to hold the books, once the room was quite nice. The last wall holds another mom-built shelf, this one holds the coffee maker. She took apart two coffee makers to put a timer on this one so that her coffee is made at a certain time. The coffee in the bottom of the pot will be recycled, it re-heats well she says. Mom’s bed is beneath the coffee maker, having run out of room in her room, unable to get into her bed she has moved first to the den and then the living room, but once out of room there, she now resides in the kitchen. Her bed is covered in things, so many things, garbage, cigarettes, clothes, toys, books, coffee cups, plates, there is only enough room on the cot for her body if she sleeps on her side.

If you turn just a little further you can see the living room, the TV on the far wall and the door in the corner….watch where you step as you make your way out, please don’t tell anyone, I understand that you don’t want to come back, neither do I.