Physically, Sarah was still sitting in her apartment at her
little table in front of the last few spoonfuls of her matzo soup. Mentally,
she had traveled hundreds of miles away and more than 10 years back into her
past. She was so immersed in this memory that felt as though she could hear the
wavering drone of her neighbors’ lawn mower and breathe in the comforting smell
of the freshly cut grass. She recalled looking out her window, at the sun and
trees as she attempted to process her newly found insight into her lack of
attractiveness. In her memory she was back at her bedroom window and wondering
if it even mattered at all. She was re-living the anxiety of wondering if this
misery was going to be the sentence for the rest of her life? Would her lack of
prettiness exclude her from any chance at happiness forever? She swallowed hard
and told herself not to give in to that idea. 12 year old girls seem to be
drawn to believe most strongly in ideas that are the most fantastical and
dramatic rather than those that are most logical or sensible. Sarah was no
exception to that rule. However, she was a smart girl and was doing her best to
draw upon her intellect to grapple with the terror brought about by her sudden
change in self-perception. Logic told her she was the same girl now that she
was when she woke up this morning. Emotion told her that everything she had
ever hoped, every dream she had ever dreamt of her future had just been
rendered void of hope and impossible to attain. She drew in a deep and noisy
breath and wrote down on her drawing, in between the two portraits, “the truth
is probably somewhere in the middle”.
In
her apartment, Sarah smiled slightly as she traced her finger over the words
she had written so many years ago. Still smiling, she thought to herself “No,
the truth was on a completely different page”.
She remembered the act of calming herself on that morning, blowing her
nose, taking several deep breaths and walking quietly to the bathroom to wash
her face with cold water. She was on a mission now, a mission to press her
mother for both truth and guidance. She
went down stairs to find her mother. She looked in the kitchen, expecting to
find her mother there at the kitchen table with her morning coffee but her
mother was not there. She checked the living room, pantry and laundry room but
there was still no sign of her mother.
Sarah recalled having fleeting thoughts of terror at the thought that
her mother had somehow disappeared or simply left. Rather than succumbing to these potentially
disabling fears, she pressed on.
Her Mother had always said “If you’ve already
looked everywhere that something COULD be, then it must be somewhere that it COULDN’T
be” so Sarah started to look for her mother is less likely places. She checked
the basement, then climbed the stairs out of the depths of the house , up to
the main floor, further up to the second floor and then pried open the sticky
old door that led to the attic. Sarah walked carefully on the steep and narrow
stairway, being half-afraid to raise her head over the opening that would allow
her to see into the attic. Because she was progressing carefully, her head
reached the opening a full six steps before her feet had finished climbing the
stairs. She turned her head to the right to look into the attic and was
surprised to find that her vision was blocked by a line of cardboard boxes
sitting right next to the opening of the staircase. She finished climbing the
stairs and peered into the cavernous space. It was fairly well lit by the sun
streaming through a round window in the wall at the front. She saw more
stacked boxes as well as several pieces
of antiquated furniture, covered with old sheets in a futile effort to protect
them from the layers of dust that covered everything else in this space. The
sheets made the furniture appear ghastly and sinister, as if each piece was waiting
to grab any passerby. This room was the forever home of anything that became unwanted or forgotten. The sight greatly increased Sarah’s anxiety and she worked
to find her voice and break through the foreboding silence of the dormant room.
After a few minutes of motionless struggle she had worked up the courage to
call out when that courage was suddenly drained by a scraping sound that came
from behind a large wardrobe on the left side of the attic. Sarah had already
been motionless but now she froze to the point where she even stopped breathing.
She looked intently at the wardrobe trying to ascertain who or what might be
making that noise yet frightened of what she might discover. There was another
scraping/sliding noise followed by a distinct THUMP on the floor. Now Sarah
called out in apprehension “Mom? Are you up here?”.
Silence followed. The scraping stopped and the echo of the previous
THUMP had faded. Now Sarah heard footsteps moving slowly and carefully across
the attic toward the stairs. She retreated back down a few steps so that her
head was below the line of boxes at the perimeter of the suitcase opening.
Sarah heard the foosteps closing the distance between the expanse of the room
and her location on the stairs. She thought it might be best to turn and run
but couldn’t find the energy to fight against the fear that held her incapacitated.
The footsteps stopped just on the other side of the row of boxes. Sarah sucked
in her breath and forced herself to look up toward the top edge of the boxes,
not knowing what she could expect to see attached to the footsteps. Whatever it
was now stood on the other side of the short, cardboard barricade.
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