Monday, March 3, 2008

Sights and Sounds of an Empty House

I watch with a discreet eye, as you step out of the bed. The morning sun frames your slender silhouette as you wrestle your hair into shape. You reach over (as my eyes quickly shut) and brush my hair gently, in affection that you seem never to get tired of. I see your shadow dance across my eyelids, and I open them again to watch you pick up the dishes on your way out of the door.

Then I open my eyes again. This time, there is no one, only the wispy curtains fluttering, fighting, foreboding rain. The phone rings and another friend – the one we met at cooking class – leaves a concerned message, recounting how she too lost someone. It is ironic, really, how she makes perfect sense to me, but the words just glance off my brain and into throws of the sheets.

You were here just a week ago. Your bathrobe encapsulates me, breathing your scent into the dank atmosphere. This is the scent that poured into the room with you stepping out of the shower, drying your hair with a smile (your smile) and a story of your day of an insolent customer, your uptight boss, Sheila, the cleaning lady. You paced the room around the bed to put the finishing touches to your flawless skin, picking up towels and clothes strewn from the morning rush and depositing them into the basket. Slowly, you turned off the lights – bath, dresser, bedside – before slipping between the sheets, right up against my arm. The conversation continued to prance about in the darkness, flirting with the occasional giggle.

The room is silent now, albeit dark. The T.V. throws shadows and lights in array of patterns onto the ceiling. At this point, for some reason, I decide to get out of bed. “Time to move on, come on,” I repeat under my breath. You’d think after 1 year of you helping me out of bed I would have learnt how to do it myself, but I still find some difficulty in traversing from bed to wheelchair without falling into the chasm in-between. I knock the bottles of beer onto the wooden floor, but I make it.
It was easier when your slender hand held my arm as I heaved myself into the chair. For a woman your size, you were unexpectedly strong. Once I eased myself into the groaning frame of the wheel-chair, you pushed me out into the corridor and stop at the stairs. The light of the day seems to make up for dialogue, as I watched struggling to move me down the steep stairs without me plummeting headfirst into the wall. You seemed so much more tired when you woke up. Did you realize then every morning, that this is your husband? This man whom you swore to take care of on an altar a year ago? The sound of my voice didn’t sound right without yours, so I looked out silently at the glowing sky, listening to the sounds of your cutlery over the breakfast table.

The squeaking of the wheels as I make my way down the corridor patters along the dusty carpet. It is quite a daunting task to maneuver this place without catching a box by the edge or getting cloth stuck in the wheel, but I do. I gratefully open the door to the refrigerator that sits majestically at the hall; since you’ve been gone, the last other person I talked to here were the friends who forced all my furniture into the second floor, ‘for my convenience’. I consider getting someone to help me with groceries as I try to find something edible amongst the numerous packets of microwave dinners. Unfortunately, the slight stench met unkindly with my alcohol-drenched guts, and my empty stomach urges me to the toilet – which resided downstairs. I drudgingly get out of my chair, and drag my two redundant limbs behind me as I pull myself with effort towards the top of the stairs.

I found myself in the same position that night, I remember. Arms sprawled on the floor, face plastered to the ground, except that quiet Saturday, I had a foot against my back, and your screams pierced the silence. I was dressed better too – after all, we had just come from a night out at the movies – and so were you. Perhaps if I had told you how beautiful you looked that night in the car instead of (unromantically) in the deserted parking lot, no one would have heard me but you, and no one would have decided to take action upon it. No one would have pushed me out of the chair and pinned me to the ground. No one would have grabbed you by the shoulders and – I watched helpless, as they proceeded to abuse you, leaving you in a pile of blood and your best dress, as quiet as the night. The dim streetlamp highlighted a slow path of red creeping towards a drain, the only trace of the clamorous mob that came as quickly as they left. I could hardly hear my cries for help over the deafening silence.

I return to my wheelchair after relieving myself and mounting the stairs, to resume the enthusiastic squeaking of the wheels. I maneuver the hall from room to room, around the furniture and boxes that you cleaned and arranged but today lie undignified beneath cobwebs and each other. With each room I enter, the thunder roars more loudly, as if God himself was there with me in my rounds. The rooms are empty save for the deepening darkness that plays a prelude for the storm. I search each and every room for something that seems to linger in the silence – I wouldn’t be staring blankly otherwise – what was there to find?

I search each and every room.

Labels: botw

(1) BBians have spoken.