Afterwards - Part I

Except for a thick layer of dust and an obvious pest problem, the room was exactly as I remembered. My mom had painted the room a cliché shade of pink when I was too young to know any better and had refused to repaint because apparently I was the one who had chosen the sickeningly feminine color. I’m sure I was very close to changing her mind before she got sick. Both beds were still unmade. Plastic animals and Lincoln Logs were strewn across the cutesy flowered rug. The stable my sister and I had built for our toys was more or less still standing. I couldn’t help but smile.

It had been ten years, I think, since I had been in my room, and I couldn’t resist taking a glance down memory lane. I tried not to disturb the mayhem as I crossed the disaster of a room to reach under my mattress and up under the fitted sheet where I had so cleverly hidden my diary. My grandmother had had “Emma” carved into the cover before she gave it to me for my tenth birthday. I stared at the silly doodles of a young girl struggling to establish an identity of her own that littered the cover and margins. I didn’t feel quite up to reading it right then, so I shoved it in my shoulder bag with a half-smile and a shake of my head. I turned my attention to the wall beside my bed. I had posters of angsty bands and hot guys colorfully tacked up with some notes I had passed back and forth in class, movie tickets, playbills, and about fifty different postcards from all the places in the world I wanted to visit, sent to me by my aunt the pilot on her adventures. I grabbed a few of the postcards off the wall and put them in the bag with my diary.

As much as I wanted to fully explore this long forgotten life, these weren’t the things I came home for. I left my room, closing the door in an unconscious attempt to preserve the memories, and made my way down the hall to my parents’ room. The door was closed, and instinctively I almost knocked. It felt wrong turning the knob without permission. The silky blue drapes were drawn shut, casting an eerie midnight glow onto the great bed where my parents had laid together for eleven years. It wasn’t long enough, but then, it was never going to be long enough.

I entered their forbidden sanctuary slowly, waiting for my mother to walk out of the bathroom and chase me out the way she did that last Christmas when I tried to peek at my presents. She had been wrapped in a beach towel; her copper hair that normally lived in a bunch at the back of her head was blown half dry and cascaded down over her thin freckled shoulders. Her eyes were sky blue and youthful, free from their typical dark brown liner, and they absolutely sparkled with the fireworks that went off in them every time she smiled. She wasn’t angry, she just laughed as she shot colored hair ties at me until I closed the door behind me. I made a point never to forget that night. I would’ve given anything for her to scold me one more time.

I opened up the side of the closet that had been my mother’s. Her wardrobe was colorful, to reflect her wildness, and much of it was going to be useless to me, but I didn’t fit into most of my clothes anymore. I browsed casually through the color-coded seasonal outfit staples, and when I saw my favorite aqua blue sun dress, I couldn’t help myself. I pulled it off the hangar and tried it on. She was a bit shorter than I had become, and I remembered her filling out the bust better than I did, but it fit rather well. I twirled once, and then twice in the walk-in closet, trying to make it flow the way it had always seemed to when she wore it. I pulled off my ragged hiking boots and picked out the yellow flats with brown polka dots and brown ribbon bows that she liked to wear in the summer. They were horribly uncomfortable, but they made me smile nonetheless.

I went to look in the mirror in the corner of the room, but couldn’t see very well. So I opened the curtains. When I turned around, I saw my mother. She was a little taller, a little thinner, less womanly, and her hair was a mess but basically the same. I was shocked. It was the first time I had seen my reflection in 10 years. Dad had always said I looked like my mother, but here, in that room, in that dress, I could see it for the first time. I looked exactly like my favorite memories of my mother. I smiled a bit, and I was almost overwhelmed with emotion, almost. That was when I noticed how clean the mirror was. Panic shocked my system and I whirled around to the rest of the room. The whole room was clean. It was being used.

I hurried to the window to shut the blinds when I saw him ducking under the same loose fence posts I had entered by. I shut the curtains, but I was sure he saw me. I ran into the closet with no time to be choosy and grabbed as many t-shirts and pairs of jeans as I could fit in my bag, kicked off the stupid flats and shoved my bare feet into my mother’s old green and grey running shoes. In retrospect, this next move was extremely stupid, but instead of heading straight for the door, I made for one last piece of nostalgia. If it had been in the cabinet in the hall where it belonged I might’ve made it out. When it wasn’t in its place, instead of ditching it I searched two more drawers. The time that took me was enough for the stranger who was living in my parents’ room to get up the stairs and into the hall.

“Hey!” He yelled, dropping some kind of animal on the floor and running in my direction.

I turned back to my old room. Slamming the door behind me I ran to the window and threw it open with a bang that would likely have broken the glass if there was any left. I punched the screen out and clambered out onto the roof. I was running towards the garage where the roof sloped closer to the ground when one of the old roof tiles slipped out from under me and I went tumbling off the roof and down to the ground. I landed on my back with a thud that knocked the air out of my lungs and clouded my vision. Before I knew it he had one had over my mouth carrying me into my childhood home through the dirty yellow front door.

I screamed and kicked at him, missing, but I got him when I swung my bag that I had miraculously managed to hold onto. He let out a muffled “oof!” His grip loosened and I was free, for a second. He recovered quickly enough to grab the stupid dress before I could get away.

“Don’t-“ He started, but I turned around and pushed him hard. He tripped and fell onto our fashionable glass coffee table that shattered under his weight, but he was still holding my dress and I don’t have the best balance. I fell next to him, smacking my face on the wood frame, and knocking myself out.