so i went back yesterday. back to the house i abandoned, i loved , i now hate but still need. back to the uneven black and white checkered plastic floor coming off to expose brown wood crumbs underneath. shoulder length grass in the backyard, the same fucking clothes on the line. i’m sure it’s dry now.
i go back to explore, to see what’s left, to take back what’s mine. i’ve done that here and there over the year +. my high school belongings scattered, dust collecting thick and dark on everything, the same pictures and papers on my wall, the calendar-October 16, 2006- the next day to cross out.
the other bedroom window is still open, letting in the breeze as if we still lived there, lack of air conditioning then and now makes everything hot, dry. the back door is still unlocked, and i unlocked the front door too, made it known i was there, as if he needed the reminder. our boxes full of childhood books, westerns, family portraits that never belonged there, open boxes spilling their contents all over the the floor in the back room.
this was the only house i knew as mine. and even then it still belongs to my tio, well my baptism padrino, my border patrol department of homeland stupidity padrino in his mansion in san manuel, selling this shitty house to my father, leaving everything they didn’t want in the living room, i had to move heavy boxes and other shit to that back room to mix with our belongings, i had to move them all by myself.
the house has been in my family since, oooooofa! quien sabes quando, my wela sinfo lived in it, my tio AG, who knows who else before we got it, falling apart wires don’t work right dirt everywhere fixer upper. and my father probably never really paid anything for it.
now, more than a year later, it sits lonely dark quiet. a house with no people, while i’m a person with no house. but when i think of squatting this forsaken house, this scary white rundown peice of shit, i always remember that day in late september. i will always remember, outside in the front yard, the spot where he’d park his truck sometimes, where the fence was taken out, (it’s the one with half a fence, i’d always say to visitors), that spot where no fucking grass will grow. my best friend since first grade, my newish roomate, mi hermana de otro mama, trying, trying, trying so hard to get her life together. imagine! can’t live with your own family so you move in with your best friend, trying trying trying so hard to get your life together, at seventeen! diez y siete y perdida. my father was like a father to her, she even said, she had written him a letter after living with us for a week or so, after getting arrested and disappointing him, a dad who loved her and cared for her as if she was his own daughter. he even got after her when she fucked up. i will always remember that day, that moment. we were outside in that spot, me her and her friend. her friend was begging her, making her tell me something. she was nearly hysterical, i was scared. what, what is it, tell me, it’s ok, i won’t get mad i promise please just tell me! her friend was making her tell me, she needs to know, you need to tell her, tell her TELL HER and she was just saying no no no no no no no no no i CAN’T!
she was trying, trying, trying, the words came reluctantly, fumbling over her tongue, tumbling to the grassless dirt in my front yard. and when she finally told me, time stopped, my life, my world, completely changed. your dad raped me.
dramatic pause.
so i went back yesterday…
