I Want to go Home

I want to go home.

Few people have any idea how gut wrenching a statement this is for me ... or why.

The home I live in and now call my own, originally belonged to my husband's father, long story that. While I'm grateful to have a home, it doesn't feel like mine.

I live surrounded by Johnson family ghosts.

Loving Ghosts of countless birthdays, holidays, illness, sorrow, joy, family meals and gatherings.  Ghosts residing deep inside fragrant cedar scented drawers and closets ... and sheltered within countless boxes. All containing photos, letters and more ... memories intermingled with dust and tears.

I want to go home ... to my childhood home ... a world I fight to remember and struggle to forget.

Most days I reside in a sort of half life now, where past memories are past memories. Simple right? I wish. But, and here's the rub, memories ::: my memories ::: are always there. Some are just below the surface waiting to bob up. Some memories are buried too deep to see, but I can still feel them and react.

There are times when remembering is hard bitter work. Today's one of those days. Today I need to type as fast as I can. Before the fog slithers back into my brain and I forget. Before the memories fade from my mind. Before the colors and the streets and the smells all go away, and I’m left standing alone in the dark.

I want to go home ...

I remember Santa Ana ... Bristol street a few blocks from my home … I would walk up and down that street for hours on end ... a little kid, taking in the sights and smells ... the A and P on the corner of Bristol and Mc Fadden … the Carnation Ice Cream parlor, Bob's Owl Rexal, with their big picture window, filled with impossibly large colorful glass pharmacy containers, Me n Ed's Pizza ::: ye old Pizza Parlor ::: and that big old upright piano ::: ye old piano ::: they had, the sign painted above the cigarette machine - reading "ye old coffin nails" Freddie's restaurant.

I want to go home ...

There was a Volkswagen dealership on the corner of Bristol and Edinger where a furniture store used to be … now there's a strip mall. Matter Dai was located across the street ::: still is ::: sort'a kind'a catty cornered. I don’t remember the exact year, 1963 I think, they built a Thrifty Drug across the street, where I’d go to get ice cream cones for a nickel, and my folks would go for dinner when they built a restaurant inside. All you can eat specials, fish, chicken … too much food.

I remember the new air conditioned post office they built across the street from my school … Diamond Elementary. I remember sitting in the car while parked in front of the post office on a brutally hot day. Waiting for my mother, the hot sun burning my skin, the 3pm sky as white as steam, so white that all the colors in the world melted away with the heat and the bright light until I melted with them and vanished.

I rode home a shadow, bones only, rattling in the car, my mother clueless to the fact I had gone, was gone, would never return. I watched glints of blue fade in and out between the wind and the sky and forgot who I was … dizzy from the heat and the blinding white light.

I want to go home ...

I wish I could go home, to places I remember. To the In and Out on main street, the one that sold hot oily melon sized bags of crisp salty dark brown fries. La Fonda’s Mexican Restaurant, tacos, corn chips, confetti salad with sugary dressing, Dr Pepper in bottles, my father talking with the owner, chewing gum cigars and candy cigarettes in my pocket on the way home. The wishing well in front, pennies in the water. The late evening sound of Main street with no cars. The color of the stars ... smell of a cool spring night ... and the warmth of my father’s strong hand holding mine.

I want to go home ...

To my own bed, with the sound of my brother's 1000 aquariums gurgling from the next room ... my brother's room, the light from the hallway sneaking into my bedroom from under my door, the comforting sound of my father's shoes clomp clomp clomping on the hardwood floor, the television blaring in the distance, the squeak of my bedroom door when Dad opened it to check on me, hug me, kiss me and bid me goodnight. The smell of cigarette tobacco, old spice and sweat ... Dad's smell, "Goodnight Shrimpy", Dad's name for me ... "Ik houd van jau" I love you. I love you to Daddy.

I want to go home ...

To Tony and Tanja and Pupper and Beaster and Junior. My four legged friends. Wiggly and soft and warm. So many days and nights ... they were there ... to comfort and love me. They were there when Mom went crazy, when I was sick, when ambulances came for Mom, when Steve (our gardener … her lover) raped me, when Amy (my Grandmother) died and Mom began to hate me. They were there.

I want to go home.

I can never go home. Someone pulled me away. Away from my life ::: my parents ::: my family ::: my cats ::: my dogs ::: my bed and my home. Someone who choked me and left me to die on my bathroom floor, face down in the toilet. Someone who found me when I was home alone sick in bed.

The man in the hallway, who haunts my dreams always comes back.

He stands in the doorway and looks at me in my bed. One minute he is at the door, the next he has my face in his hands and is pushing something I can’t see down my throat ::: something wet hard and silky smooth ::: choking me.

He told me he would kill me if I told. I’m barely 9, Defiant, scared, hurt and sick ... I told him I was telling my mother. So there, go ahead and kill me. You can't make me NOT tell. His fingers on my throat, his eyes searing my skin, my breath gone, my soul gone, my life gone. He left me laying on the floor in a pool of vomit and something worse.

This after the bad thing in my mouth, choking me. The bad taste, the sticky fowl smelling awful thing that made me vomit all over the floor. He held my hair and face so I couldn’t move. I was sick and he made me sicker. My throat hurt and he made it hurt more.

Don't tell ... don't tell. Stupidly defiant child, I screamed no! You can't make me! No help, no family, only pain. He choked me forever … until I saw millions of flickering stars orbiting my face and my heart exploded inside my chest. He choked me until my warm safe world turned cold dark and ugly. He choked me until I died.

My death didn't last long. When I awoke, the blue walls of my room had turned white, as white as steam, whiter than any white the world had ever seen and melted me away to nothing and I was gone. The only living thing remaining in my room were the ugly blue red purple rings surrounding my neck.
The sound and feel and taste of that late spring afternoon are permanently etched upon my soul ::: buried in deep within a dark cold place.

There are still times I fly into a wild panic ... for no reason. Suddenly I see his face ::: the man who raped me ::: and the outline of him standing in the doorway. I hear the sound of my brother across the street shooting hoops with Billy Wilkins. The thud his basket ball makes when hits Wilkin's garage door.

Close enough to hear my brother's laughter. So close and yet too far for help.
I can still hear the sound of my own screams echoing inside my scull, trying to escape from my bruised and battered throat. I can smell orange blossom intermingled with the acrid odor of freshly cut and watered grass. The smell of gasoline on Steve’s clothing and the smell of Lysol from the just cleaned bathroom floor.

I can still hear the creaking of the hardwood floor as the wind sweeps through the house … the sigh-whoosh sound the central heating makes as furnace cycles on. The ticking of rain drops on my bedroom window and the constant musical gurgling of my bathroom toilet. Sounds familiar sounds safe ... sounds of home.

I want to go home. I ache to go home ... feel my own bed … run down the street with my greyhound Junior padding beside me ... kiss my grandmother ... hug my Dad ... start over … forget … heal … recover everything that was stolen from me all those years ago. I want to go home.

The nine year old I once was resides within me and longs for family. She doesn’t understand that I’m old and everyone I ever loved and cared about, who ever loved and cared for me ... is dead.
I can never go home. Never. The finality of that simple statement floods me with grief.

I'm lost and I want to go home.