We All Sleep Alone

It was a “handyman’s special,” a decrepit old farmhouse that would be torn down in twenty years time because of an irreparably cracked foundation. But we didn’t know that at the time. The plumbing problems, the furnace problems, the rodent problems – these were all for the future we couldn’t see. When we moved from the city to this falling down ruin in the middle of a cornfield, my sister and I were excited. And naïve. We could get a dog. We could sled down the hill in our humongous backyard. We could learn to ride bikes. We could frolic outside with no danger of getting hit by a car.

We didn’t consider the downfalls. The naïveté, I suppose. We were young. So young. My parents were young, too. Looking back at the photographs, I see two young people, still in love, still holding hands, full of hope of what this new adventure would bring.

My sister and I couldn’t see the taunts we would receive at school. The year my sister was in sixth grade, she skipped over 70 days of school. She’d pretend she was going to catch the bus, hide in the barn, wait until I went to school, mom went to bed, and dad went to work. Then she would watch television until I came home from school. She learned to love daytime television. She knows more about Pine Valley and Port Charles than anyone should ever know.

We didn’t know that the costs of just maintaining (forget improving) this piece of crap pile of bricks and wood would cause so much friction between our parents. The photographs became fewer and fewer as the years passed. The people got older, more haggard, less happy. We couldn’t foresee the fighting – the yelling, the crying, and the times we would spend huddled under the covers at night, clutched to each other, waiting for it to end. Willing our lives to stop spinning out of control.

The day my parents found out my sister was skipping school is so clear to me. They were yelling, of course, blaming one another, blaming her, me, the dog, anyone. No one asked her why she didn’t want to go. And she and I hid under her bed. Even now I can see us, crying, and hiding. When he screamed her name and came running up the stairs, he punched the wall. If we weren’t hiding under the bed, it would have been her face. A hole remained in the plaster for years.

That stupid house. The upstairs was “unfinished.” That’s how the realtor described it. It was little more than the skeleton structure of a house with a little plaster. No heat. No floor for most of it. It was also where my bedroom was. Wasn’t I a lucky kid? My own bedroom! Others would have done anything for their own bedroom. But that spooky old house made noises. And shadows. It was terrifying. You could hear the ghosts whispering in the attic above. With birthday money, I bought a flashlight that came with rechargeable batteries. I slept with this flashlight turned on under my covers, every night. I was scared of the dark, sure, but more than that, I was scared of the house.

She passed the sixth grade. No one ever asked her why she skipped school. Years later, he was sick. I visited, somewhat reluctantly. We were huddled together on her bed. “Why?” I asked. “They made fun of me.”

The fear of mockery was greater than the fear of the fist. She still lives with them.

I still sleep with a light on if no one else is in the room with me.