Edda
There is something uniquely terrifying about returning home after so many years.
MATTHEW CONNOR-FERNANDES
IMAGE BY CAMEO VENCHIARUTTI
There is something uniquely terrifying about returning home after so many years.
Everything from the large oak tree outside to the stone steps leading up to the old wooden door is the same. Yet, as I stand by the sidewalk, looking up at the sagging old house, there’s the sense that something has changed. It isn’t the peeling paint on the fence or the dirty windows. It’s something more than that.
A cool breeze blows by and I shiver, unable to move my gaze from the front door.
The colour has long since faded, leaving the door a sickly off-white as opposed to the joyful yellow it had once been. With a deep breath in, I start up the driveway. Roaches scatter as I step up the cracked stone stairs, now able to take them two at a time. The porch sags under me, the rotting wood unused to the weight of a fully grown person.
I don’t bother knocking. The key is still taped under the wilted flower pot, as it had been for the past thirty-two years. The door swings open with an ominous creak, revealing the darkened entryway that lay ahead of me. The first thing that hits me is the smell. After being gone for so long, the scent of rotting garbage welcomes me home. Piles of bulging black bags line the walls, years worth of waste that never made it past the doorway.
Not since I left.
I shove some aside, jolting back as an unidentifiable sludge defiles my nice pants, freshly ironed for what should have been a joyous homecoming. Small puddles of unknown liquid dot the floor and I gingerly step around them. It doesn’t help. The floor itself is sticky. My new loafers meet resistance every time I take a step, as if the floor is fighting to keep me there.
Despite the trash everywhere and the buzz of flies surrounding me, there are no signs of life in this house. No family portraits, no radio or television playing in the background. The only photo is from my high school graduation, taken by my best friend’s mother. It stands on the only clear surface, angled towards the living room. I look away.
If it weren’t for the freshly dirtied dishes piled neatly beside the sink, I’d have thought that nobody lives here. I walk through the house, taking the all-too-familiar path from the kitchen to the main room. The once-open hallways have long since been turned into closed, claustrophobic tunnels. No light reaches inside, the windows blocked by stacks of black bags. I can’t get over the smell. The putrid scent of sheer filth assaults me, even when I breathe through my mouth. I can taste it.
A moment passes before I hear movement. A shuffling sound reaches me from the back room where a tattered old couch awaits me, stained in so many places that its original colour is impossible to make out.
The room is dark, the only light in the room filtered through the layers of filth on the crummy windows.
Maybe that’s why it took me so long to see her.
Or maybe it was the way she sat, slumped against the arm of the couch like the sacs of garbage that surrounded her. A sick feeling bubbles up within me and I can hardly form the words to ask her. Then, her chest rises. She takes a breath.
The relief is instantaneous. Every muscle in my body, tense with anticipation and fear of what I might find, goes lax. And still, I can’t speak. I can only look at the woman that had raised me, greying hair and loose skin, and wonder just where her life went wrong.
It’s my mother who speaks first, shattering the silence into jagged pieces, her two simple words cutting deep like broken glass.
“You’re home.”
I feel her judging eyes on me. I swallow. My throat feels tight. “I am.”
“Well. Don’t just stand there. Put on some tea. I raised you better than this.”
Her eyes drill into my back as I turn and head back into the kitchen. The smell is worse here than in the rest of the house. Clouds of fruit flies swarm the decaying fruit bowl, attracted by the sweet smell of rot. I wave them away and they return seconds later. Acting on pure muscle memory, I approach the cabinet that has held the kettle for as long as I could remember. When I open the door, it’s not there.
“Mom, where’s the kettle?”
“Above the stove.”
“It used to be beside the microwave.”
“Not anymore.”
While the kettle boils, I return to the sitting room. There’s an overturned tower of take-out containers on the loveseat. I take great care in moving it aside, though I shouldn’t have bothered. It only blends in with its surroundings, just another item of trash to add to the hoard. Once it’s out of the way, I take a seat. The cushion is damp with a substance I don’t care to identify. A grimace flashes over my face for just a moment. My mother’s telltale frown has reappeared.
We sit in silence, just the two of us. In the quiet that follows, I can hear the telltale scritch-scritch of little mice feet running amok among the bags, searching for something they can eat.
Neither of us speak. The silence is no longer the comfortable and familiar space it used to be. This silence is oppressive and rife with tension, years of unspoken words filling the room and suffocating us. Seconds pass, then minutes. My fingers twitch for a cigarette, craving the release of a habit I’d broken years ago.
“Look, I—”
The kettle begins to whistle. I stand all too quickly, glad for an excuse to be free from the suffocating tension. My mother says nothing. Once the tea is poured, my mother takes the cup from me with a nod of thanks. I sit back down on the damp couch, managing to hide my disgust this time. I wipe dust from the lip of the teacup before I take a sip. It’s nice, sweet with a hint of lemon. I recognize the taste from my childhood spent within these walls, and it instantly calms me.
Chamomile.
“I saw one of your cases on the news.”
I wince. I know which one she’s talking about. “You did?”
“That poor woman . . . how could you defend somebody like that?”
“Mom, come on. She did it to herself.”
There’s a moment of silence, the air itself seeming to hold still in anticipation.
“It was a case of negligence. Plain and simple.”
“There is no legal responsibility for a child to care for their parent.”
My mother throws her hands up, the most movement I’ve seen from her since arriving. “He could have at least visited her! That poor woman . . .”
I’m shrinking down, even while something else rises up within me, bigger than I have ever been. I laugh, bitter like the sharp scent of mold around us. “Seriously? You’re judging me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You might as well have.” I stand, putting the tea down on the table. Some of it splashes over the lip of the teacup. “I knew you were going to do this.”
She narrows her eyes at me, the disapproving frown that dominated my childhood. “Then why’d you even come?”
“I don’t know, maybe because I wanted to see my mother?”
The word ‘sardonic’ comes to mind as she laughs, shaking her head at me. “Don’t give me that. You just came here to show off.”
“That’s not—”
“You’ve come here to show off how you’re some big-shot lawyer now. Are you proud of yourself?”
My hands are shaking, clenched so tightly that my nails dig into my palms, leaving little half-moon indents behind.
“Yeah, yeah I’m proud. I got out of here. I worked hard, I studied. I worked two jobs—two jobs!—to put myself through law school. You know, my classmates spent their weekends partying and having a good time. I spent my time studying and working and being responsible for six years. Six years! I didn’t get a single break, I didn’t take a single day off. My classmates had college funds and paid vacations and do you know what I had? You know what I had, mom?”
She is silent, staring at me.
“I had nothing. Nothing. You didn’t even come to my graduation.”
Neither of us speak. The silence stretches on between us like an endless horizon. A minute passes, then two, before she breaks the ice for the second time that day. Her voice was barely a whisper, so quiet that I wonder if I was meant to hear it at all.
“I couldn’t.”
I feel like a bucket of cold water has been dumped over me, washing away the years of resentment brought on by missed soccer games and school dances. That angry part of me shrinks down, smaller than the mice that run around our feet. A deep feeling of guilt takes its place. “Mom . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.”
“Yes, you did, don’t lie to me.”
In the quiet that follows, I take a look around the room, shocked by the mounds of muck. A bag of waste slips from its perch upon a couple others, startling me enough that I barely manage to avoid dropping my tea. The top of the bag brushes the curtain’s edge as it falls, just slightly, allowing a sliver of light into the room for just a second. I stare at it, watching the light get smaller as the curtain swishes back into place. When I look up, my mother is staring at me.
“It’s . . . pretty messy in here. There’s a lot of garbage.”
She huffs, narrowing her eyes at me. “Well, you’ve been gone. You can hardly expect me to deal with all of this myself.”
I look at her, actually look at her. Her hair, once a pale brown with the occasional silver streak, is now a dull gray. The smile that had always covered her lips, even on the bad days when she could hardly leave her room, was nowhere to be seen. Instead, wrinkles from a recent eternity of frowns mar her face.
Setting my tea aside, I stand and offer her a hand up. “Come on.”
I’m expecting a smile or some form of agreement. Instead, she stares up at me like I’ve grown a second head. My hand drops. I falter. “Mom—”
“What? What do you want from me?”
Behind my back, I wring my hands. A rat runs past and I watch it go out of the corner of my eye. When I look back at her, she’s waiting, expectant.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “It’s been years. I guess I just . . . I don’t know, maybe I just wanted to see you?”
“Well, you saw me. You can leave now.”
“Mom, I can’t just leave you here. Not like this. This place is filthy, you’re going to catch something.”
“Well I’m not leaving.”
I sigh. “Mom, that’s not—I’m just saying we should clean up a bit.”
“Why bother? It’s going to take us ages.”
“Then we’d better start now.”
“What’s the point?” she asks. “We’ll clean it all up and then it will just build up again.”
Somewhere in the entryway, another bag of garbage falls over. The resulting crash sends the cockroaches scurrying across the floorboards, running for cover.
“How about this? We’ll do what we can today and I’ll come by every week to take the garbage out. We’ll do it together.”
She’s quiet again. I look over at the window, where the curtain has finally settled back into place, and can’t help but imagine how wonderful the room would look full of light and life. Her wrinkled hand grasps mine and a small smile graces her face.
Together, we lift the heavy bag of trash blocking the window, allowing a sunbeam to enter the room, illuminating the long-stained hardwood floor. For the first time, there’s light in the room.
And for the first time, dealing with the garbage doesn’t seem so difficult.
Matthew-Connor Fernandes is a young writer based out of Toronto, Ontario. He writes in a variety of formats from poetry to long fiction. Storytelling in the forms of scriptwriting and short fiction remain his favourites.
Image: Edda (Cameo Venchiarutti)
Edited for publication by Raegen Montaque, as part of the Bachelor of Creative & Professional Writing program.
HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation.