Used to be when I’d shut my eyes real tight - squeeze ‘em closed hard as I could - til it hurt, til I’d start to see colors behind the black and feel my cheeks scrunch up tight, somethin’ would happen.
I remember exactly when the first time was. Remember bein’ there, a little girl, barely seven or eight at most. Standin’ outside the bathroom door and waitin’ for mama. Mama’d always tell me she couldn’t take her eyes off me more than a second. Didn’t trust me not to fall and crack my head or wreck up the place.
So when she’d go in the bathroom with her special bottle and tell me “You stand outside this door and wait, and don’t you make a damn sound. If I hear those feet pattering away down the hall, girl…” She never needed to finish. Even at that young age, I knew. Knew the kinda person mama was.
She’d only act this way when daddy wasn’t around, which was most times, sadly. Daddy drove a big rig, one of the best truckers around way I always heard it. A good man who worked hard to provide for his family. He loved me most of all. When daddy was home it was like things weren’t so bad.
He’d pick me up and spin me through the air and kiss me on the cheek. Call me his little lady. And when he was around, mama seemed happier too. She wouldn’t call me names or grab my wrist real hard when I spilt my juice.
Daddy wasn’t around so much though. It’s a hard life, truckin’. On the road more often than not. And those times, it was just me and mama. Daddy not bein’ there made her lonely, and well, who else was she supposed to take it out on? I guess we all play our part.
At that age I didn’t know what was in the special bottle, or understand why mama took so long in the bathroom - it never took me that long to pee - but I understood what’d happen if I didn’t listen. Or if I even asked why.
So I was standin’ there , in the hallway, staring at the same peeling yellow wallpaper and stained rectangular rug that I’d stared at a million billion times. I leaned against the door and shut my eyes.
It wasn’t instant, took a few seconds. A minute maybe. That’s when it happened.
It was like this white haze washed over me, a gentle phantom wave from an invisible ocean, and I could see like my eyes were open, only they weren’t. I could feel they weren’t. It was like I was seein’ somethin’ I shouldn’t have been able to.
I saw the yellow wallpaper, the dirty rug, but there was one thing that was immediately different. My tiny little heart just about stopped when I glanced down that long hallway and saw it.
It, him, her. It. It was a thing. Human lookin’, human shaped anyway. Tall like my daddy. But it didn’t look right.
It wiggled and shimmered, like my eyes couldn’t focus on it properly. Some ribbony, misty being in the shape of a human. It was all grey and swirlin’, with two black rimmed and jagged white holes where they eyes’d be on a regular person.
It clutched something in front of it, in its wispy hands. A dark brown wicker basket, woven with thick and intricate ribbons. It was lined on the inside with soft, white linens.
It stared at me, and I stared at it.
I felt fear, but only for a minute. Quickly, it was like this calm washed over me. I didn’t sense any malice or evil from it. It had this aura - otherworldly, but benign. I stood up and without even thinkin’ about what I was doin’, took a step toward it.
I froze. Mama.
My head whipped around back to the bathroom door. I expected it to swing open, to hear mama come bargin’ out hootin’ and swearin’ and promisin’ to put the switch to my backside (or worse).
Nothin’.
I guessed that wherever I was, whatever I was seein’, mama didn’t have no power here. However my tiny brain rationalized it, I continued over to the thing. It held the basket out toward me, expectantly.
I hopped in.
I know what you’re thinkin’ - a dream. You laid your head back against that bathroom door and had one right vivid dream. For years I tried to convince myself that that’s all these memories were - a series a’ particularly powerful lucid dreams. That’s bullshit.
The sensations, the feelin’s- it was all far, far too real. The scratchy rug under my bare feet as I approached, the soft and immaculate sheets of that tiny basket brushing against my face as I jumped in and nestled up. The stray , sticking piece of wood that jutted from the basket’s ribbon pattern that I poked with my finger absent mindedly.
I stared up at the thing, and it looked down at me with its rolling storm cloud face and gapin’ white eyes. Then it started movin’.
It floated down the stairs, into the living room, all the way up to the front door. As it - WE - passed through the door, and I felt the warm summer sun wash over me, that’s where the panic re-emerged. I started wonderin’ where the thing was takin’ me, glancing’ back and forth between its shiftin’ face and the road ahead. Whole time, it didn’t say nothin’. Got as far as the front lawn before I’d had enough. Did the only thing I could think of.
I closed my eyes real tight, real hard, and opened ‘em.
In a snap, I was back in the hallway. Back outside the bathroom door and waitin’ for mama. I looked around frantically, touched the floor below me in fear. I looked down the hall, expecting to see that roiling mist man standin’ where he was, basket open and wantin’ to take me for another ride. All I saw down the long upstairs hallway was the door to the master bedroom at the very end.
The bathroom door swung open, and mama sauntered out, steadyin’ herself against the wall as she did so. She looked down at me, slurrin’ her words ever so slightly. “Good girrrl, letsh get some dinner.” I didn’t bother tellin’ her what’d happened. Mama wouldn’t wanna hear it.
Daddy came home later that week and I was so enthralled I didn’t think about monsters made of clouds or mama’s special bottle. Just my daddy and the way he made me feel. Didn’t even think to tell him about how mama’d smacked me so hard upside the head I’d saw stars just the day before, when I didn’t finish my greens fast enough at dinner.
A’course , daddy left again. Way he always did. And it was just me and her.
There I was, outside that bathroom door again, mama inside drinkin’ her brain cells away. I got bored and curious and I thought of my basket ride and wondered how far the mist man would carry me if I let him.
So I closed my eyes tight as possible, and that familiar feeling of a wave passed over me again. I was there, in the other place, and so was it.
This time I didn’t wait, I got right up and jumped into the basket and we were off. Down the stairs and through the door, out onto the lawn in the summer heat. We rolled across the air, fast but leisurely. Like we weren’t in no hurry. This time, I let it carry me out into the tall fields behind the farm, into that dry sea of cracked brown grass. I got scared when I couldn’t see the house no more and I panicked, slamming my eyes closed and wreckin’ it all.
It got to be somethin’ I almost looked forward to. Somethin’ that made up for the times daddy wasn’t around. To make me forget about mama and all the bad. For the next year, any time mama made me stand outside the bathroom while she sucked down her special bottle, I’d go to the misty place.
I didn’t question why, or what it all meant. It was a world that only I could see, somethin’ that didn’t mean to hurt me (I didn’t think anyway), and that let me go when I was scared.
We’d float down into town, out to the old creek. No one else ever seemed to be around during our travels, it was like we existed in this empty and tranquil world.
The final time I saw the creature, we floated so far that we reached the big city outside Vernon. It felt like we traveled thousands of miles on the air, passing by the tall buildings and a world so much bigger than I’d ever seen. I looked up at his nebulous face and wondered how far the mist man would truly carry me if I didn’t stop it.
This fear suddenly took me as I thought about where we were goin’, what were doin’. It always happened but this time it was intense and heart stopping. I thought about never seein’ daddy again, thought about floatin’ like this forever. About where a thing like this maybe came from.
I scrunched my eyes shut hard and escaped. Immediately, sittin’ on the hallway floor in the same old house, I regretted it. I felt sad for abandonin’ my friend. I thought next time maybe I’d try askin’ him.
Where are you takin’ me?
I never got the chance to find out.
Daddy was on the road more and more. Mama was gettin’ worse. She’d start drinkin’ her special bottle right in the middle of the livin’ room some days, not even waitin’ to sequester herself. She’d scream and yell and sometimes she’d smack me for no good reason at all. Even when I wasn’t doin’ nothin’ wrong. Hard, stingin’ smacks that made my teeth hurt.
She’d tell me she didn’t want no rotten cunt daughter , and I didn’t even know what that meant but I knew it was pain. I tried to find him, sometimes. Face down, cryin’ after mama had her way. I’d shut my eyes and open ‘em and look around. But it only seemed to work outside the bathroom door, when mama was inside.
Daddy died that year. He’d fallen asleep at the wheel and ran his trailer off the road. Smoke from the burnin’ wreckage was visible for miles, I heard. Things were never the same.
There was no buffer no more. Nothin’ to give either one of us a little light. I remember the last time I saw daddy, and he asked me about a bruise on my arm. I didn’t have the courage, and I sometimes wonder if he didn’t either. He hugged me hard and tight and the next time I saw him was a picture above his casket.
It was just me and mama. And god was it ever the most miserable existence for two wretched humans.
She didn’t have to pretend anymore. Hittin’ me, spittin’ on me, tellin’ me what a worthless little cunt I was. No need to hide the drinkin’ either. Openly and constantly all day long she’d suck the bottle dry.
I couldn’t see my friend or go to my place even if I wanted to.
For many, many years we went on like this. I never left home - what was out there for somebody as worthless as me? All I had was mama, a miserable drunken wretch with nobody else to care for her.
I did my job, played my part as the dotin’ daughter. Bringin’ her whatever she needed, doin’ our shoppin’ - groceries and liquor. People whispered when they saw me in town - the two strange ladies livin’ on that ramshackle farm on Vernon’s outskirts. No friends, no boys. No job , no school. She was my whole world, and I was hers. The punching bag, the chew toy.
A day never went by that she didn’t tell me how worthless I was and how she wished it was me that was gone. I wished the same thing.
Nearly every night, I’d think and I’d dream about that dancing mist and that calming wicker basket. Floating through the world , unburdened by any a’this hate and anger. Or I’d dream about daddy. I’d dream about those warm summer days spinning in circles out in the fields. His smile and his arms wrapping me up.
Mama’s old now, rotting and frail and as hideous on the outside as she is on the inside. As I stand over her bed, I think back to that last time I ever saw the mist man. How we floated into the sky and how I got too damn scared, and I never saw him again. Never got to feel that peace, never got to ask him what it was he wanted. Why he took mercy on someone like me.
Mama’s babblin’ like usual, eyes all bugged out and lookin’ at nothin’. I stare into her eyes as I lift up the pillow. I wanna tell her everythin’ about how I feel, the hate I hold in my heart for her, how I wish she was the one all mangled up in a burnin’ tractor trailer and daddy was here with me and we were happy. I never been good with words though.
I just place the pillow over her face and press down hard, all elbows and palms. She fights back but only weakly, and it doesn’t take long.
I drag her body out of the filthy sheets and into the bathroom. I throw her onto the floor in a heap, and close the door behind me.
Taking deep breaths, I lean against the door and slowly lower myself to sit, staring at that peelin’ and rotted yellow wallpaper and feelin’ the ancient rug beneath me.
This was the only way it ever worked.
So I shut my eyes, hard and tight as I possibly can. So hard it hurts my face, feelin’ the muscles contort.
I wait for that phantom feelin’ to wash over me. It doesn’t. There’s no gentle creature with a body like a raging storm , no beautiful basket or better place they’re carryin’ me to. All I see is the black void, all consumin’ and coverin’ everything around me. And long, hot rivers of tears stream down my cheeks.
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