Come Home

Less' New Friendship (ch 8)

Chapter Eight


Less' New Friendship


                   The house has reverted to the past state, it looked just as it did when we first laid eyes on it so many years ago. No color on the wood sides, no trim, and no flowers. It looked abandoned again even though we lived there. Unbelievably, it always seem to have an animus gray cloud hovering above the house and yard.


         Dad kept a path cut in the high weeds from the house to the barren road. We were the last house on the forgotten trail. The road was the only place that mom permitted us to play now. I missed the veggies. I love home grown melons. They, with all the others in the garden ,have long withered away.


         However, neither Less or Sis has been sick. After the dreams, the heat did not return. He can run and speak complete sentences. He can write his name. He counts to fifty. Less is totally ready for school. However, he has never been away from the house except for going to the doctor. Would he know how to keep quite about the events of the house, or will his classmates pick on him for lying or making things up?


          Less is always awake when we get ready for school. He is disappointed when we have to tell him that he has to stay home. Everyday when we return, he waits for us to play school with him. I usually incorporated it while doing my homework. We still used lamps for lights, so I did not have time to do both separate. I had math problems and sentences written out for him to work with. He loved it.


                   The days must have been lonely for Less, so I thought. Truth was  he held his own secrets. While we were in school, he found a friend. He never told us about the lady in the house that played with him everyday. She would pick things up in the room making the items seem to be floating. Less would squint his eyes to pretend that he has the power to do the same. Sometimes she would hold his hands. She would lift him from the ground and disappeared from view. He loved to feel as though he was flying.


         Less doesn't have to wear a leash any longer. He stays where he is told. If he wants to explore, he always asks first. A good kid all in all. One Saturday morning I went looking for him. Our parents were still sleeping. I decided to open doors until.. There he was. In the stairs, he was levitating six inches above them. I stood still. You would not think that after all that had happen in this house that I would be frozen with fear.


         “Hey, Matilda,” my brother's voice was bringing me back to my senses. “Look what I can do.”


         “Yyea,” I stuttered. “ I always wanted to float.” I walk slowly up the steps. I was hoping that whatever held him in the air did not let him fall. I get beneath him. As I touch his feet, he was lowered gently into my arms. He is too heavy to carry down so I sit him down to walk. I held tight to his hands.


         I am crying. “Why are you sad?” He asks. I do not know how to answer him. He was smiling bright. He was happy, healthy, and excited. “Sara, would never hurt me. She loves me.”


         “Who?” I did not know how to react.


         “Sara, she loves me. She says that this is my home here with her. She said that she would not permit anyone to take me away or harm me.” He says looking up the stairway at something or someone that only he could see.


         When we are on the other side of the door, I lock it behind us. I decide not to tell Mom and Dad. There was no harm done yet. However, how would Sara react if Mom gets afraid again. Will she react the way that the spirits did when we took Less to the doctor? Would it be worse this time? Would they kill to keep us living there with them.


         Mom sees me locking the door. She thinks that I am unlocking it to go up the second floor to play. “Where do you think you are going? The windows are too low for you to be running and playing up there.” She scolds us. She scats us out the door toward the road until she was ready to call us in to eat.


         When I got Bub outside, I began to question him. “How long have you played with Sara?”


         “I have seen her as long as I can remember. She plays with me while you go to school.”


         “Is there anyone else that you talk to that we do not know about?” I ask.


         He thinks, “Oh yes,” he answers. “ I almost forgot. Mr. Jones. Sis knows him. They used to play, but he only talks to me.”


         “Why?”


         “I don't know how to play checkers or cards.” my brother answers in an of course attitude as if I should have known the answer.


         “What does Mr. Jones talk about?”


         “ He tells me stories like how Sara needs me to play with her because her children live in Heaven. She can not go until she realizes that they are not here.”


         I continue to push him on the broken big wheel that we all have played with. Rose and Sis comes running. “Less, lets not tell anyone else,” I plead “until you can get Sara and Mr. Jones to meet me. I want to let him know that you are a great


kid.” He agrees.


         Before our sisters made it to where we were playing, they were fighting. I mean pulling hair with punches fighting. I run over to see what the new trouble was between them. In the process of trying to break them up Splat, one of them put a fist into my eye. The fighting stops. They know that Mom would have a fit because I would probably not cover for them this time because I would be carrying a black that would be too hard to explain away. 


         I begin to walk home. I look up at the second story window. There sat Sara brushing her long hair. She was watching us as if we were her children. I stop. I remembered what had happened just moments ago. I did not want to worry my mother any more. I began to work up an excuse for the damage to my eye as we walk on home.


         Sis, Rose, Less, and I walk silently. The girls preparing themselves for a whippen. Less did not like it when any of his sisters were in trouble so he didn't have anything to say. Me, I was working on something that would be part true and not a lie. 


         When we got home to eat, Mom noticed the red swelling around my eye instantly. “What happened?” She asks as she brought me a cold wet rag to hold on it. We did not have ice since we were always without power.


         “I was pushing Less on the toy. Then the girls came over. I guess we were playing to rough. In the fun something hit me in the eye.” After all I had been pushing Less, the girls did join us, and something did hit my eye, I didn't say what hit me. So technically I didn't lie.


         I wasn't sure that she totally believed me, but she did not press for more information. Sis and Rose look at me. They knew that I had always covered for them before, but this was the first time that I got hurt in their ever ending fighting.


They wondered why I protected them from a punishment when I had gotten a black eye for sure out of the deal. I walk away leaving them to their thoughts.          





My words are ways to leave peices of myself behind for my children.

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