by Cory Hiles
“He has such a look of…purity; I guess is the word for it, that I feel like I have to grab his hand. Anyway, I take his hand and the darkness fades away and suddenly we’re standing on the porch of this house. I recognize it as this house because, as you might recall, I have a vivid memory of being chased away from here with a broom.”
I had to laugh at that, recalling my own imaginations of old men and flower gardens protesting speeding idiots.
June politely waited for me to finish snickering before she continued.
“Anyway, in this dream, we end up on the porch and then this boy, who is still holding my hand, reaches his other hand out and lays his palm flat against the front door. When he does that, everything fades to black again.”
“Then, we stand there in the dark, him still holding my hand, and he whispers two words; ‘Squirt’, and ‘Johnny’. And as soon as he whispers those two words, he disappears and I can just make out in the darkness, the shape of a little boy who appears to be floating on his back in the darkness. Just hovering; there in the dark. I always try to shout the words the big kid gave me, but I can never make a sound, then I wake up.”
“That’s how I found you, and how I knew your name. And I think the big kid in the dream was…”
“Joe!” I shouted at her, cutting her off in mid sentence.
June laughed and made a big production of recoiling as if I’d scared her.
“That’s right, Johnny,” she laughed, “I’m pretty sure it was Joe, though I wasn’t sure before, because I haven’t seen him since his father’s funeral, and he was just a baby then.”
“I don’t know where he was the night you were born. Your mom might have left him at home alone, but he wasn’t at the hospital. Anyway, Joe was able to show me the house, and give me a name. I really wasn’t sure if the dreams meant anything or if I was going crazy, but after five nights in a row, I finally drummed up enough courage to come and see.”
“I’m glad you did.” I said. “But I heard you looking all over the house, why didn’t you come straight to the basement?”
“Well,” June said, “I didn’t know Joe had showed me the room. I thought all he had showed me was darkness; I didn’t realize he had been showing me the basement until I found you down here.”
June looked a little sheepish and seemed to struggle to continue, but she eventually found the courage and said, “I also didn’t know if you were alive or dead. From the dream I couldn’t tell if you were sleeping or dead and I was very, very scared of finding a body instead of a boy. That’s why I looked in cupboards and closets first.”
June got up off the mattress and stretched, “Ok,” she said, “Now enough of my story, tell me your story. Why are you down here? Where is your mother? What is that horrible smell? And why are you running around naked like a little aborigine?”
I recounted to her the details of how my incarceration started, and up to the point where she found me as best as I could. It turned out to be harder to talk about than I thought it would be.
I went on to explain that I had no idea of my mother’s location, that the smell was my pooping bucket and perhaps my own lack of personal hygiene, and that I was naked because I had forgotten that normal people wear clothes.
My story took a long time to recount, even skipping over most of the mundane details, such as which books I’d read, or what I’d eaten for lunch on any given day, and I finished the telling of it with a big yawn.
“Oh, you poor Honey,” June said leaning down to hug me with tears in her eyes. “That’s the most horrifying thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I don’t know how you managed to stay sane, Johnny.”
I’m pretty sure fire shone in my eyes as I replied, “Because I will NOT be crazy like Mama! I won’t do it!”
June smiled a sad, knowing smile and seemed to understand that my strength was born of abhorrence to my mother’s Sickness, and she quickly changed the subject.
“Well, my little super hero,” she said, “I think it’s time to get you out of the basement, what do you think?”
My heart nearly exploded out of my throat and tears did explode out of my still tender eyes in my sudden exultation. I jumped up off the mattress so fast that I nearly plowed right into June, forcing her to step back a couple paces. I grabbed up my dictionary and started traipsing towards the stairs.
“Whoa, Silver!” June shouted through her laughter, stopping me in my tracks. I turned around and saw her smiling beautifully at me. “You can’t go wandering around in your birthday suit. Where’d you put your clothes?”
Smiling and crying, I made my last trip over to the washer and dryer in the basement of my mother’s house.
CHAPTER 12
The trip out of the basement and into the great big world beyond was a blur. I got dressed quickly, and made sure I had my dictionary and ran up the stairs without my usual modicum of caution, risking not only more broken fingers, but likely a broken neck as well.
The bright light of the kitchen hurt my eyes, but I stared around with wide eyes anyway. I had always thought the kitchen was an ugly little room, with its dingy wallpaper—cream colored with images of fruit all over it—but that night the kitchen looked like the vestibule to Heaven.
Everything seemed to shimmer with an ethereal glow; radiant warmth and glory and beauty shining forth from every surface. I wondered briefly if the auras were due to my long confinement in the dark and some kind of resultant light sensitivity to my eyes, but I decided quickly that it was probably just what freedom looked like.
Entering the kitchen had felt like wandering into a vast, ancient temple crowded with artifacts. Each artifact seemed to have vast importance and carried with it the potential to change the entire course of human history and needed to be treated with a certain reverence, awe, and wonder. That was the condition June found me in when she topped the stairs.
Such were my feelings of awe and reverence in the kitchen that I’m surprised I didn’t bow down before the toaster to offer my most penitent confessions of guilt before turning to the microwave to make requests for eternal life.
June came up the stairs much more cautiously than I had and entered the kitchen several seconds behind me. She found me standing in the kitchen, turning slow circles, looking at everything with the wide eyed wonder of a person who suddenly finds himself surrounded by unbelievable miracles that shatter all preconceived notions about the universe.
She put her hand on my shoulder and stood there for a few seconds, letting me absorb all the things I’d seen a million times before, but was suddenly seeing for the first time. When she spoke, she spoke gently, “What do you think about getting out of here before your mom shows up with a broom?”
I broke my reverie with a giggle, imagining my mother not carrying a broom as she entered, but rather flying through the door on it. I looked up at June (who, in that light, bore a striking similarity to both my mother and Kim Basinger) with a wide smile and said, “Yes, let us forsake this penitentiary.”
Laughing, June led me out of the over-bright house and out the front door into the pleasantly dark night, never to return to that palace of horrors where my childhood had been poisoned by my mother’s Sickness.
We hopped in June’s car and started up the block, driving at a reasonable speed so as not to piss off the little old men in coveralls that shouldn’t be out gardening at eleven o’clock at night anyway.
I looked over at June as she was driving. Her face was dimly lit by the faint glow of the dash lights, and even cast in a green light I thought she was beautiful. I knew I loved her. Not in a romantic way, I wasn’t in love with her, but I loved her in a way that I had never loved my own mother.
June was the embodiment of everything my mother should have been. Just looking at her had a calming effect; reassuring me that everything would be ok. When she talked to me she made me feel like I was the most important person in the entire world, and that nothing—nothing at all—was more important in that moment than I was.
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When she laughed, the entire world inflated with her infectious joy, and when she touched me, I could feel love flowing out of her body and into mine like some sort of radioactive beam.
As I was admiring June and coming to terms with the fact that she was the mother of my dreams, a troubling thought entered my mind; ‘What if I can’t stay with her? What if someone makes me go back to my mother?’
June glanced down and must have seen my troubled expression, because her own expression quickly changed from one of peaceful contentment to one of intense concern. Furrowing her eyebrows and placing a hand on my knee she asked, “What’s wrong, Tiger? Why do you look so upset?”
I was surprised by her sudden awareness of my change in mood. I was still struggling to believe that someone actually cared about me at all, even less cared so much that they could sense my uneasiness without me explaining it to them.
Tears began building on the rims of my lower eyelids; part from my fears of having to leave June, and part because I was overwhelmed by her concern for me. In that moment I knew not only that I loved her, but also that I trusted her.
I could be certain that no matter what I told her, she would not judge me. I could tell her my hopes, dreams, and fears. I could tell her the deepest darkest secrets of my heart and never have to fear that she would laugh at me, scorn me, or use that information to hurt me.
I drew strength from the comfort of my trust and told her my fear.
“Am I going to have to go back to my mother? I don’t want to!” I cried, “I want to stay with you forever! Don’t ever make me go back, June, please!”
We were just driving by the park when I began to freak out on June about the prospect of going back to my mother, and June quickly slammed on the brakes and cranked the steering wheel, executing a controlled slide into the parking lot of the park that any Hollywood stunt driver would have been envious of.
The car slammed to a halt and was still rocking back and forth from the sudden turn and stop, but June had already managed to unclip her safety belt and was leaned over towards me with both hands on my shoulders, turning my torso firmly so I faced her directly She had her face bent down, inches from mine.
“Sugar Pie,” she said desperately, “don’t you worry about that! Don’t you worry one hair on that beautiful little head of yours about that! I’m going to make sure that you never, ever, have to go back to live with that psycho! Do you understand me? Do you understand, Johnny? You’ll never have to go back to her, NEVER!”
Fire burst forth in her eyes, or maybe just reflections from the dash lights, but whatever it was, it was striking. Her eyes sparkled with hate and anger and love all at the same time. Two emotions were clearly reserved for my mother, and only the last was reserved for me.
As she spoke, her breath washed over me. It smelled faintly of cinnamon and acted like some sort of alchemical concoction, washing away every trace of my fear, and empowering me to accept the love and security that was being offered to me.
I was overwhelmed with emotion.
First of all, I had just been rescued from a tortuous tenure in a bleak cell; secondly I had been rescued by a person who loved me for no reason other than because I was alive and needed to be loved. My own mother had not loved me so much, and thirdly, this rescuer of mine looked me straight in the eye and promised to protect me.
As dust clouds created by June’s exceptional slide into the park continued to drift by the windows, I was so overcome that I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t cry, and could only barely breathe.
The only other person who had ever loved me and protected me had been Joe, and he’d been gone for nearly seven months. During those seven months I had stumbled through a myriad of ways to convince myself that I would never be loved again, and likely didn’t deserve to be.
But now, here I was sitting in the car with some kind of racecar driver who was staring passionately into my face, bathing me in love, and promising to protect me from all the evils of the world.
I had been convinced during my imprisonment that I was a figment of the imagination; that some creature in a book had more place in reality that I did. But June was here, and she had my complete and utter attention forcing me to recognize that I was not only real, but that she wanted me to be real.
It had been a long time since anybody had wanted me. I didn’t know how to react. Hell, I couldn’t react. The whole scene was too surreal. Everything still bore an aura; a shimmering around the edges, lending a slightly unrealistic quality to a world that was most certainly real.
In the end, through June’s continued prompting for me to acknowledge that I believed her when she said I’d never have to go back to my mother, I did the only thing I could do with my nearly paralyzed body; I nodded.
Relief washed over June’s face at my acknowledgement of trust. The fire dulled in her eyes, and her entire countenance softened. She let go of my shoulders and turned back towards the steering wheel.
“Johnny,” She said quietly, “I know you’ve had a rough go of it so far, Baby, but I’m going to try my damndest to make sure you never suffer again, ok, Hon?”
I nodded again, still unable to speak, and completely unconcerned with the fact that she wasn’t looking at me and could not see my acknowledgment.
At my silent response, she turned her head and looked at me sideways. I smiled a weak smile up at her, my paralysis softening.
“It’s true Darlin’,” she assured me again. “If you’d like, I can try to get the courts to grant me full custody of you, and you’ll never even have to see your mom again if you don’t want to. Will you come and live with me, Toots?”
The idea of living with June instead of with my mother slammed through my head like a thousand clanging gongs. The explosion of rapturous joy was so strong that even my vision wavered, seeming to make everything I could see vibrate around the fuzzy, glowing edges.
I was still too dazed with bliss to respond verbally so I just nodded my head vigorously until I nearly gave myself whiplash, tears finally finding purchase in my wide, dry eyes.
June smiled and her eyes filled with tears that never spilled over the rims, but instead puddled on the rims, swelling up and seeming to defy gravity. She sniffled softly, and still smiling, said, “Good! I’m so happy Johnny! We’ll make a great team, you and me. We’ll take on the whole world, and nothing will be able to get in our way! We’ll be like superheroes or something.”
We both laughed at that idea, and then June asked me if I’d like to go get some ice cream. I thought about it for a second before deciding that as appealing as ice cream sounded, at the moment I’d rather just get some sleep, in a real bed, in a real room, with a real night light, but not a Snoopy night light; no, never a Snoopy night light again.
I told her about my desire for sleep and she accepted my preference without complaint and put the car in drive. She drove out of the park much more sanely than she had driven into it. She drove cautiously the rest of the way to her house, which lay beyond the suburbs, out into the countryside, where the nearest neighbor was at least two miles away, and throughout the entire trip, she gave no little old men any reason to complain, and I fell asleep listening to the gentle hum of tires on blacktop instead of the clunking of laundry appliances.
CHAPTER 13
I slept during most of the trip to June’s modest farm and awoke only when she stopped the car in front of the large gate that barred her driveway. June was still unbuckling her seatbelt when I awoke and she looked over at me and smiled.
“We’re home, Sugar Dumpling,” she said. “I just gotta get the gate, and then we’ll get you to bed, ok Soldier?”
I nodded my sleepy head and thought how wonderful it was to have somebody who cared enough about me to give me nicknames. Joe had given me a nickname that I would cherish for the rest of my life; ‘Squirt’. But my long lost Aunt June seemed to have a limitless supply of nicknames for me, and every new name she called me seemed sweeter and more wonderful
than the one before it.
I watched her getting the gate and wondered, not for the first time that evening, if this could really be happening. I could only barely believe that I was really free from the basement and free from my tyrannical, mentally unbalanced torturer; aka Mom. I couldn’t believe that someone had come into my life who loved me every bit as much as Joe had, and they wanted me.
After the life I’d had thus far, it was pretty hard to believe, and the fuzzy glow surrounding everything I saw was still lending that weird, surreal element of unreality to the whole situation.
I gave myself a quick slap across the face before June made it back to the car to test the theory that this might be a dream, but the immediate pain I felt in my still sore fingers, and across my face assured me that I was really awake and everything was really happening.
June made it back to the car as I was busy rubbing my eyes, (they had started watering from the injured finger face slap I’d just administered).
“You ok, Sport?” she asked. “You ain’t crying are you?”
“No, Ma’am,” I replied. “I’m just tired; eyes are watering a bit. That’s all.”
June seemed to believe me. She smiled and said, “Well, Little Buddy, I’ve got a room that’s got a bed with nice thick blankets, and a big old fluffy pillow in it, and it’s just waitin’ for a big old Honker like yourself to jump in it and go to sleep. What do ya say we quit gabbin’ out here and get you in that bed?”
I smiled and shook my head in eager approval of her plan, and June drove the car up the driveway to a garage that was detached from a big, old farm house.
From the front, I could see that the house was a big white two story shaped like a rectangular box with a roof on top and a big covered porch out front.
Along each side of the house, poking out of the steeply slanted roof, were two small dormers; one towards the front of the house on each side, and one towards the rear on each side.
All the trim was painted gray and the main structure, which was sided with three inch lap siding, was painted white.
