The Spring Anthology ✔

The Past Inhabitant

Written by @katherinealyce

The room is small, with sky blue walls and tan carpeting. Cheery April sunlight streams through the two windows, still shrouded in delicate lace curtains hung carefully by the room's previous owner. This bedroom, soon to be mine, is completely empty except a small scrap of crumpled notebook paper in the corner, lying next to a deck of cards. I kneel down on the floor and pick up the paper, which is covered in childish handwriting. The heading reads "A Letter to the Future Inhabitant of this Room." Intrigued, I continue to read.

My name is Margaret Elizabeth Robertson, which sounds like an old lady name, but it's not. It's my name. I'm ten years old and going into fifth grade at the end of the summer. I am four-foot-seven and have straight brown hair that reaches my mid-back. When it grows out a little longer, I'm donating it to Locks of Love or some other organization that gives wigs to kids with cancer. I have hazel eyes and a lot of freckles. Mom used to say they were beautiful. I say they're ugly and wish they would go away.

I don't want to leave this room. It's been mine since I was a baby. It's not fair that Daddy got a new job. He said it's what would be best, but what would really be best is if we stayed here and Mommy was still here. Daddy said she just needed to get away for a while, but I know she's not coming back.

Mommies aren't supposed to leave. They're supposed to stay, and tuck their kids in at night and tell them they have beautiful freckles. They're supposed to stay with the Daddies and keep the families happy in their little white house. They're supposed to make sure that the kids believe in Santa, the Easter bunny, and the Tooth Fairy for a long time. When Mommy left, I found a collection of baby teeth in her drawer. You might think that's creepy, but I'm glad Mommy kept them. They remind me of her. I left them in the drawer and didn't tell Peter, because he's only seven and too young to know the truth.

Mommy took every single thing Peter, Rebecca, or I had ever given her for Mother's day, even the lumpy clay cat I made in pre-school when I was little. Daddy said it was because she still loves us and will want to see us soon. I hope so, but it still won't be the same as Mommy and Daddy loving each other and living in the same house and taking care of me.

Everything's been different. We're not going to Ocean City this summer. Daddy, Rebecca and I had a long talk about it and we decided it was okay. I think it would make Daddy sad to be in a place Mommy loved so much. So I'll be stuck at our new apartment all summer long. Daddy will be working a lot, so Rebecca is going to have to take care of Peter and me.

I can't believe it's only been two months since Mom left. It feels like it's been an eternity plus a month. A whole Mother's Day went by, and that week in Sunday school, we made cards for our Moms. Mrs. Brooks was really weird about it though. She told me I could just color a picture of Noah's Ark instead of making a card, if I wanted. I think she knows that Mommy left. I made a card anyway, and I'm going to give it to Mommy whenever I see her next.

I got sick in April, with a bad cold. I even got to skip school one day. But Daddy had work, so I had to stay home alone. I didn't have a Mommy to make me chicken noodle soup of hot tea. Mrs. Murdock from next door came over for an hour to check on me and get me something to eat, but it wasn't the same. When I have to stay home sick normally, Mom sits next to me on the couch and folds laundry and we talk. Sometimes we watch a movie. Our favourite movie to watch together is "E.T." I know how E.T.'s alien family must have felt when he was left behind. Except in this case, the family were the ones left behind. I just wish Mommy was like E.T. and actually wanted to come home.

But this won't be a home anymore. Tomorrow we're moving to a new apartment in Elizabeth. At first I liked name of the town, because it's the same as my middle name, but I don't anymore. I want to stay here. But I can't.

Congratulations on moving in to this amazing house. I hope you have a happy life, with a Mommy and a Daddy who love each other. Maybe you even have a gerbil. I love gerbils. I graduated from fourth grade last week and had to say goodbye to our classroom gerbil Skippy. Some kids are going to still visit him next year, but I can't, because I'll be doing fifth grade all the way up in North Jersey. I told my best friend Amanda Evans to give Skippy an extra sunflower seed for me when she visits him.

Amanda will still be my BFF after I leave. I made a new email address so that we can keep in touch. My username is margaret176983684xoxo. I hope I can remember it.

If you go to my school, you can say hi to Skippy and Amanda for me. They're going to really miss me. Be nice to this room. Always take your shoes off before entering so that you don't track dirt on the carpet. Don't dent the walls, and be especially kind to this pack of cards. It's the same one my Mommy and I always played War with. War is a really long card game, but I like it. Mommy and I would play it when I was sick. I left it here because no one is a better War player than Mommy. And I haven't seen her in a long time.

Be nice to Mrs. Murdock. She bakes pumpkin bread for all the neighbours every Christmas, and as long as you stay on her good side, (by not trampling her flowers) she will give you some. That is all I have to say.

From, Margaret. - June 2013

I fold the letter and place it back on the floor. It's almost unreal to think that this girl exists. Maybe she's still living in that apartment in Elizabeth. I wonder if she ever saw her mother. I wonder if I'll ever meet her, she's only a few years younger than myself. I can sense a part of her lingering here, like a ghost. Maybe it's the small signature on the wall, next to the outlet. Maybe it's the way the breeze gently lifts the curtains away from the window as it drifts through my screen. Maybe it's the worn deck of cards, the one that Margaret and her mother loved so much that the box is falling apart and the queen of spades is missing: a square piece of copy paper with a "Q" on it serves as a substitution. I feel like Margaret is a part of me, just a young girl, alone in her sky blue room, missing someone.