Cracks

The Looking Closet

Meeting myself kept me from jumping off the Keystone Bridge. It was a dark day. Most were, but this one was especially bad. She was on a tear, hopped up on something new and convinced I was the source of every bad thing life handed her. She had started with shrieking and ended by ripping a clump of hair from my head, lighting it with her Zippo and throwing it on me, sneering, "That's what it will smell like when you're burning up into nothing."

I was 11. I was not going to be doing this at 12. I was leaving that night.

Most children in stories like this usually get dead parents. If only I were so lucky. I only got one dead parent, and the other not fit for public consumption. I called her M, because she lost access to the rest of the letters the first time she kicked me in the stomach. I was four. Listen, not everyone is meant to be a mother, I get it. There are the obvious crazies; the psychopaths, sadists and narcissists. Others merely lack the gene, and are more cut out for dog fighting or adult dancing. Something with a shorter shelf life than 18 years, either because you go to jail or your knees give out. Everyone always says you need a license to drive, but not to have a baby. Hilarious, really. Even if licensing were a requirement, M would breeze her way around the legalities of it. Her beauty was flashy but felt natural and hypnotizing on her, with a slash of red lipstick that looked like a scar to me but the beginning of something delightfully sordid to those who were not me. She used her face and body to her every advantage, and mostly I just got in the way. Broke the spell too often and paid the price.

I slept in a closet she kept locked at night, legs curled up, ironically, in the fetal position. Stretching meant walking them up the wall where they became rigid and numb, and almost too sore to walk the next day. That wouldn't do when I never knew if I'd need to run. The carpet smelled of smoke and was gummy with an invisible layer of despair that threatened to stick to you forever. Or at least that's what I felt. There were no dolls, no talismans, nothing to call my own except isolation. In the closet I could hear everything. I didn't understand what all the words meant. I was pretty facile with drugs at this point, but the sounds made my stomach hurt, and ruined every innocent screen crush I was just starting to develop. Is this what people do? I never wanted to have to make those sounds. Little did I know it was heading straight for me like a lightning bolt; that soon I would be the high-ponied object of desire in a horrible motel next to a 7-11 that was always out of Coke Slurpee. And she would be right there egging it on.

It was in the closet that I would press my face up against the back wall so hard I was certain my nose would permanently flatten and my eyes would stop working. It was what I called looking for a crack. A place to shrink into. This dump was far too cheap for magical wardrobes, but I still had a small amount of dream life left in me then. I believed there were openings everywhere for people who really needed a break. Phone booths for the super, secret doors in retaining walls for children who deserved a real family. When my break finally came it was unexpected, and maybe that's how mystical openings work. Half asleep, I rolled smoothly into a room that immediately smelled like cinnamon and real Christmases.

I was on the softest carpet ever made, in a room I didn't recognize. M was not here. I didn't know if I'd been kidnapped. I didn't know if being kidnapped might be preferable. As I pondered such a thing, a hand reached out from a canopy bed a few feet away and turned on a lamp. It was a beautiful carousel horse lamp with a magical umbrella shade. It looked eerily like one I'd wanted desperately years ago, when I still hoped for things instead of exit routes. I had no idea what was going on. But I wasn't scared. That was the one advantage I held, would always hold: I'd already seen the scariest things, so the basic unknown was often just a head-scratcher rather than a reason to panic.

Soon the room was flushed with a soft pink light that I already wished was the color of everything, and a girl about my age sat looking at me with a furrowed brow. Immediately I knew she wasn't just about my age. I dropped my head and whistled softly, trying to make my face stop smiling. I'd always hoped something like this would happen. I knew it. I knew. I was adopted. I started to cry, just a little, which didn't happen often; didn't happen at all anymore, really. My real family had finally come to get me. This could be my carpet.

"Who are you," the little girl in the violet flannel nightgown asked, rubbing the night from her eyes. 

"It appears that I'm you," the little girl in the too-small Speed Racer t-shirt and kneeless cords replied.

She looked at me very closely, eyes widening, and that's when my plan to jump off the Keystone Bridge became a distant memory and the entire galaxy fell apart.