THE HOUSE INSIDE ME

by Camelia Wheatley

  I can’t be certain, but I think this was the moment I became a full-fledged believer in Maw Sue’s stories. The House of Seven was my escape and I set claim to it. I built it to fit my needs while the little girl helped me. We carried the word skeletons on our backs like soldiers rescuing their commrades from harm. I designed my House of Seven with delight. It had a dilapidated front door and the sizzling number seven carved into the pine. The seven glowed against the edges of the wood like many moons set on fire. Maw Sue said our houses inside ourselves take on our own nature, our embodiment of self over time. My House of Seven was behind the curtain of pines, under the cover of giant Loblollies and a lush landscape of oaks dripping with moss and underfoot was thick carpets of dried pine needles. The Hush cemetery lay a few yards away landmarked with two gigantic old oaks, the kind that doesn’t exist anymore except on old home places, according to Maw Sue.

  Words, both spoken and unspoken, always mattered to me. But since they didn’t work as I intended, instead, I gave them permission to live, written out on the word bones. I did not intend for them to speak. And no matter what I did, they would not hush. It drove me mad. This is why I created a place of rest for them. I buried them out of necessity because I could not keep them inside me. My mind could not contain the chaos they created, night and day, minute after minute, the chattering, the speaking.

  Only the Hush cemetery could hold such a relic of creation beneath the soil. I placed brambles around their graves to keep the ghosts from returning, as Maw Sue always taught us but the magic didn’t work on me. I didn’t know it yet, but the honeysuckle nectar on my lips gave them power to rise, to speak, to never remain silent. Their groans and whispers would come back to haunt me years later.

  To this day, I still don’t remember what the arguments were about. There were so many, one argument collides with another until all I can hear is the symphony of cartoon music and all I can see is that glaring sign, RABBIT SEASON OPEN. It could have been anything; dad drinking like a lush, or flirting with other women, staying out too late with the boys, or getting tee-totally drunk, or fishing all the time, or in the woods hunting. Maybe a gnat farted…who knows. It is the South, after all.

  I do know one thing. In the Collard household, nothing ever got resolved. Every year it grew worse, or maybe I just listened more, I’m not sure. Fighting, silence, no words. Me trying to control, to fix, creating word after word hoping they’d repair whatever mess they’d created. The more words went unspoken, should have said, didn’t say, meant to say—the more I took upon myself, the more I carried, and the more burdensome it became. The army I created had turned against me somehow. I could not live with the hundreds of screaming word skeletons at my front, my side, and my back. They slept with me. Walked beside me, sat with me while I ate, cackling, clanging and banging on my walls when I tried to close my eyes. The words glowed with amber letters on their chalk bones like embers of fire, and their whispers drove me mad. They demanded what I could not give.

  Resolution, forgiveness, redemption.

  It was bound to happen. One morning my little mind fractured. I woke up to a brutal, disturbing silence. The chattering had stopped. It was eerie and yet strange. I wasn’t sure which was worse, the sounds, or the silence. But it was too late to debate, or go back. I realized a part of me had entered the House of Seven. This was the first occupant of the house, but not its last.

  4

  Pots, Pans & Powder Pistons

  One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if once mine gets out, I'll have a bit of a tussle before I let it get in again to that of any other.

  ~Lord Byron

  My parents both grew up in the small town of Pine Log. Dad had three brothers, Daryl, Sid and Mark. Their father, who we called Papa C, worked at the local racetrack as the top mechanic. My father and his brothers tagged along, learning, racing, and tinkering. When my dad was little, he could jack a car up and rotate the tires. By age ten he could literally rebuild an engine better than any mechanic in town. Papa C built a tinker shop behind their house out of tin siding and metal poles for his sons to finally have a playhouse, a torture chamber for cars, machinery and boyish dillydallying. Tools, hoses and metal contraptions hung on prongs and strapped from ceiling to floor, or strewn on shelves, under cabinets or tucked under boards. Wooden carts on wheels were stacked three-deep with nuts, bolts, fragments, screws, plastic fittings, you name it. From what I hear, the Collard boys were drawn inside the tinker shop by a cosmic force only affecting the male population. Females have yet to comprehend it. The tinker shop even had its own monster. A fire-breathing, spitting contraption that magically transformed metal into pieces of art. This metallic, fire-breathing power made men gather in groups and take stuff apart just for the fun of it. They hit iron, wood, and blunt objects, twisting, bending, molding, or burning them with monster’s fire. Outside they pissed on tree stumps, and spit tobacco but inside the tinker shop they cursed like sailors, drank like fish and created magic like wizards. Those Collard boys could roll in a box of metal parts and three days later, roll out a shiny, souped up Chevy.

  Mother was a helper at an upholstery shop furnishing custom fabric and leather upholstery. Their paths were lined by fate to meet. Dad drove up in his Chevy to drop off two bucket seats to be recovered. She was sitting behind the desk and didn’t give him a second glance. But when she did, one look at Mother’s blue eyes and Dad was smitten. He showed up once a week, every week, for different reasons, but there was always an underlying motive and that was to get my mother’s attention. She had no interest at first and it drove Dad crazy. He returned time and time again, determined to win her over. On one of his drop-offs, she realized he wasn’t going away and he didn’t just show up for seat covers. He was there for her. She had no idea what she was getting into, but she let her guard down. Dad broke the ice by inviting her to one of his races. She sat prim, proper and out of place in the stands next to his wild brothers. Royalty and rebels. Side by side. Alcohol flowed amongst the patrons, and with it, loose lips and tempers.

  Dad won two consecutive stages in the pre-races, showing off. This fired up his nemesis, Carl Ray Johnson, who had been riding Dad’s bumper all night. Carl Ray had bumped Dad illegally and sent him spinning into the pasture once already, and what should have been flagged wasn’t. This infuriated the crowd into an uproar. When rednecks go into uproars nothing good can come from it. Daryl, Sid and Mark cursed, spit, yelled and threw beer cans. Dad was known as the Mad Hatter of the racetrack, so things were fixing to hit the proverbial shit fan. Carl and Dad exchanged hellfire looks between motor revs. The gun fired. Carl Ray was in the lead and Dad right behind him. It was tight for the first few laps until Dad gassed it on the straightway and rammed the hellfire out of Carl Ray, which sent him spinning into oblivion. The crowd cheered the Mad Hatter’s retribution.

  Until the black flag came out. Dad was flagged for the same move Carl Ray made on him earlier and got away with. Tempers flared. Dad took it in stride. He made another lap. As he passed by, the stands erupted into southern mayhem. One second yelling and cheering, the next booing and flinging hot dogs, popcorn like confetti and beer cans like exploding bombs. A punch was thrown, then another. Suddenly the whole stand was an all-out free-for-all brawl. My soon-to-be mother ducked and watched with shock and horror. Dad saw the commotion as another day in the Mad Hatter world. He laughed, burnt the tires and went back to winning the race.

  The next month, my mother Gabby was not in the stands but behind the wheel of a race car and a newly initiated member of an all-girl racing team called the Powder Pistons. Most, if not all the entrants at the track were wives or long-time girlfriends of drivers; but there was one persistent tart who had been trying to convince someone’s husband or boyfriend to provide her with a car. It was made clear through the racetrack grapevine: no man was to lend her a stock car. Well, poor ’ole Gavin “Mad Hatter” Collard didn’t ge
t the message. He sent the perky blonde tart out in his car. Later, after having rolled his car in a heat, Dad moseyed across the track looking for Gabby. He found her. She met him with a palm smack across the face right in front of a packed and roaring bleachers. It was weeks before she’d talk to him again. I had a good hint this was when the “silent treatment” all started.

  As a kid, I had heard all the stories of my parents lives long before I was born, from my grandparents. Supposedly, the G-Team, Gavin and Gabby were unbeatable at the racetrack. Oh, but then there was Myrtle “Messy” Waterford. She was a stout potty-mouthed female who didn’t bother racing with the Powder Pistons. She raced with the boys from the get-go, whether they liked it or not. Gabby, who had won every single heat and had the town talking up a dirt storm, double dared her. Myrtle decided to cross over to the girls’ side to prove a point. Myrtle “Messy” Waterford did indeed cause a mess, after she flew off the backstretch into a pile of hay, courtesy of Gabby “Lash” Lancaster, who dished out some serious lashes and had the bleachers roaring. Afterwards, “Messy” Waterford stuck with the boys. Gabby was queen of the racetrack and queen of my dad’s heart. Weeks later, Dad proposed from the window of his race car and the crowd went nuts.

  Out of all the stories I heard about my parents, this one was hard to swallow. I tried to picture my mother behind the wheel of a car doing ninety to nothing and wearing a pink Powder Pistons jacket or sending Myrtle flying over the backstretch. It was inconceivable. This was the same woman who constantly nagged Dad to slow down, don’t turn the curve so fast, quit revving the engine, don’t spin the tires, and whatever the hell else she could gripe about. If this was indeed my mother, then what the hell happened to her? If it wasn’t for my grandparents telling me these stories, I’d never have known this side of Gabby “Lash” Lancaster Collard. She hid part of her life just like everything else she hid—beneath the walled fortress of pale skin and blue eyes. But why?

  I began to wonder if my mother had a house inside of her own. Did she have secrets to hide and what were they? This was another branch of the family tree, separate from Maw Sue’s and dad’s family tree, but obviously rooted in something disturbing, but what? It made no sense for my mother to hide something like racing cars. She was well beyond the age of not caring. So why all the secrecy? And what else was she hiding?

  Remembering these things brings others to the surface, dreamlike memories, strange and revelant ones. They seem real, yet untouchable. I am a vocal, vivacious child. I’m loud and laughing, giggly and flirtatious, wild and free. A thousand fairy spirits are dancing with me. But behind me, standing at the edge of the pine curtain, in the backdrop of my life is my mother watching me precariously. There is an ambiguous glare in her eyes, a struggle of sorts, one cold and distant, the other yearning to be unshackled to join me. In this dream, the struggle that is, my mother sees me for who I am, and it is equally terrifying as it is joyful. The truth is—I am everything she fears in herself and yet everything she wishes she could be, or perhaps, could have been when she was young.

  As a child, I watched my mother with a curious observation, the way she walked, the way she dressed, the way she put on lipstick, twice around the lips, then pat once with paper. I’d find her lip prints around the house on notepads, receipts, scraps of paper and tissue—but never on me. I’d find them and hide them in a wooden box called the mirror bin, a present from Maw Sue when I was born. Stacks of lip prints, colorful unearned kisses from my mother. One day I thought for sure I’d have enough kisses to fill the emptiness inside me. Every day I yearned for those kisses to come to life on my cheeks, on my lips, around my neck. I wanted the lips to grow a body capable of holding me and wanting me and telling me how much they loved me. But until then, I had the lipstick paper kisses.

  In my eyes my mother was an exotic paper doll with beautiful coal-black hair, paper-white skin, and sky-blue eyes, fierce in intensity, but easily torn. As I grew older, I began to believe I was the cause for every rip and tear. For some reason, my mother grew as distant as the moon, unreachable, and I was only a shadow in her bright glow. I kept telling myself she couldn’t help it. I pretended she was a broken paper doll, fragile and lame, who couldn’t hold me or tell me I was valuable. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she was paper. I told myself it wasn’t my fault she couldn’t touch me, kiss me or love me. It was the way she was made. So, when I heard the stories of my mother’s former life before I was born, I found it hard to envision this same broken doll used to race cars. Even now that I’m grown up, married and divorced, an arsonist on the verge on madness—I don’t believe it.

  Suddenly, under pressure, my mind gives off a quick flash, then rapid image bursts but instead of fire, dripping blood and a screaming child’s mouth full of darkness, it’s my mother. The Gabby of yesterday, long before I was born. She is dressed in a tight black jumpsuit, pink jacket and black helmet. She is sitting behind the wheel of a race car with a loud purring motor, pressing the gas and revving the engine. She pops the clutch, presses the gas, squeals the tires and lets out a vibrating howl out the window. She speeds off, leaving me stunned and choking on dust. The dust turns to sparks and the sparks bring a painful memory. The one I thought I erased forever.

  It was New Year’s Eve, a little before midnight. I was seven. Mother was lying on the couch drinking a glass of wine. Dad was six beers in and kicked back in his green wool recliner. I was lying on a pallet watching Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve special. Meg, my rambunctious, can’t-be-still-for-nothing sister, was fidgeting beside me. Having a younger sister is like having an extra shadow, a mean one kicking the fire out of you for no reason. Right now, she was in her calmer state, occupied with eating popcorn and clicking the metal bowl with her fingernails to irritate the mess out of me. I tried to ignore her. The countdown commenced, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—and then an explosion of fireworks. People yelled, kissed, hugged, threw confetti and toasted drinks. At the same time as the celebration on TV we could hear our neighbors up and down the street gathering, popping fireworks, shooting off guns and raising all kinds of Southern hell. We were nothing of the sort. Meg and I were dull as doornails and bored out of our wits. According to our parents, fireworks were way too dangerous. So were sparklers, matches and anything flame related. Mother suddenly disappeared into the kitchen. We thought nothing of it till she returned with an assortment of pots, pans, metal spoons and two wild slits in her eyes I’d never seen before. Dad recognized this wildness, chugged his beer and said, “Mamma’s cut loose.”

  Meg and I looked at each other. What did that mean? I didn’t know it then, but it would be the first, and only time I’d see a side of my mother I never knew existed, except in stories. The events of this night would linger inside me years later, when the silence of the house ate me alive.

  Meg and I sat up on the pallet, confused. Mother handed us a pot and a spoon each and kept one for herself. I gave my sister a weird look. The woman who resembled our mother skipped outside the front door like a gypsy melting into the darkness of the night. Meg and I sat like bumps on a log. Seconds later, between popping fireworks and sizzling sky sirens, we heard clanging and banging. Metal to metal sounds, then strange howling and yipping and carrying on. I looked up at Dad to get answers. He just smiled and said, “Yeppp, cut loose alright” winked at us eerily and opened another beer. Meg and I didn’t know what to do. It was uncharacteristic of our mother to act, well…crazy, like a banshee. We’d heard the old Irish stories from Maw Sue about howling banshee’s, the myth behind them. We weren’t too sure we wanted to partake of what was happening to our mother. Her wildness gave us caution, but dad sat back as if this was something he’d seen before. Meg and I sat stone face until we couldn’t take the howling anymore.

  We ran out the door and stood on the front porch like parade gawkers. Our mother looked like a ghost, an apparition, a night phantom in a thin white gown dancing across the lawn. She howled and sang and yip
ped and hollered while she banged on the aluminum pot like a rock goddess left over from Woodstock. She spun and clanged, thrust her hips out and around, shimmied and shook, tilted and vibrated like those go-go dancers I’d seen on TV. She was caught up in some strange energy, her head jutting upwards, sideways and back and forth. I caught the wild glint in her blue eyes reflecting off the light of the moon and forming prisms. They were like the white and blue flames leaping from sparklers the second you light them and right before they go out in cinders of smoke. I was so mesmerized by this strange woman, I barely heard Meg ask me how much wine she had drunk.

  “It doesn’t matter. I like it.” I said running off the porch in a sprint. I joined my flamboyant, vibrant, wild slit-eyed, cut-loose mother. This event was as rare as a cosmic comet crossing the blackened sky. I didn’t want to miss it for fear it wouldn’t return for another eighty years. Meg followed. The three of us danced. Banged. Clanged. Hooted. Howled. Hollered. Yipped. Yelled. Laughed. Shimmied, wiggled and waggled. A strange eccentric embodiment had embedded itself momentarily inside my mother. For the first time, ever, I felt inches from the moon. So close in proximity I could see the craters, the fissures and cracks, its fusions colliding with the galactic heat as it lit up and illuminated its great flaws and beautiful edges. We were three wild pot dancers cut loose under the shine of the big drop moon. I wanted the moment to go on forever.

  Unhindered. Spellbound. Goddesses. For ten heavenly minutes, I embraced a mother, a woman, a girl, a gypsy, a goddess and a moonshine I never knew existed.