Chapter Two: Moving Into my Imaginary Hell
Now we’re back to where we started. In my mom’s truck going towards my inevitable doom, Alva Oklahoma.
“Guess what??” my mom said cheerfully as we past a sign saying 67 miles to Alva.
“We’re almost there.” I say in my trademark unenthusiastic voice of mine.
“How did you know??”
“Lucky guess,” I said. My mom’s somewhat oblivious sometimes when it comes to obvious things like road signs saying how far or close we are to a place. “How much would I have to pay you to turn this truck around right now and go back to California?”
“Hailey, there’s not enough money in the world to do that.” That was what I expected to hear but I had to ask anyway.
“This is our street,” my mom squealed as we turned onto Peach Street. “Nice name for a street don’t you think?” My mom has always been the enthusiastic type when it came to little things like street names. She always said things with a perkiness that seemed to give what she said a happier meaning than it really had. “Aren’t you excited to see our new house?”
“Can’t you just see the excitement on my face?” I responded, purposefully frowning and sounding as bored as possible.
“254, 255, 256, 257,” she counted the house numbers, “258! Here we are!”
I tried not to look at the house as long as humanly possible but I knew I was going to have to within the next 20 seconds or my mother would explode. So I looked.
Hmm… umm…not so bad. It was one of those houses you saw on the show Desperate Housewives, where the perfect families lived and they always had these deep dark secrets that they always hid from their other generic neighbors. The only difference was that it was lavender colored and a bit older then the ones in that show.
After examining it for about a minute or two I knew my mom would expect some sort of an answer out of me, good or bad, but “umm…” was all I could get out of me for the moment.
“Umm… that’s it? That’s all I can get from you? That’s pretty sad you know.” My mom said, looking irritated and disappointed. What did she expect? Me to jump up and scream in joy? Don’t hold your breath on that.
“No, no it’s not that at all, it’s just… I can’t get the right words,” I said hoping that would work for now because truthfully I thought it was a nice house. I could possibly imagine myself living here. But I wasn’t going to give up this fight about moving back to California so quickly over a stupid house. I knew if I told her I liked it I would have lost this fight, so I hoped I wouldn’t have to lose if I could help it, even if that meant acting upset and moody all the time just to make her think I was unhappy.
“Fine, whatever you say. But we’re going to be living here so even if you don’t like it you better start,” she said, then gave me her trademark mommy knows best look, “the movers won’t be here for a little bit so go take a look around.”
I did my best to look angry with her while stomping off in the direction of the house. I continued to stomp on the paved sidewalk leading up to the porch of the house. I walked up the three white wooden stairs to look at the porch. It wasn’t a big porch or anything but it was a porch nonetheless. Big enough to maybe fit a few plants on one side and a rocking chair on the other with just enough room to walk through easily to the old vintage looking door with a stained glass design. I tried the door handle to find that it was locked. I turned to yell to my mom to give me the keys but she was busy talking to a pleasant looking older woman who quickly looked at me and smiled then got back to talking. I decided to go around back to see the back yard.
I was pretty sure what to expect in a backyard when my mom was buying a house. It always had a space for a garden and flowers everywhere. My mom took gardening very seriously as if it were a sport of some kind among the neighbors. I rather disliked gardens just for the fact that occasionally I would have to help out with it. I never quite liked the idea of caring for something and having it depend on you for life, which always worried me for when I would ever become a parent.
I unlatched the picket fence door and entered the backyard. A beautiful green lawn lay ahead of me that almost looked too nice to step on. At the far end, next to the white picket fence was a perfect place for a garden. Nothing too big like some of the ones we had before but it seemed just the right size for my mother, big enough to plant what she wanted and small enough that it wouldn’t take over her life all the time. I walked forward towards the garden to get a better look when I heard a crunch from somewhere in the bushes.
“Hello?” I said aloud. I waited for a response. None came. “Umm… ok, I’m going to go now.” And with that I shot out of there like there was a 1-hour 60% off sale at Abercrombie and Fitch.
When I got back to the front lawn I saw the old lady my mom was talking to had left and my mom was now trying to find her cell phone on the floor of the truck.
“Hey mom,” I said, “the house door is locked.”
“Oh ok. We were just invited over to Ms. Cheng’s for Chinese tonight.”
“Oh how nice of her.” I said, faking a smile. Great, just great this day just keeps getting better and better. Why don’t we go over to some old person’s house I don’t know for dinner? No offense to the old people out there, but you guys just sometimes really scare me with the old person smell and all.
“She lives across the street so if you need anything when I’m not here you can always go over there and just ask her.”
“Great,” I said, sounding as happy about that as I could, but I knew this would mean many boring dinners over at Ms. Cheng’s.
“Oh, right the keys to the house!” My mom said out loud. She pulled them out of her coat pocket and tossed them to me.
I walked over to the vintage looking door again and stuck the key in. It turned with little strength on my part. I opened the door and walked in. There stood in front of me a medium sized chandelier hanging in the middle of what seemed to be the living room. It seemed so out of place from the rest of the room. The rest of the room had the modern day farmhouse look to the room. Not something you would expect from what you saw on the outside. The walls were all covered with a dark tinted wood that from the look of it covered the rest of the house.
As I walked through the rest of the house I justified my earlier assumption, it did seem to have the same look to it throughout the house, all wooden with carpet flooring and tile for the bathroom and kitchen. I didn’t quite know if I liked it or not but I knew it would take some getting used to from our old modern day apartment with cement outside instead of grass and noisy neighbors to the peacefulness and calmness of well… not having that!
“Do you like it,” my mother said as she walked in with a box full of junk that she wouldn’t let go from our last apartment.
“Yeah I uh… really do like it.” Oh Shit! Just then I saw a big smile come from my mother’s face, one I knew all too well. The victory grin that she only used when she knew she had won a big argument like this. I had lost. No point in still whining about going back to California now. No point arguing a lost cause. Just then two mover guys came in carrying more of my mom’s old junk.
“Did you go upstairs yet?” My mom asked, an odd mischievous smile forming upon her face.
“No.”
“Well both our rooms are up there so go check em’ out.” She pointed to a staircase in the corner of the living room that I hadn’t seen before.
I climbed up what seemed like three flights of stairs before I got to another floor. It was a wide hallway in which had four doors. I opened up the first one to my left first. It was a simple bedroom that had two windows and a small closet. I prayed it wasn’t my bedroom for it was far too small to fit all my clothes and posters that I planned to put up on the walls. And yet if that were the master bedroom what would the other one look like?
The door across from that bedroom was the bathroom. It was the first room that didn’t have wooden walls. Instead it had plaster walls and was painted forest green. It was a perfectly cute bathroom. It had two sinks, a bath and shower combination, and a toilet.
The room diagonal from the bathroom was a linen closet (real exciting I know). I knew what the last room across from that was. It was my room. From what I saw in the last room I was nervous about what it looked like, but I had to face it eventually so I opened the door.
OMFG. No way. It was beautiful. The room was the same wall material as the bathroom but this was painted my favorite color, maroon and it was one and a half times bigger than the first room. I danced into the center of the room. I closed my eyes and just let it soak in.
“Beautiful,” I said aloud.
“Glad you like it.” My mom said from the doorway. “You know it’s yours right?”
“Really?”
“Yep. And look.” She pointed up towards the top of the wall. There was a stained glass border across the top of the wall. I was astonished by all the twists and turns the glass made to make such a beautiful design.
“You’ll get the morning sun to wake you up,” she said.
“Oh wow, thank you mom!” I squealed. I must admit. My room was pretty damn awesome.
“Ok now come help unpack. We have to make some sort of a start before we have to go to Ms. Cheng’s tonight.
Oh yeah. Great. I almost forgot about the dreaded dinner with Ms. Cheng tonight… almost.
