The Porch

I woke up early again. I’m up to greet the morning most days. When I first get up, I avoid the porch.  I piddle around the house, straightening curtains, refolding throws, boiling water for tea, and washing the kitchen windows. I’m not out there in my chair, but I’m thinking about it. My mind hardly ever leaves its place on the porch.

 She told me once, “You know you can see the soul of most anybody you look in ta their eyes? Well a person look inta your eyes and they’d see you sitting on that porch.” 

What did I do out there, she always wondered? And thinking back, I can’t remember what I did. I swung my legs off the end of the chair (my feet didn't reach the ground back then); I watched my father struggle to replace the shutters, mow the grass, and talk with the neighbors. I didn’t used to do anything on the porch, but if she could ask me now what it is I do on the porch, I’d have an answer for her. I sit in the wicker chair I made that summer and pretend that she’s sitting beside me, and I try to forgive myself for staying on the porch that day.

Self forgiveness is the first and most vital step on the road back to a normal life. That is the only thing that I remember from my costly appointments with the shrink I talked to for several months following the incident. I decided that if that was all he could tell me, he didn’t need my money and I didn’t need his broken-record advice, however true it was. I have yet to find forgiveness waiting for me on her wicker chair, and I have yet to find my way back to a normal life.

My neighbors might say that I’ve lived a normal life. I married a man that made enough money for groceries each week and an occasional trip into the city. We had three children who grew up and moved out. During those years, I was almost convinced I was normal too. Now as an aged widow, living alone, a wound that never healed has resurfaced, and it’s almost like the months after the incident all over again. 

I try to recreate the time when I was too busy to think about the porch and all that goes along with it, so I muss things up around the house, creating distractions for myself. I've taken to leaving dishes out after dinner, so that I can clean them in the morning. I empty my closet before bed, leaving the blouses and sweaters crumpled on the floor, hopeful that some of them will be creased enough to need a good ironing in the morning, but last night there were no cloths on the floor. The dishes were clean. The windows were washed, and I woke up without an excuse to stay away from the porch.

The last time I walked out of bed and straight onto the porch I was a young adult. It was my first morning back in the house. I had just purchased it from my parents. They didn’t agree, said I ought to find my own place. I told them I would make it my own. I went on and on about how the house had so much potential. My father said it was the most I'd talked about anything for years, which was true, and so whether or not they believed my intentions, they sold it to me for much less than it was worth. 

I had no plans to reinvent the house I had lived in all my life. In fact, the idea of changing anything seemed a bit morbid, like drawing mustaches on the precious baby pictures my mother kept in a fireproof cabinet, but I felt that I owed it to them to try. I striped the wallpaper and re-stained the hardwood floor. Visitors marveled at the transformation. They congratulated me on my good eye and elegant taste. Someone offered me the number of their colleague, who was in the business redoing fixer-uppers. They wanted to believe I was finally enthusiastic about something, but I bought it for the porch.

Even though that was years ago, this morning feels suspiciously similar to that time of my life, almost like being whisked back into childhood memories from a whiff of my mother's hair. Fog is lazily making its way across the grass, and the sun is up on the other side of the hill, lighting the sky of the still dark valley. My knees bend carefully until my rear finds the familiar curve of the chair. The seat is perfectly formed to my shape, the material thin and supple. I wonder about the day it will break and I’ll fall to the ground, calves and forearms flailing above the hole I've fallen through. Would I sit in her chair then?

The screen door squeals, the sound it makes when opened from the inside. I live alone, no cats, no dogs; even the mice find other houses to visit. Usually I'm somewhat paranoid about movement inside the house, but on this morning, it doesn't alarm me that there might be someone walking onto the porch from inside my house. I swivel my neck as far left as it will go, and watch as my visitor walks into view.  

She looks around with attempted nonchalance as she takes in the porch and it's unchanged appearance. She’s uneasy as she always used to be standing there beside me; that was one reason I made the chairs. As she approaches the wicker seat to my left, I notice that she’s barefoot, a good place to start our conversation. My eyes travel from her feet to her face where I meet her gaze. I furrow my brow playfully, asking for an explanation for her lack of footwear. Her expression is blank, no answer. Instead, she takes her seat in the chair, tucking her bare toes underneath her and eliminating them as a topic for conversation.

Despite the subtlety of our wordless exchange, I feel derailed. I am no longer in command of the conversation. This meeting on the porch was different; we would not tease and giggle. With my first question hanging in the air unanswered, it seems there is no room in the small atmosphere of us to place my next question. So instead of speaking, I wait in submission for her to take the conversation where she will. I watch her; her dark smooth skin taught and healthy wreaks of youth. I look at my own skin, a blanket of pale grey flesh hanging from my bones. The silence breaks with the rustle of her hair as she turns to face me. We absorb one another. She does not take my hand; she does not smile. She does not speak.

I used to think that there was something I needed to hear her say, but I have since realized that I don’t need to hear anything. I need to know, and here she is in her chair. But I feel like a school girl all over again, sitting in math class scribbling down numbers, hoping that somehow I'm getting the right numbers, never sure never confident that I've got the correct answer. What if I'm reading her wrong?  

She looks at me, finally comfortable enough with the porch to let her shoulders slope easily into her arms. My own shoulders are tense as I wait. Time passes and something drips off my chin. I shut my eyes, damning the pain, blocking it's escape. Once I've reached a negotiation with my tears, I return to her eyes. The stolid expression on her face melts into something warmer, more familiar. 

It's the same face I saw as I watched her leave, sitting in my chair on the porch, as a child. A twitch of a smile crosses her lips, and she stands. She faces her chair, and for the first time, the imprint of an occupant’s body is visible on the tan tangled pattern of the seat. Smooth brown hands grasp either side of the chair, and she’s hoisting it into the air. The chair, now upside-down is above her. We lock eyes for the last time, and then she turns and leaves, chair overhead. I watch her descend the steps of the porch, and then they’re gone, lost to the morning fog, the girl and her chair. 

There's no need for tea this morning. The house is clean. I have nowhere to be, so I sit in my chair on the porch and swing my legs, forgiven.