444 - Ghost Tour

Our house on Andrews Avenue is neat and orderly.  Nothing is ever out of place, or if it is, it will not be for long.  Even though the house is small, four rooms, one bath and a pantry, there are ample cupboards, closets, shelves and drawers to hold all of our possessions, which are sufficient and minimal.  There is no hoarding of any type; no collections, no stock piling, no storing of items away in reserve for a future date.  We don’t burden our house beyond its capacity to hold what can be used in the space of a week or two, beyond what the house can easily contain for a family of four to live comfortably day by day.  Everything that we own is needed; no excess to cram into this or that corner, no clutter, no debris, no disarray.  Ours is a utilitarian household, fit for the practical purpose of living. For that reason, some sixty years later, my memory of it will be intact; vivid, non-superfluous, unobstructed.

If I were to give you a tour of our little house on Andrews Avenue, we would begin by taking one step up onto the front porch.  Notice how nicely the porch is enclosed by dark green lattice work, and how the ivy and the pale blue-violet morning glories climb and twine up and in between the trellises.   Before we go inside, take a moment to look around, beyond our house, at all of the other houses in this project.  Like our house, all are made of cinder blocks covered by white-washed stucco.   Most are attached to other identical houses in rows of six.  Some of the rows have red roofs and some of the rows have green.  Red-roofed houses have red doors and red porches; green-roofed houses have green doors and green porches.  Occasionally, but not randomly, (because this project has a pattern that cannot be denied), you will see two houses back to back, attached to each other, but set apart from the six row standard.  This occurs because the builders of the project wanted to be efficient and make the best use of the limited space the government gave them.  But I like to think of these two-house anomalies as grace notes, linking the entire composition of Glendale Heights together in a bitter-sweet and soulful sonata.

We enter by the front door – the only door – which separates the outside from the inside.  This is the entrance and the exit, the way in and the way out.  Nothing so unusual about that, you might say, but to me, or to the child in me, it has always seemed and continues to seem amazing.  The door itself is made of thick, solid hardwood and painted the same dark shade of green as the trellises and the porch floor.  There is a large, square pane of glass, beveled around the edges and centered in the top half of the door.   Can you see how the beveled glass works as a prism and how a child might spend a good amount of time marveling at the rainbow of colored light emitted when the sun passes through it at just the right angle or just the right time?  On the inside, affixed above this wondrous window, is an ivory colored window shade, scalloped and fringed along the bottom.  Hanging from the shade, a braided silk cord with a circular looped pull, dangles and dances when the door opens or closes.  There are times when this cord swings and sways for no obvious reason.  
  
We are in the living room now.  Some people call it a parlor.  We never do.  Mario Lanza is singing.  Or is it Enrico Caruso?  Who is singing, Father?  He turns from his work at the desk; his brown eyes quick and alive beneath the horn-rimmed glasses that bridge his noble Roman nose, and says, “Caruso.”  He and his mahogany desk face the far wall, and above the desk hang photographs of the people he loves; his wife, his two children, his mother and father, his five brothers, his three sisters.  The walls in this room are blue, pale blue.  On the left wall are two windows, side by side, that look out to a green hill rolling gently down to a shallow, narrow creek called Muckinapatus. The hill is profusely dotted with dandelions.  Both sides of the creek are lined with willows, shaggy barked maples, and here and there a mulberry.   In the winter time, when you lie on your belly and sled down the hill on your Flexible Flyer, you better make sure you know how to steer or you’ll be making a trip to the hospital for stitches.

  Beneath the double windows is the black tapestry sofa with the red and pink roses woven in all stages of that flower’s form, from bud to full bloom and including the stems, foliage and thorns.  It is my mother’s pride and joy and no nonsense whatsoever may be performed on it.  However, when she is not in sight, both Petey and I ride its arms, kick its sides, and shout “High, ho, Silver.”  When Petey gets on my nerves I threaten to tell Mother that he at times wipes a boogie on it, though I really only saw him do it once.  In front of the sofa is a cherry wood coffee table, upon which no coffee has ever been served.  It holds a crystal candy dish filled with cellophane wrapped hard candy in many shapes, colors, and sizes and of which I never partake without first asking permission.  Mother, when we have company, often comments on my remarkable restraint.  When my cousin, Marybeth, visits, she sneaks one piece after another when the grown-ups aren’t looking.  She also likes to lick her index finger, stick it in the sugar bowl and then lick the sugar off and do the same thing again and again and again until the sugar bowl is taken away. I don’t think I am better than Marybeth; I’m just not crazy over sugar.

Against the wall opposite the windows and the sofa is my father’s leather arm chair in a color that my mother calls cordovan, and next to his chair,  a mahogany table with a brass lamp, an amber ashtray,  his pack of Camel cigarettes and a silver lighter on which is engraved his three initials, PJT, in a very flamboyant cursive.  Above the chair and table hangs a large painting of a woodland scene that has the ability to mesmerize me and in which scene I have spent many wondering and wandering hours.  Women in gowns of pink and green and red and blue and violet, leisurely strolling through and between, or sitting beneath tall, splendid trees that border each side of a winding stream and grow dense and then denser as they spread out into obscurity as they approach the edges of the picture.  There are no men or children in the painting, and the women seem to be alienated from each other and from their own selves; they all wear the same benign expression which is no expression at all.  It’s as if they have been placed arbitrarily into the scene for the single purpose of giving it color and nothing more.

There is another chair, to the right of the door through which we first entered.  It is my mother’s chair, feminine and yet stately; a camel colored Queen Anne with magnificently sculptured legs.  A small petit point footstool sits to one side of it, out of the way but still visible in it’s designated place, ready to be drawn into service if needed.  Do you see those two exquisite pairs of shoes lying on the floor next to the foot stool?; Italian leather high heeled sandals, one pair red, one pair navy blue.  Mother came home with them just this afternoon.  She was ecstatic.  Her feet are so narrow, you know; she never went barefoot because going barefoot widens the feet, and narrow feet are a sign of good breeding and aristocracy.  She so wanted to be an aristocrat.  She so wanted to leave the poverty of Sugar Hollow behind her.  When she found those wonderful shoes in size seven Quad A she nearly went delirious. She had to buy both pairs because who knows when she would ever come across such a marvelous treasure again.  Quad A’s are almost impossible to find anywhere.

As long as I live I will never forget the tears my mother will cry tomorrow when she wakes up to discover that our Collie dog Laddie has chewed her treasure to shreds.  Laddie won’t be waiting for us at the school bus stop anymore.  He will be sent to live on a farm in Sugar Hollow where he can run and play with barefooted children.   He will be loved and fed by a short stout woman and will lie at her feet as she shucks peas on the front porch in a rocking chair.  He will think of us once in a while, and look up at the woman with questioning eyes. He will sniff her apron and lick the fat toes of her wide bare feet before he drifts off to sleep.

We are now in the pink walled center hallway with its two closets, side by side. One is for linens and the other is for coats, hats, and the vacuum cleaner.  To the right of this hallway is the green walled bathroom with a black fleur di lise pattern on a white background.  It’s just an ordinary bathroom; toilet, sink and tub, all of which are white porcelain and sparkling clean as you can see.  There is a window on the wall over the tub that offers yet another view of Andrews Avenue partially blocked by the branches of our Elm tree. There is a pink wicker hamper against the wall opposite the sink. A medicine cabinet with a mirrored door hangs on the wall above the sink.  Go ahead, open it up and take a look.  You will find: Pepto Bismal; Phillips milk of magnesia; witch hazel; Bayer aspirin; rubbing alcohol; hydrogen peroxide; oil of wintergreen; Vaseline petroleum jelly; Vicks Vapor Rub; Father John’s Cough Syrup; Ipana toothpaste; Noxzema cold cream; syrup of ipecac; tincture of iodine; tincture of violet; mercurochrome; band aids; my father’s Old Spice shaving mug, red handled shaving brush and Gillette razor.  On the left side of the sink, next to the faucet are four tooth brushes in a porcelain holder shaped like a woman’s hand; on the other side of the faucet is a pink bar of Camay soap in a green dish shaped like a fish.

  This is the bedroom of my mother and father.  The walls are lavender and there is a four inch wall paper border of violet bouquets on a pale yellow background at the top where the walls meet the white ceiling.  The linoleum covered floor has a light wood parquet design.  A mahogany four poster bed is positioned in the center of the room with the headboard against the far wall.  It is covered with a bright yellow chenille bedspread with a fringed border.  Above the bed are two pictures; Jesus Christ and his mother, Mary.  Their heads are slightly turned and tilted so that they appear to be facing each other, but at the same time, they each have eyes that follow you no matter where you are in the room.  There are two small night tables on each side of the bed with matching milk glass hurricane lamps set on doilies tatted by my grandmother.  Double windows covered by sheer, white, dotted Swiss curtains that fall to the floor are centered on the right wall.  The view from these windows is much like the view from the kitchen windows, but from here you can see the fat trunk and the lower branches of the Elm tree.  The tree is so close to the house that you could reach out and touch it if the window was open and you wanted to do such a thing.  Against the left wall is a double dresser which matches the mahogany bed and is shared by my mother and father.  Her clothes are in the right-hand drawers and his in the left. The dresser has a black marble top and above it hangs an oval mirror in an ornate gold-leafed frame.  A white and red oriental vase, depicting geishas, nightingales and lotus trees is the only item on the dresser.  The vase is empty. 

Next on our tour is the room I share with my brother, Peter.  We sleep in twin beds that face the back wall of the house on which yet another set of double windows look out upon the Muckinapatas.   The curtains on are cotton twill and vertically striped in colors of red, green, yellow, orange and purple. The walls are a light shade of turquoise.  Our bedspreads are made of corduroy in a much darker shade of turquoise than the walls, almost teal.  There is a table between our beds and on it a unique lamp; a silver horse about eight inches high with a small round clock imbedded in its belly.  The horse is mounted on a wooden base and tethered to a brass post by a braided leather strap. The clock has Roman numerals and behind a glass door which opens so the clock can be wound with a key that slips into a saddle bag. Enclosed within the post is the lamp’s wiring. The shade of this lamp is made of stiff translucent paper and saddle-stitched with leather around its top and bottom circumferences.  I have never seen another lamp such as this. Hanging on the wall above the table is a wooden crucifix that opens and contains the items necessary to perform the ceremony of last-rites called Extreme Unction. Sometimes I take the crucifix down off the wall and remove the little bottles of holy water and sanctified oil and the two small white candles. Peter and I pretend we are dying and give each other the last rites.  The body of Jesus is ivory colored and his head is bent in sorrow.   Peter has a chest of drawers on his side of the room, and I have an identical chest of drawers on my side.

  There is only one room that remains to be seen.  Of the four main rooms of our house, the kitchen is my favorite.  It has been said that “the kitchen is the cultural womb of our existence within the place that we dwell.”  I don’t know who it was that said this, some famous anthropologist I suppose. But you don’t have to be an anthropologist or a sociologist or any other kind of “ologist” to understand the truth of those words.  Jim Morrison of the Doors, in a song called “Soul Kitchen,” stated the concept of kitchen as womb quite erotically, symbolically and melodically: “I want to sleep all night in your soul kitchen” You don’t have to be a Sigmund Freud or a Carl Jung to catch the drift of his words and their rhythm.

Well, the clock says it's time to close now
I guess I'd better go now
I'd really like to stay here all night
The cars crawl past all stuffed with eyes
Street lights shed their hollow glow
Your brain seems bruised with numb surprise
Still one place to go
Still one place to go

Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen
Warm my mind near your gentle stove
Turn me out and I'll wander baby
Stumblin' in the neon groves

Well, your fingers weave quick minarets
Speak in secret alphabets
I light another cigarette
Learn to forget, learn to forget
Learn to forget, learn to forget

Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen
Warm my mind near your gentle stove
Turn me out and I'll wander babyStumblin' in the neon groves

Follow me then, into the kitchen, through this doorway which, unlike all the other rooms of our house, has no door to shut you out or keep you in.  The atmosphere is easy come, easy go.  There is nothing to hide in this room, nothing to lock up.  Its contents belong to one and all.  I am especially fond of the linoleum floor and its intriguing pattern of green and red concentric squares.  It would appear to be a simple checkerboard to most people, but to me it is so much more.  In the center of each six inch square is a black half inch square centered in either a green or red one inch square.  The squares then increase by half inch increments of alternating green or red color until the final six inch square is reached.  This arrangement of shape within shape and color within color provide an endless possibility of pattern and form and an endless opportunity to imagine and explore.  I am eight years old.  I scrub this floor every Saturday morning.  I get down on my hands and knees with a bucket of warm soapy water and a soft, clean rag.  I scrub every square inch of the floor with the ardor of a mystic finding herself in the midst of an infinite and unintended journey.  The voice you hear belongs to my mother, “What’s going on?  It’s taking you forever to scrub that floor.”  

The kitchen table is under another set of double windows which look out onto our front yard. The yard is enclosed by a white picket fence, on the other side of the fence is Andrews Avenue, and beyond Andrews, row upon row of vertical and horizontal white stucco houses with red and green roofs.   My friends are out there; Margaret, Joanne, and Linda Belle, playing jump rope in the street.   I will join them when I’m finished scrubbing the floor, or maybe I will sit on the sofa and read my new comic books.  My mother’s friend, Helen, is sitting in a wicker chair on her front porch embroidering the edges of a pillow case.  Her son in law, John, is mowing the lawn in a dingy white undershirt. The radio on the kitchen table is playing songs from the Hit Parade.  It’s a Saturday morning in the summer of nineteen fifty.  I am sitting at the table in my chair next to the window eating my peanut butter toast on my favorite yellow plate with small blue flowers around the edges as my mother rolls out the washing machine and hooks it up to the kitchen sink.  The washing machine is noisy, and the fumes from the chlorine bleach that she uses to kill germs and whiten linens, nauseate me.  I get nervous and irritable when the washing machine is chugging and churning, and I get very disappointed when the smell of the chlorine makes my peanut butter toast taste like poison.  I have peanut butter toast every morning, with cold milk in a glass that used to hold strawberry jelly.  I hate it when the washing machine intrudes upon my privacy; it interrupts my thoughts and ruins my breakfast.

The pantry is to the right of the kitchen and runs all the way through to the living room. The furnace and the hot water heater are in the pantry, and shelves that run up to the ceiling.  The shelves hold canned goods, cleaning supplies, tools and Christmas ornaments. There’s a small window high up on the wall that I can’t see through unless I climb up on the step stool.  From that window you can see all the way down Andrews Avenue until it curves left and meets up with Hibbs Avenue.  We have many relatives who live on Hibbs, but I don’t go down that way because around that bend is a place called “Hell’s Corner.”  There are two doors to get into or out of the pantry; one in the kitchen with two long narrow horizontal slits, about one inch by ten inches, in the bottom half, and another regular door in the living room which forms a right angle with our front door. Petey and I play a game call “Going in one door and out the other.”   Mother says this game drives her crazy so we only play it when she’s not around.  We also play a game called “Spy” where we spy on each other by peeking through the slits in the door. I don’t understand why there has to be two doors to the panty.  In my opinion, one would be more than enough.  I don’t care much for that room.  The furnace and the hot water heater scare me.

Sometimes, on weekday afternoons when my father is at work, Helen comes over to our house with two ugly men and a bottle of whiskey.  One of the men is named Sid and he used to be Helen’s husband, the other is called Blaine, and he is her boy friend.  They are both old like Helen and have white hair and red faces. Sid smokes cigars and Blaine smokes Lucky Strikes.  Helen doesn’t smoke anything and neither does my mother.  They all sit around the kitchen table and drink whiskey out of little glasses which they call shots and then they wash it down with something from a bigger glass called a chaser.  When my mother asks Sid what he wants for a chaser, he always says “crick water” and everybody laughs like it’s hilarious.  Blaine uses beer for a chaser, and my mother and Helen use ginger ale.

When I was younger, about four years old, I used to climb up on Helen’s lap and sit out there in the kitchen with them.  Helen would let me look through her pocket book for candy and chewing gum, and she would let me take sips of her ginger ale.  But then one day something happened to change me forever.  It was something my mother said: “Go in the other room like a good little girl.”  Her words came as a shock to me.  How could I ever be anything but a good little girl?  I looked at my mother and in a state of utter confusion stated, “But I already am a good little girl.”  Everyone was impressed by my wit and my logic, I could tell by the expression on their faces and the way that looked at each other and smiled.  My mother did not smile.  She stared at me with a stern face and with an air of one-up-manship said “Then go in the other room like the good little girl that you are.”  I realized at that moment that my being good was not a permanent condition, that it was instead a never ending process that carried with it the ever present possibility of not being good.  And what’s more, that that possibility could be determined and therefore arbitrarily controlled by someone other than myself.  I was sickened by the horror of this revelation, and by the arduous path that now lay ahead of me, the endless proof I would have to provide to the judges of goodness whoever they might be.  I felt broken and shamed. With my eyes downcast and my head hung low I dutifully left the kitchen.  I threw myself on the sofa, buried my head under a pillow and cried for a long while over my great loss and the ponderous  knowledge that replaced it.