The Window

I stood there in the middle of my back yard that day, in the sunlight, looking at the amazing blaze of flowers. They had taken over, sprouting up in every niche, draped over tree limbs and climbing fences and trellises – so many it was hard to drink in. I had to smile as I reached up to touch my locket – the one Gram gave me on my 16th birthday. Her backyard had looked just like this one. Her house was badly in need of paint – it had turned a rust color over the years – and the back porch was a little saggy but nobody ever noticed it because the yard was absolutely splendid with color. She lived on a corner and people literally slowed down and pulled over to gaze at the beautiful sight of her garden. Sometimes they would ask her for a bouquet and she would clip, clip, clip them an armload. The other flowers in her garden then seemed to fill in the gap. Annuals such as petunias and marigolds sprung up every year without planting in the rich black earth. And much to my surprise and pleasure, years went by and I became a wife and mother to children – 7 to be exact- and one day we drove up to this house with its multitude of stairways and a big park butted up to our back yard – and there it was – Gram’s garden in my own backyard. I had tried for years in other places to grow some of these same flowers and here they were all the time – growing themselves in this back yard. Lucky me.

This house was built at the turn of the century and it was amazing. There were cubby holes and secret places behind cabinets and under stairways. Gram had been gone for awhile but I could still feel her warm touch as I went about my huge but cozy home. I had her locket with the tiny scratch on the back around my neck. I had worn it since that day that she had given it to me and I was sure that I would never take it off. Gram was born in 1876, the centennial year, and had ridden in a wagon all of the way from South Carolina to Kansas with her ma and pa and siblings. As her mother lay dying, she took her locket off and gave it to 12 year old Gram, and told her to keep it always to remember how much her mother loved her. Gram knew the story of the locket; it had come from some ancestor back in the old country and passed down from generation to generation. It was my most precious possession – even more than my birthstone ring – and I could feel it against my skin as I soaked in the sunlight and flowers in my garden that day. Gram, you would love my garden, I thought.

“Sarah Ann!” I was jolted out of this nice place in my mind by Arty, my friend from church who was standing at my backdoor waving.

“Geez, I thought you were in a trance!” I couldn’t believe she was inside my house and then I remembered that Kent, my husband was home for a couple of days vacation leave. Not that Arty wasn’t welcome anytime to be inside of my house – I preferred people just walking in – otherwise I had to run down one of the stairways and try to get to the right door. But Arty usually only came over for a Sunday School party. I was glad to see her.

“Let’s sit down in the breakfast room and have a glass of iced tea,” I said as I guided her into the kitchen.

“So, what’s up?” I asked.

Taking the tall glass and settling in, she said, “Oh, nothing really. I went to play tennis and my partner didn’t show so I was driving home and just thought I ‘d drop in.’” Arty was good at everything – tennis, bridge, you name it and she had two little blond daughters that never seemed to get dirty.

“So where’s Max?”

Max was our 3 year old, the youngest of our children and the mascot and yes, he did get dirty. Everyone knew Max because all of the kids took him with them everywhere. Our conversation was into its second glass of tea when Arty commented on the fact that she had seen Kent carrying wood through the kitchen and down the narrow stairs to the old basement numerous times since we had sat down.

“What’s Kent doing in the basement?”

“Ohmygod – haven’t you ever been to our basement? You won’t believe it, come on, let me show you but just for a minute, I want to be sure that I can hear Max.”

I led her down the old stairway, telling her the story as I went. Here’s the background: We had purchased this house from an estate. It had been standing empty for several years and so we got a very good price on it. After we took ownership, we realized what a huge job we had undertaken: ceilings were down, doors hung on their hinges, electric lights hung from cords in all of the rooms upstairs. Taking down some old metal cabinets in the kitchen, for example, we uncovered a door that led up a back stairway that had been hidden for years. Once we had cleaned out the main part of the house and we were able to move in, we tackled the basement. It had been an apartment complete with a small kitchen. We also found an old door that led into a coal room that we turned into storage. We painted the basement apartment and fixed it up as a bedroom with pink and green flowers and ruffled curtains. Two of our daughters moved right in.

The day that Arty came over, we had lived in our home for about 4 years. It was still a work in progress, but it was shaping up and we loved it. We had gotten involved in the community and were fortunate to live in a neighborhood teaming with kids – all about the same age as ours. The year before in the summer, the children were all out in the park playing softball when a storm came up. They brought everyone in the house and began playing like the basement was a ship and running around the various rooms squealing and laughing. Well, the sun finally came out and all of the kids filtered out through the various doors into the park and left their “ship” abandoned. While, checking out the “damage,” I noticed that a piece of the old wall board in the girl’s room was pulled away from the stud that held it. At first, Kent thought he would just nail it back to the stud, but when he felt a steady airflow, he pulled it back further and to our amazement, we discovered that the wall was merely a partition in a very large room.

That was the beginning of an amazing discovery. The room itself, after removing the “wall” was large but that wasn’t the end of it. Fallen bricks at the other side of the room, in line with the basement steps, proved to be an old doorway leading into yet another large room. It was an odd-shaped room with a slope at one side that went down at an angle for about 20 or 30 feet and stopped against a stone wall. We all just stood there – we couldn’t believe it. Talking about it in bed later that night, Kent wondered if this had been some kind of tunnel – we were in Kansas – surely this wasn’t the Underground Railroad? That was only the beginning. All of the kids were so excited that they brought their friends in to check it out. Everyone had a theory. But Kent had a vision of a woodworking room all of his own and so the first big room was finished first. First there was white vinyl flooring, overhead lights and outlets. The little kitchenette was made into a tool supply room and he spent literally week-end after week-end dismantling his wood lathe and saws, carrying them down the narrow steps and putting them all back together again. Then with everything in place, he began on the second room, building shelves against every wall for toys and storage. This room was definitely kid-friendly with colorful tiles and rugs and bean bag chairs. The slope was covered in slick material and the kids slid down it in their sleeping bags, or rolled down it on skates when they thought we weren’t watching. We were the kid party house supreme!

This basement had been the talk of the neighborhood and so I was surprised that our fame had not reached Arty. It was always fun to take people down there because it was so funny to see the look on their faces which was usually always one of shocking amazement. Kent was down there immersed in his project, listening to his small radio and whistling, I remember. Arty and I were laughing and she was suggesting that on Halloween we should have the next Sunday school party down here. The slope always was a puzzle to most – what on earth was it exactly, they would ponder. Arty slid down the slope, but somehow went off to the side and stuck her heel through the grout on the stone wall. We screamed with laughter – there she was with one foot stuck in the wall. Kent was called to help us unhook her shoe. He did but it brought a wall of gray stones crashing down and there in the corner was another door. Looking through the opening, one could see that we were staring down a tunnel. Down at the other end of the tunnel, just barely visible was a wooden staircase with just a faint glow of light from above. We ran down the tunnel gasping for breath and up the stairs. Up and up we climbed until we came out way up high into an attic that was so full of dust, that it was hard to identify the objects that lay strewn about. We ducked as we picked our way across the boards and under the rafters, kicking up the dust and making our way to a window that accommodated the shape of the roof by having a half-circle shape. It looked as if the paper or cardboard covering it had been jabbed by something from the outside so that it -the covering - was broken in the middle.

For some reason, I don’t know why, I was the first to reach the window. I yanked on the paper and there I was on the window sill looking out into a cobblestone courtyard that was surrounded by very tall, wooden buildings of at least 4 or 5 stories. It was just after a rain and the sun was coming out making rain drops glisten on the wet wooden planks of the siding covering them. The air was dewy fresh from the rain. It was breathtaking. Across the big court yard there was an alley going straight out to a street beyond. A woman was sweeping the rain from a door in the alley while another one shook a rug from a wooden stoup behind the building on my right. Through the alleyway, you could see horse drawn carriages passing by in the street in what appeared to be a bustling city street. Something moved – and out of the corner of my eye, I caught the sight of a small child wearing a soiled brown hat with a broken brim that was pulled down over her long scraggily hair – so tiny, scampering just out of sight.

My mind seemed backed up as I tried to take it all in – the fantastic sight, the air, the smells of salty air and boiled sausage, the sounds of people and commerce. Where were we? A moment passed. I tried to think, - if I were up in some attic in my home, where was my neighborhood in relationship to this scene? Where was the front of my house? Again – where were we? I was stunned into a sort of slow motion but not Arty. She threw her leg over the sill and much to my horror, pushed herself onto a brick step that was almost invisible. It was the top step of a stairway that had been created from bricks by some carpenter as a latticework from the window to the ground and it was cleverly placed hugging the side of the wooden structure so that its purpose, although visible from our angle, would only appear as brick décor from below. Arty had shockingly (to my mind) actually gone into that scene like stepping through a mirror.

“Look, a stairway!” she called over her shoulder as she jumped down to the payment from the last step and started across the cobblestone courtyard toward the alley. Kent and I were frozen as we watched her. Just then the woman with the rug threw it aside and started striding purposefully across the cobblestones towards Arty. She was dressed in a long soiled skirt with a sort of muslin blouse rolled up at the sleeves over her skinny arms. The clothing was nondescript in color as it swung around her bony frame. The woman’s brown boots were scuffed at the toe and worn and old with yellowish wool socks bunched around their tops. On her head, she had a ruffled hat pulled down over her ears with stringy pieces of dark brown hair sticking out from all sides.

“Hey, Hey ya! Huh I’m talking ta – ya!” As she neared Arty, it was plain to see that – and quite shocking -she was a clone of Arty but coming from some other time, some other place. I mean, she looked exactly like Arty!

Arty saw the same thing that we saw because, she came to a stop and turned to look at Kent and I up in the window sill and mouthed the words while pointing at her own chest – “Do you see it? She’s ME.” Then all of sudden, it was as though Arty realized her folly and turning around, she fled back up the brick stairway. Panting and red in the face (the window looked out over at least the same distance as the other buildings – probably 3 stories at least – probably more, she shoved me aside and dove right through the window. Kicking up clouds of dust, she stumbled across the room and threw herself down the long wooden staircase - I could hear her steps pounding through the tunnel.

I had fallen backwards into the dust when she had come through the window but as I pulled myself back up by my fingertips on the sill, I looked out once more. The woman was marching angrily back to her stoop. As she pounded across, she swung her mop at the small waif sending her scuttling like a mouse into the shadows. Suddenly, Kent’s strong hands jerked me back and half dragged me across the attic room and I felt myself pulled down the stairs while my feet tried to catch up with my body. “Get out of here!” Shouted Kent. “Run!”

I ran down the tunnel and back into the light of our basement, but my mind was still racing. I wanted so badly to take another look, I remember. Wow! What was that? I reached the kitchen with Kent behind me just in time to hear the front door slam shut as Arty hurried out to her car and peeled away. I turned to Kent who was ashen in color. “Talk to me, “I said. “What did we just see?” Kent said that if he didn’t know better, he would think that we had just seen London, a couple of hundred years ago because of the clothing and language and the carriages but that couldn’t be possible. Then we stopped. Both of us got the same idea at the same time and we raced up to check on Max. He was wrapped around his monkey with a smile on his little lips. Life was normal and nobody knew but us.

“We should tell someone,” I said.

“No, No! Don’t tell ANYBODY about this! I’m telling you – nobody will ever believe us – it will ruin us. I mean it Sarah Ann – NOBODY – not your mother – NOBODY. You hear me?”

He scared me – mild, funny, loving Kent. Something had happened, that was for sure, but what? That night I lay in my bed with a million thoughts racing through my mind. The moonlight came through my window. I listened to the breathing of my husband. “Are you awake?”

“yes.”

Earlier that evening, while going about my normal tasks - fixing dinner, or sitting at the table, or packing the kids off to bed, I would remember that amazing scene from that window. But when I would look up, Kent would always be there to give me a look and I would lower my eyes and try to file it away for later. He had blocked up the hole to the tunnel with the fallen rocks, I later found out when I went back down. We talked into the night about the courtyard and the tunnel and the woman who looked like Arty. He was just as curious about it as I was that night. I called Arty the next day and the day after but she didn’t ever return my calls. Once, at church, she stared right through me and didn’t respond when I spoke to her. Kent grew more distant and it seemed he did not want to talk about it anymore.

One afternoon, in the autumn when all of the kids were at school and once again Max was napping, and Kent was at work, I stole back down the tunnel, up the stairs and looked again out of the window. It was still there only now, it too was autumn with the leaves drifting down to scatter in the wind over the cobblestones. A cat sat in the window across the way sleeping in the sunlight. Suddenly my eye picked up movement. There was that small child again scuttling around the corner, picking up scraps from the garbage can on the stoop across the way. The door banged open and out came the woman with her mop swinging it with force and catching the child across the shoulders as she flung her off of the stoop and onto the cobblestones. “Feed your belly on somebody else’s garbage! Get out and don’t come back till you pa comes home if he ever does!” Her cackle was deep in her throat and so hard that she had to come up for air before she started it up again. The child lay still on the cobblestones. A stray dog nosed his way around her, pushing at her shabby coat. The door slammed shut.

Without hardly a thought, - down I climbed from my perch on the sill and I raced across the stones to the child who was so still. Now I could see that she had vomited and she was now laying face down in it. I turned her over and wiped off her face with my sleeve. She opened her eyes and stared at me. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Abigail,” she whispered.

“Who is that woman?” I ventured.

“Me ma,” she answered. “She’s naw ri,” she pointed to her head. “Please, if she sees ya, she will kill me she will.”

I reached into my pocket and handed her a half-eaten roll of lifesavers. “Candy,” I explained.

From then on, I visited that place at every chance, always stacking up the rocks at the tunnel entrance whenever I returned. I heard that Arty had gone to visit her mother in Cleveland but it was rumored that she had had a nervous breakdown. Kent had grown more silent with every passing day and sometimes he seemed to be miles away. He didn’t whistle anymore and the lathe stood gathering dust in his special room. The children also noticed it. And still I visited the little girl, taking her small treats, careful not to give her something that would bring her trouble.

Then came that fateful day when I stayed too long. Max woke up from his nap and wondered out on Adams, the busy street close by. Somebody called Kent and when I came back through the door to the tunnel all hell broke loose. He screamed at me all night. I felt so terrible. My Max! What if something had happened to him – I was sick with guilt and I made a promise that I would never ever do it again. I tried to talk to Kent about Abigail but he would have none of it. The memory of that day seemed to have faded from his memory. He kept saying “Forget about it Sarah Ann –it never happened!” Sadly, I couldn’t. I was good most of the time and then I would spend days in my room in the dark, crying and my mom would have to come and take care of the kids. They would creep into my room at last and I would push myself out of it and swear to “get a grip!”

Snow was on the ground – it was a gray shivering cold godawful day. I went through the house, cold and lonely - Max was now in preschool. And I did it again. I went down that tunnel and looked out of the window. After adjusting my eyes to the dimness through the swirling snow in the courtyard, I spied her huddled next to the grate, her bare knees sticking out from under her skirts like sticks. As soon as I bent down to her, I knew she was starving to death and I handed her a dinner roll and some jelly beans. Suddenly there were footsteps behind me. Kent was running across the slick cobblestones toward me with fury on his face. I unclasped my beloved locket and placed it around her neck. “Keep this and remember how much I love you,” I said as he put the handkerchief over my nose.

Spring came. I sat in my chair in the game room with the other patients and watched as the birds began to sing. I had been declared “mentally unstable” and given rounds of drugs and lots of therapy by well-meaning nurses talking baby-talk to me. I gave up on my story because nobody believed me and even my husband denied that it had ever happened. Maybe it didn’t……… Maybe I was crazy…..

I got to go home on Mother’s Day. As we drove up, the children were all lined up on our brick wall out in front with bouquets of flowers from our garden. A large banner hung from the posts on the porch which read “Welcome Home Mom!” with x’s and o’s. I was so so happy to see them I could die. Thank youGodthankyouGodthankyouGod!!!!

Life started fresh. The basement wall had been cemented closed. One day, while cleaning a cupboard, I came across a box that was still left unpacked and to my pleasure, found my Gram’s Bible, worn and faded with her smell about it. I fixed myself a glass of tea and sat by the window leafing through it. I had been through it a couple of times when a thin yellowed envelope fell out from between two pages. It was addressed to Beatrice Rickets, my great great grandmother. I pulled the letter out gently because it was so thin, almost transparent. It read: My darling niece Beatrice, I am so in hopes that your journey was a pleasant one across the wide expanse of the great ocean. My days are long without you but I find happiness as always in your happiness. I feel it is time to tell you a story that I have kept hidden in my heart for a lifetime as my destination on this earth is drawing near. Beatrice, you are like a daughter to me and it has been a lifetime of happiness for me to have you grow up in this house.

The letter went on. ‘I was the child of a ship oarsman and his young wife, a girl from the countryside. They married quite young and were very happy, I am told. But he was a man of the sea and he could always hear it calling to him and so he moved his young wife into a place far from her home, in the poor and gritty side of London near the docks. There he left her all alone to answer the call of the sea. My mother gave birth to me in the darkest of rooms in a place that even now I cannot think of without sickness overtaking me. By the time my father returned, she was quite mad. In her madness, she thought of me as vermin and tried many times to kill me. My father tried to care for us but in the end, he returned to the sea and was lost. I grew from a tiny child by learning to eat what the other animals ate and tried to dodge her wrath as best as I could. Sometimes I was beaten so badly, ( Beatrice, it pains me to tell you this but I am telling you this my darling so that you will know)that I was want to die. On such a day as I lay praying for an angel to take me up in the heavens, a kind and gentle woman looked down into my face and did one of the most wonderful things that had ever happened to me – she wiped my brow and asked my name. My darling daughter, I truly believe that she indeed save me from giving in to death that day. She spoke in a strange tongue albeit a sort of the King’s English and dressed in a manner that was quite odd. My life has been strengthened, I am of the belief, by the vision of her kind and gentle face that I still see in my dreams and hear the soft sound of her voice. On that last day she did something for which I will never forget. I have kept the memory of it close to my heart and it has been my strength. Within a fortnight of that moment, I was found by the Women’s Social League and placed in an orphanage. I was there but for a short time which to me seemed much like heaven with its pallets to sleep on and warm food. Two years passed. I was but 7 years of age. A man and his wife, a handsome and benevolent couple of privilege, picked me out of the line of other homeless children and took me with them to their large and loving home. There I was raised as their own daughter in the drawing rooms of the gentry and was married after my presentation at court to a kind and wonderful man, your loving uncle, the brother of your poor father (God rest his soul). My fate was changed; I am quite sure, my darling Beatrice, by the sweet kindness of that unusual woman, an angel from heaven to be sure. I am sending you this talisman that she gave to me that last day that I ever saw her face. It has been my strength and salvation. Keep it and know that how much I love you. Your loving and devoted aunt, Abigail

Out of the envelope and into my hand fell the gold locket with the tiny scratch on the back.