“Return to Childhood Bedroom”

Sketch of setting through characterization

01-29-2008

The distance hasn’t changed since the first, third, or hundredth time that I measured it: barring distractions or stumbling over the three dogs who sometimes seem like thirty, it is exactly twenty-seven steps from the front door to the small, one window bedroom that is mine. It’s strange to come back here after so much time away, but at the same time familiar, as if the room has kept a sheet of memory beneath the layers of dust. Hesitating at the doorway, I am momentarily stunned to discover that the room has changed shape -- I always, in my imagination, recall it having more corners.

The walls are white, although conflicting memories remember them green, blue, even yellow. The wallpaper is gone, although I never recall there being any, and for some reason the closet has disappeared -- no, just hidden behind doors when my conflicting memories unanimously agree that there had never been any doors here. The only thing remaining the same from my last visit is the carpet, except the trees are missing. Still, I avoid stepping with my big grown-up feet where they would have been, sticking to the perimeter of the room. It’s suddenly too small, and too square.

I sit in the very center of the room like I would when I was smaller and the world was simpler, cross-legged and almost trance-like and I imagine the army of plastic horses arranged before me, faces and names as easy to recall as my own. For a moment, I wonder what has happened to my old friends. The shelves they used to rest on are gone now, and the time that was theirs over some ten years past. Like a striking snake, an overwhelming sense of trespassing hits me.

The stuffed animals on the bed do not smile at me with welcome in their plastic button eyes, and the child-sized bed seems to shrink even smaller as I sit to think on it.

The posters on the walls are not of my unicorns, and they snort and paw at this too-old intruder to their magical realm. The dragon in the closet grumbles behind the wooden doors that have imprisoned him, but I know it is my presence he resents and not theirs.

The corners and the wallpaper and the trees are missing, and the tiny herd of plastic equine warriors has faded away into memories and cardboard boxes. The unicorns no longer recognize my face and I, although desperate, cannot recall their names to beg forgiveness. The faces in the ivy outside hide when I turn to look at them, but I can hear their rustling laughter behind my back as I turn to go. I shut the door behind me.

This isn’t my place anymore.