In Rockville: The Old Woman

He returned to Rockville some years ago with his mother and sister to see what fragments of his memories yet remained, and his family followed.  We knew the trip was his, and we were to be curious bystanders as he walked down the storefronts, wondering which memories would persist after the trip.

The town was hollow and frail.  Pale walls sagged, patched roofs crumbled, and weeds clutched the broken cement and splintered wood, pulling it all further into the cold ground.  The air was still and heavy, and there was no sound anywhere.  All that remained of this place, it seemed, were the grain silos and the family that lay claim to them.  Yet even there, behind and around the silos, there was no sound, no motion.  Nothing was happening.

The man said little as he moved down main street, looking up at the empty facades of the stores there: The billiards hall, the hardware store, the East Side Grocery, all of them ghosts.  The town jail was a pile of gray stone in the grass.  Doors were missing, dangling from the top hinge, nailed shut, or warped and tapping against the weathered frame.  The man stopped as a cat, raggedy orange and wary, hopped from his path on the heaving sidewalk to commune with three others in a copse of grass across the street.

Our eyes followed the tabby across the street, and the man turned to us and said, "Jesus.  Look out there.  They're everywhere."  They bounded with one another in the grass, howled and spat in the road, and spilled out of a darkened store ahead.  It was impossible to count the feral host, for they twined and moved and pulsed over everything, and scattered as we moved along the sidewalk towards the front door of the residence.

There was no door, jagged pieces of glass perched in the gaping windowframes, and the afternoon sunlight splayed along the floor and sliced through the black of the building.  Dust motes and mosquitos and fleas danced in the warm yellow light.  Cats padded out of the room and moved between our legs, while some sat within and stared at the intruders.  Some danced to a darkened corner to lay beneath what looked to be the ruined front door, resting on cinderblocks.

It was only when we looked atop the door-and-cinderblock bed that we saw the ashen, tattered woman sleeping there.

The man turned to his mother.  "I don't remember this.  Who's place is this?"

She reached up and patted his shoulder.  "She didn't always live here.  She used to live around the corner.  She didn't use to have as many cats..."  At that, she tightened her lips and shook her head in frustration at the ancient soul within, and called to it.  "Dony.  Come out, hun.  You know me."  The figure on the wood turned its head slowly and stared out at us, unblinking.  The skeletal hands scraped against the wood as she rose and shuffled out to meet us.  The feral horde moved as one with her.

She wore a threadbare pink nightgown, her white hair was cut very short and curled about her ears.  Her nails were yellowed, and she had no teeth.  She raised one sharp arm to shield her eyes from the glare of the light and peered at the man, his sister and his mother, who now stood resolutely in front of us all.  The words creaked and crawled from her mouth, and her eyes widened with familiarity.  "Well, my goodness.  That pretty face is a lovely sight!  If I knew'd you'd be comin' I'd a put on somethin' nicer that mah gown."  She looked down at the fading fabric and shook her head sadly.

The man's mother smiled and stepped forward.  "It's okay Dony, hun.  We're just passing by to see things again.  You remember my son and daughter, don't you?"  She crept out of the store to stand on the sidewalk to look over those faces from her past and in the full light looked very small and very alone.  Dony gave each of them a hug, and the group stood for some time talking.  She would wave her arm at a part of town, point with her curled, arthritic finger into the past at different places, and everyone's gaze followed.  She smiled, chuckled, and once stooped to run her hands along the back of a dirty gray cat that passed her way.  It smiled.

Soon , they were saying their goodbyes.  "Sure was kind of ya to stop and see me."  Her eyes glistened a bit as the tears began to creep in.  "I'm feelin' a bit tired, I'm afraid...I need to go lay down for a bit."  The man and his mother and sister rejoined us as the old woman turned and moved back to her bed in the darkness with the cats.

We moved through the town for another ten minutes, and no one spoke.

(Photo borrowed from www.raccoonvalley.com)