Accelerated Adolescence

Nightmare

So, this feels like a strange title to be giving this blog. However, amid my more traditional nightmares, I had this dream that left me much more restless and sleepless than any of the others. I've elaborated on it, but not too much. This is pretty much the gist of the dream, if you're interested.

A young black woman is sweeping the overgrown sidewalk that runs past the aged white house. The paint is cracked and bleached from age and the lawn is overgrown. The sidewalk running past the house meets the steps at the street, like so many city houses. As foreshortened as the front lawn is, the back property extends into the distance, blurring the demarcation between the last home in the suburb and the first home in the country. A woman is standing in the front room, converted from an enormous porch, gazing out of the windows that line the room. She is watching the young girl’s shoulders rise and fall with each broom stroke. Her face is careworn, though her soul is peaceful, at last.
The woman sweeping pauses to look at the porch of the house. She is wearing a pink cotton shirt with close fitting jeans. She raises a rich brown hand to her forehead and squints into the sun. Seeing a silhouette, she calls out, “Good morning Mr. Gershwin!” The figure in the window is still for a moment.
“Mr. is not here.”
“Well maam, may I offer you my services? Mr. Gerswin, had me over twice a week to clean the home.”
“Mr. Gershwin has made arrangements to have you continue, thank you.”
The young woman senses the distance of the other and returns to her work. She’s lived in the neighborhood for the past twenty-three years, just across the street from Mr. Gershwin, and she can’t recall Mr. Gershwin ever having guests or family visitors. Mr. Gershwin was nice enough, though, and had even helped her to start her successful home cleaning service. Besides sitting on his front steps to talk to neighborhood children, as though he regretted closing in the porch, Mr. Gershwin rarely invited anyone into his home.
Any conversation, these days, is tiresome to the woman on the porch. Her salt and pepper hair has begun to lose its remaining black. Turning into the house she turns her attention to a recently brewed cup of tea. Curling into the large easy chair, she sips her tea and leafs through an ancient photo album. The quiet room, the oaken floor, and her father’s easy chair reminds her of her childhood. She can remember what her parents looked like when she was young, how beautiful she thought her mother was and how strong her father seemed. Tears come easily now, as they did when she was small. She falls asleep snuggling the album like a child in her lap.
She wakes when the screen door claps shut and the front door creaks open. She sees the young woman enter the house. Her shoes click down the hallway, first to the bathroom, then to the closet. The two are avoiding one another as though they were strangers each convinced that the other is attempting to claim the home they know as their own. With the little energy she has left, Mr. Gershwin’s sister decides to take a walk in the apple orchards of her childhood.
In Mr. Gershwin’s tenure the apple orchard has become overgrown and wild. The grass is long, to the hip. As she walks, she catches glimpses of small animals scampering away in the brush. She cannot see the disordered state of the trees, though. She sees the manicured lawn of her childhood. Here she played with her toys, imagining the grandeur of her future life. There, her brother broke his arm when he fell from a tree. There was the opening where her mother and father had once fought; the indelible image of their faces twisted in anger never left her memory.
Everything was coming back. Memories of the painful years she so anxiously strove to get through. How she regretted not truly living. Now, knowing the value of a day, she was longing to have even a few back, to relive those days as she could now. Returning to the overgrown orchard, sighing and wondering if Lucy had finished her work yet, she found herself walking back to the house. Parting the tall grass while walking, leaving a temporary trail behind her, she is beginning to leave her body. Her consciousness is on the verge of transcending her reality.
Staring out of the kitchen window, Lucy, feeling a sense invasion from the new occupant of Mr. Gershwin’s home, decides to finish early. Rationalizing that Mr. Gershiwin’s home is always immaculate, she leaves as Mr. Gershwin’s sister returns. Her thoughts are on other homes, her afternoon that she’ll spend with her mothr, before going out with her friends to relax for an evening. Still, she is unsettled by the prospect of a new inhabitant in a home that she has always felt was her own and Mr. Gershwin’s unexpected disappearance.
On a morning, several weeks later, Lucy wakes to the familiar hum of Mr. Gershwin’s elderly Rolls Royce. Glancing out her window, she sees the form of Mr. Gershwin walking up his own front steps. She is not yet confident enough to confront Mr. Gershwin about her emotions. Feelings of confusion steadily grew stronger when he left. After only one week, she stopped cleaning the home. Her sense of awkwardness had kept her away.
After only an hour, an ambulance quietly pulls into the driveway across the street. Mr. Gershwin meets the two young men in the driveway and has a brief discussion with them. They pull out a stretcher and lug it into the house. In only a few minutes, the three men emerge with Mr. Gershwin’s sister on the stretcher. She is relaxing, speaking softly to Mr. Gershwin, who is holding her hand. The two of them enter the back of the ambulance, the young driver closes the doors, and the ambulance pulls away.
Lucy fumbles through her keys to find the spare key to the Rolls Royce that Mr. Gershwin gave her in case of an emergency. The engine hums and she discovers that the aged machine travels much faster than its exterior lets on. She is not far behind the ambulance when she feels tears begin welling up in her eyes. By the time the ambulance has pulled into the hospital she is weeping uncontrollably. Mr. Gershwin startles her, knocking on the window.
“Lucy, I think that I ought to go park the car, you shouldn’t be driving in that condition,” he says softly, “will you go with my sister to her room?” Nodding, Lucy steps out of the Rolls Royce, leaving the engine running, and follows the men into the hospital. Mr. Gershwin’s sister raises her hand into the air and Lucy clasps it tightly, sensing that the woman reached out to comfort her more han to be comforted. Together, holding hands, the two wind through identical corridors until they are deposited in a small room. The young men transfer Mr. Gershwin’s sister to the bed and are gone. All the while, Lucy’s tears have grown more uncontrollable; she is sobbing and big drops are dropping on her lap.
The two women make eye contact and, despite wanting to look away, Lucy’s gaze is held, fixed, on the other woman. “You will be all right,” Lucy hears the woman say, “You may leave whenever you need to.” The familiar gate of Mr. Gershwin can be heard in the hallway and he enters the room calmly. Mr Gershwin and his sister smile at one another and hold hands.
“Goodbye, Roger, “ she whispers.
“Goodbye, sis,” he murmurs back, tears running down his cheeks.
Mr. Gershwin’s sister closes her eyes, lays back her head, and slowly fades into oblivion. The room is still except for Mr. Gershwin’s crying. “Goodbye, sis,” he keeps whispering to himself, “Goodbye, sis.” Lucy is still holding his sister’s hand, though she is no longer crying. Finally, she lays her sister’s arm down. The room has grown chilly and she feels a desire to leave.
Mr. Gershwin looks up and says, “I think that it’s time to go home, Lucy. I think you should drive.”

© 2006, Mendon Dornbrook