The Memory Closet: A Novel (4 page)

By all accounts, Ben had always been Bobo’s favorite, and losing him in 1990 almost killed her. And it was how he died, too. Nobody ever said a word about it, everything was hushed up. But he’d been sick for a long time. We all knew he had AIDS.

I didn’t know how Bobo was dealing with my mother’s death. She had refused to attend the services, said she was through doing funerals, wouldn’t show up at another one until her own. Mama’s death had been sudden. Two months after they found the tumor, she was gone.

And Mama never said a word about it to Joel or me! She chatted with me every Sunday and Wednesday, talked about recipes or the curtains she was making or Bobo’s antics. The subject of lung cancer never came up. It was just a few days after I discovered somebody staring out at me from my own paintings that I got a call telling me Mama’d been hospitalized in Amarillo. I packed and flew back to the states. Mama died nine days after I got home.

We held the funeral in Louisville. Mama owned a plot in Cave Hill, a historic cemetery with huge trees, flowering bushes, gardens, statues and a labyrinth of walking paths enclosed in ancient rock fences. She didn’t want to be buried on the empty, windswept prairie where she grew up.

Dear, sweet Joel couldn’t understand why Bobo wouldn’t go to the funeral. He’d have done just about anything to get her there. He knew Bobo had vowed she’d never get on another airplane after she was almost arrested last Christmas for demanding to take her crochet hooks through security at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. So he called and offered to take a bus to Goshen and fly with her to Louisville.

He cried when he told me what she said to him: “She told me, ‘I don’t have to see my baby in a box to know she’s dead!’”

Bobo and I pushed our food around on our plates in silence for a while, then she shooed me out of the kitchen and wouldn’t let me do the dishes.

“You ain’t no help. You don’t have no idea"--pronounced “eyedee”--"where nothing goes. I don’t want to chase around the whole kitchen looking for stuff you put in the wrong place. And I don’t want you foolin’ with my good butcher knife, neither.”

I hadn’t even made it to the top of the stairs before I heard her talking to somebody. I went into the playroom and closed the door, but Bobo’s voice drifted up from the kitchen through the hot water register on the wall. I’d forgotten that the ancient heating system piped sound from one floor to another in the big old house as effectively as an intercom. I couldn’t make out the words because of my tinnitus, but I could hear the tone—light and cheerful. Every now and then, I heard her laugh.

She’s talking to Mama!

Tears sprang into my eyes, and this time I didn’t try to hold them back. Oh, how I longed to be crazy, too! How I ached to go back downstair and sit at the kitchen table with my mother and all her brothers I never met. I’d tell her things I wish I’d said to her when she was alive, ask her questions I never dared to ask. And I’d listen to her soft, soothing voice explain all the mysteries, tell me all the secrets.

I didn’t expect to sleep well my first night back in my old bed, my old room, in the house I hadn’t set foot in since I hauled our last suitcase out to the car almost a quarter of a century ago, Joel crying and Mama with that funny, bemused look on her face. But when I finally hit the wall, it was all I could do to snag a nightgown out of one of my still-packed suitcases before I fell into the bed. I switched off the nightstand lamp and was asleep in seconds.

The light’s so bright it blinds me.

Something’s pinching the back of my neck and it hurts and I struggle to get away. The pinching tightens and all at once I’m falling face-first into cold water. It’s so sudden I don’t have time to hold my breath and I suck in a nose full of water and start

choking.

But I can’t come up for air.

Let me up! Let me up; I can’t breathe!

I kick and struggle, my heart pounding, my lungs bursting.

And then my head breaks the surface, and I gasp, coughing and choking and crying at the same time.

I see a face, blurred by the water pouring into my eyes. A little girl with blonde braids stands in the doorway. She’s holding a Barbie doll.

Then, I’m falling forward again. I know what to expect and I grab a breath before my face hits the water. I go deeper this time. My forehead slams into something hard and cold.

I can’t come up!

Help! Help me! I scream in my head. I can’t come up.

Then the pinching on my neck squeezes so hard it’s agony; the pain pulls my head out of the water. Someone’s yelling. A woman is shouting. I’ve heard that voice before.

I don’t have time for more than one breath before I’m shoved forward again. I know the water’s coming. And somehow I know I won’t come back up for air this time. I open my eyes and see nothing but white all around.

I kick and struggle; pinchers dig deep into my neck. The last of my breath explodes out my mouth, and I watch it bubble away. I scream silently: Noooo! Let me up. Air. I have to breathe! Then I gasp, but there is only water. It fills my nose and mouth.

Help! Help …

“… me! Help me!” I shrieked, and sucked in a breath. Air!

My eyes popped open. I was so disoriented I grabbed the doorframe and slid down it to my knees on the tile floor, trembling violently. My whole body vibrated; my heart thumped so hard I could see the front of my sweat-soaked nightgown jump. I gasped, sucked in one breath after another, like I’d been … I
had
been drowning!

I shook my head savagely to clear it. A dream. It had been a dream. No, not a dream, a night terror. A sickeningly, viscerally real night terror.

I looked around, dizzy, my mind reeling.

I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto.

Not Kansas. The downstairs bathroom. I was sitting on the floor in the doorway of the bathroom under the stairs in the parlor. Pale light spilled into the darkened parlor from the nearby study, where a lighted globe of the earth glowed faintly on the table by the door. A nightlight shaped like a butterfly lit the bathroom wall from a socket next to the toilet.

Even before the how-did-I-get-here question formed, I knew; I’d been sleepwalking again. And not just ambling around in the middle of the night until I stubbed my toe on something and woke up. This time, I’d done some serious cruising, from my bedroom down a huge, curving staircase. And I didn’t remember a single step of it.

I got to my feet slowly, holding onto the door frame, surprised at how weak my knees felt. I flipped the switch on the wall by the curved railing and climbed the lighted stairs back to the second floor. I paused at Bobo’s closed door across the hall from mine. All was dark and quiet. I slipped into my bedroom and crawled back in between the sheets. They were still warm.

Then I lay there, staring at the ceiling. I tried not to think about the night terror as my mind flashed video clips from it on 20-foot image-magnification screens behind my eyes. It was going to be a long night; I’d been here before.

I’d gone to bed every night that I could remember with my own personal Boogie Man in the closet. I was only able to go to sleep because I was certain the door to the closet was locked. Big padlock. No key. Even so, I never slept sound, innocent like other people. Some part of me always stayed alert, ready to wake the rest of me if the pile of dirty clothes and cast-off shoes in front of the closet door ever began to scoot slowly out into the room.

I could have done something about the Boogie Man. I could have marched into the dark, grabbed the monster by the throat and dragged him back out into the light—where he’d have gone poof and disappeared! Everybody knows a Boogie Man goes poof when daylight strikes him.

But what happens if the Boogie Man is bigger and stronger than I am? What happens if he traps me or I get lost in the swirling purple dark and can’t find my way back out?

Fear of the Boogie Man was the wallpaper of my life, the canvas on which every day was painted.

Over the years, I offered the monster one peace treaty after another, a host of mutual coexistence agreements. If the Boogie Man would leave me alone, I’d leave him alone. Trouble was, the Boogie Man never lived up to his end of the bargain, the leaving me alone part. He was always figuring out new ways to get at me, to reach out of that dark closet into my wide-awake life. Anorexia. Bulimia. Cutting. Withdrawal. Depression. A period when I actually stuttered, debilitating migraine headaches, scary images on the edge of my vision, a knot in my stomach 24/7, sleepwalking and night terrors.

Eventually, I resigned myself to the reality that the Boogie Man would never stop messing with me; I’d spend the rest of my life dealing with his surprise attacks.

But his last ambush—eyes staring out at me from my own paintings—became the shot heard 'round the world for me. And what Mama said right before she died—I told myself I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I knew. She was talking about the Boogie Man.

I lay in the dark in the room of my empty childhood with my heart hammering like a manic woodpecker in my chest. After all these years, I’d finally stopped running. I’d come home, here, to open the closet door. All I had to do was figure out how.

T
he next morning, I had to stand at the bathroom sink and splash cold water into my face to shock myself alert. When I went into the kitchen, Bobo noticed the dark circles under my eyes.

“You look like death on a cracker.”

And you stink!

She must have smeared Mentholatum on her an inch thick—
somewhere
. The stench made my tired eyes water.

Placing two vinyl mats on the table, she reached for bowls in the cabinet.

“You go out cattin’ around last night after I went to bed?”

“I had a nightmare and couldn’t go back to sleep.”

I poured a bowl full of the only cereal in the cupboard and added milk and sugar.

Note to self: buy some Grape Nuts; Rice Krispies is for five-year-olds. 

Bobo said nothing, just ate her own bowl of cereal in silence. As far as I could tell, she was rational, grumpy but rational. I noticed she had all her clothing on properly, always a good sign. This seemed to be as good a time as any.

Bobo held the keys to the kingdom. She was present during all those years I couldn’t remember. If I could get her to talk about the past, maybe that would pry memories out of my locked mind. It made more sense than wandering around this old house, hoping I’d get inspired by a light fixture or a doorknob. Of course, the land mines were legion.

“Bobo, can I ask you a question?”

“That is a question.”

It took me a moment to get it, then I plunged ahead. “Do you know why I’m here?”

“Ever' body’s got to be somewhere.”

I put my spoon down carefully and spoke in a quiet, controlled voice. “Look, can we just talk? I’m tired of being the straight man in your vaudeville act—The Amazing Bobo and Her Trained Chimp.”

Bobo burst into uproarious laughter. Then I got tickled, too, and we laughed together. When we finally wound down, she was beaming at me. Her watery blue eyes almost disappeared in a web of smile wrinkles deep in the sunken hollows of her face.

“Well, you got some powder in your musket after all! I was beginning to wonder.”

She reached over and patted my hand with her gnarled, turtle-flipper fingers.

“You ask anything you want, and I’ll answer best as I can. 'Course, you’ll have to figure out for yourself whether what I’m saying’s true or not. There’s days I don’t know my own self what’s real and what ain’t. Anymore, I can’t swear to nothing.”

I took a deep breath.

“I want to know about my childhood.”

“What about your childhood?”

“Everything about my childhood.”

“It’d help if you narrowed it down some.”

As casually as taking off a pair of sunglasses, she reached into her mouth and pulled out her dentures, the bottom plate first, then the top, and placed them on the red gingham tablecloth between us. I tried not to look at them, but looking at her face was equally disturbing. Everything below her eye sockets had imploded, sunk into a cavern of wrinkled skin below her nose.

She looks like an Appalachian apple doll.

“Sometimes, of a night, my gums get all puffy like, and when I get up my teeth’s too tight and I get blisters under the plates--" 

She made as if to show me, but I held my hand up palm out and shook my head no thanks.

“--and I got to take them out 'til the swelling goes down.”

Her speech had a peculiar, flubbery, toothless sound.

“Oh, I ain’t complaining; they fit real good. I ain’t bit into a apple in 30 years, but I do better than most.”

The corners of her cavernous mouth turned suddenly upward.

Is she smiling? I think she’s smiling.

I smiled back, just in case.

“Now, what was it you was asking?”

My concentration was a train wreck; I’d totally “lost my plot” as the Brits would say.

Focus!

“I don’t remember my childhood.”

“What is it 'bout your childhood you forgot?”

“Everything. I don’t have any memories at all of growing up. Didn’t you know that?”

She got a faraway look in her eyes and then recognition dawned.

“Your mind went plum blank, didn’t it? I remember now. You was so tore up after … “ She stopped and bowed her head for a moment. When she continued, her deep voice was so soft I had trouble hearing her. “The accident. You got the forgets, didn’t you?”

The forgets. Yeah, that’s right. I got the forgets.

“I didn’t just forget the accident. I forgot everything.”

She looked up, startled.

“My mind erased my whole childhood, Bobo. I remember absolutely nothing before I was kneeling in the dirt and the burning car was in the gulley.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“I
did
know that,” she said, wonder in her voice. “Susan and Jericho was tore all to pieces, too. What happened was so terrible I don’t think nobody paid no attention to you a’tall for a while.”

Her rheumy eyes watched the scene in the air in front of her.

“But later on, Jericho did. That night, Jericho sat you down right there.” She pointed to the chair next to where I was sitting. “He wanted to talk to you about the wreck.”

I hadn’t thought of it in years, but I remembered sitting at the table with Jericho asking me questions, his face contorted, full of barely controlled emotion.

“He’d already talked to your Mama and me.” She stopped. “I don’t recollect anymore what he wanted to know.” She tapped her temple with a crooked finger. “Some things is clear as spring water and others is like day-old coffee. Sometimes, I know things and then they just … go away.”

“Jericho’s questions?” I prompted.

“I remember it didn’t do no good to ask you questions. When Jericho got done talking to you, we’d all figured out you didn’t know nothing 'bout nothing.”

The wreck that killed my little sister was the event that slammed the door on my childhood. It had to be all tangled up with whatever was hiding in the closet.

Do I have to go there? I absolutely, 100 percent do not want to hear that story.

My hands were sweating. I was surprised they weren’t shaking, too; the rest of me was. But I had to calm down. I suspected that if I upset her, Bobo wouldn’t tell me anything. I slowly let out my breath and asked the question calmly, almost casually.

“What happened that day, Bobo?”

At first she looked puzzled, like she was rummaging through a cluttered attic full of memories. “I don’t know … “

Then she froze. Her eyes grew wide.

I had time to think:
Well, I guess she found it
, before she bleated, “I don’t know!” again, but this time she sounded like I’d poked her with a cattle prod.

“I wasn’t there! Jericho took you with him 'cause somebody had to stay home with the baby.”

I thought Mama was here. Why’d Bobo have to stay home with Joel?

“
I didn’t see what happened; I don’t know nothing 'bout it!”

She scooted her chair back in a rush and started to stand, like she intended to bolt out of the room.

“Wait!” I was losing her. “I know you weren’t in the car with us. I didn’t mean that, I just wondered—”

“I’m done. If I’d a’knowed that’s what you wanted to talk about, I could have saved you and me both a whole lot a trouble 'cause I don’t know nothing
.”

“If you don’t want to talk about the wreck, we won’t talk about it, OK? We’re not going to talk about the wreck.”

I reached out and patted her gnarled hand. She relaxed a little, but I had to reengage her quick. I scrambled to find a safe subject.

“So … tell me about that morning then, before the wreck.”

I thought that was an innocuous question, but Bobo went off like a bottle rocket.

“
Nothing
happened that morning, nothing a’tall!” She stood and grabbed her teeth. “I got me a boatload of work to do, and I ain’t goin’ to waste no more time—”

In another few seconds she’d be gone.

“My sixth birthday, did Mama bake me a cake?”

It was like I’d thrown cold water in her face.

“A cake?”

“Yeah, a birthday cake. Do you remember? Was it a white cake or chocolate?”

She looked at me with disdain.

“Why, I don’t know what kind of birthday cake your mama made you when you was six. You think I can remember a thing like that after all these years?”

She hadn’t moved yet. If I could just get her to sit back down.

“Do you remember any of my birthdays, Bobo? I don’t. Other people remember having parties and getting presents when they were little kids. Maybe Grandpa turned them over his knee and gave them six swats on the butt and ‘one more to grow on.’ I want to remember, too. Please, help me.”

She didn’t sit down, but she did relax. She looked drained, though. That little snippet of conversation about the accident had worn her out.

“You let me think on it, and I’ll see what I can recall.”

She dropped her teeth into her apron pocket and reached for the breakfast cereal bowls.

“Birthdays, huh,” she murmured, stacked my bowl in hers and carried them to the sink. “I mostly remember Christmases. We made over Christmas more, what with the tree and decorations and such. There’s likely something 'bout your birthdays in that little book, but Christmas—”

“What book?”

“Your diary. Now, the Christmas when you was seven, no, it was when you was eight—”

“I had a diary?”

“Diary?”

My heart struggled to bound out of my chest again.

“Bobo, you said I had a diary.”

She set the cereal bowls in the sink. “Oh, yeah, that brown book. You must have wrote down all sorts of stuff in that book. It was a inch thick. I bet it tells all 'bout your birthdays.”

The world stopped on its axis and sat perfectly still. The only movement in the universe was me shaking.

“This book, the brown book—what makes you think it was my diary?”

She turned and gave me a withering look. “My first clue was how it said ‘My Diary’ on the front. I figured that pretty much ruled out it being
The Farmers’ Almanac
or the
Sears and Roebuck Catalogue.”
She reached under the sink for the bottle of liquid dish washing detergent. “And the second clue was I found it in
your
room.”

She squirted the gold liquid on the dishes and turned on the water. “It was when the third-floor toilet sprung a leak. I forget how long ago—four, five years maybe. It was before your Mama came back home to live.”

She washed the dishes as she described the two inches of standing water in the bathroom, how it had run out into the hall and drained down through the floor into the ceiling of my bedroom below. When the plaster got soaked, it let go and water poured through the hole onto my mirrored dressing table. She’d had to take the drawers out to let them dry so the wood wouldn’t warp. And there it was, a book taped to the bottom of the middle drawer.

I listened in rapt attention, but my mind was multitasking. It was throwing confetti and shooting off fireworks, too! A book with all the answers. Could it really be that easy?

Would I remember them when I read about the events on the pages? Or would it just be basic information—like I knew I had a blue dress with lace around the collar when I was a little girl because I was wearing it in one of the old snapshots. But I couldn’t
remember
the dress. Could I know all the things that happened, but still have no memories of them? Would it all come back at once?

“I liked to never got nobody in here to replaster that ceiling where the water come through. And when I asked the fella what it was going to cost, he just shook his head and said, ‘Oh, it’ll run ya!’ I knowed right then he was goin’ to charge—”

“Bobo, where’s the book?”

“What b—?”

“The diary! Where’s the diary?”

“Oh, I don’t have no idea.”

This can’t be happening.

“Bobo, please try to remember. Where did you put the book?”

“Somewhere safe,” she said with conviction, then took her teeth out of her pocket and rinsed them in the cold tap water. “I remember I looked around for a long time 'fore I found me a place I thought was safe enough, where wouldn’t nothing happen to it.”

She put her teeth back in, flinched when they connected with her sore gums, then tried to talk without moving her mouth. “I idn’t ont oo ose it ike …”

“Bobo, I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I didn’t want to lose it,” she repeated with a grimace of pain, “like that red scarf Barbara lost the day I found the book.”

“Who’s Barbara?”

Who’s on first?

“Edgar’s wife.” The look on her face became positively coquettish. “Barbara don’t know nothing a’tall’s going on; she ain’t figured out the two of us is sweet on each other.” She giggled like a teenager and continued in a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s a secret. Don’t you tell nobody, hear? You promise?”

“I promise I won’t tell a soul.” I put my head in my hands and struggled not to cry.

Bobo went to the back door, lifted her faded prairie-settler bonnet off the hook beside the porch light switch, set it on her thin white hair and tied the strings in a bow under her chin. “I got to go feed the chickens.”

She pushed open the screen door, leaned over and lifted a metal bucket out of the clutter of junk on the porch—an old, hand-crank ice cream freezer, two large washtubs, an open barbecue grill with a bag of charcoal briquettes, a can of starter fluid and a long-nose lighter lying inside, and hand tools she used in the garden.

Then she stopped and looked back at me, her eyes barely visible in the black tunnel of bonnet.

“You used to like to help me gather the eggs when you was a little girl.”

The image formed in my head between one heartbeat and the next.

The hot, close feel of the small building. The dim interior. The glow of sunlight from the open door. The smell of dirty straw, bird crap, feathers and chicken feed. Fat birds, fluttering off the nests, squawking in protest in the shadows. My hand reaching out toward an empty nest, fingers curling around a small, warm ball down deep in the straw.

“I found one, Bobo!” I squeal in delight. “I found one!”