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"It's Only A Week"
I remember the first day I had ever laid eyes on that musty old building. It looked like a church, an arch of stairs leading up to two massive white doors. A red brick building with one white painted tile to the right of the doors, inscribed with what looked like a finger were the number 1928. Even at six I could add. 1928 was 12 years ago. Twelve years this building had been up, but my mother never told me what it was. And as soon as I walked in to the odor of old wood and the smells of small children, a pain arose in my stomach and all I could think of was fresh air.
I didn’t understand what was going on and no one would tell me. My mother kept pulling at me and telling me to settle down and to stop. The word “no” was used often and after a while, I suppose a trick to calm me down, she knelt and took me by the arms, shaking me lightly and said “you are only going to be here for a couple days, it is a right of passage, every little girl ends up here for a while, just to be straightened out properly. It’s only a week.” This had calmed my tantrum and reassured that all these terrible feelings and smells would go away soon.
The rest of the tour went fast; there wasn’t much at all to see. Once you were in, there was this huge wall of mirrors; they slid two huge doors open to reveal the largest room I had ever seen. Beds, 6 or seven rows of them filled the room, I remember thinking there were more beds in that room then there were people in the town. All of them made up so neat and tidy as if they had never been touched. I found a bed in the back corner that I claimed as my own, showing it to my mom, who wasn’t much interested. The doors were shut and I deemed that to be my favorite room of the whole place. To the right was a classroom, not very big, where the children did not move, did not speak, they didn’t even seem to be breathing. Like statues they seemed to be frozen in their seats, listening intently to the person at the front of the room that was speaking in a foreign language and slapping the board with a long ruler every chance she got. The books looked as though someone had used them to do something with, although I was fairly certain and now quite certain, that reading and learning from them were not what they were used for. The desks were old and musty like the rest of the building but yet in some way, like the room they almost seemed untouched, three rows, seven desks in each row, but not even half of them were filled. Back then the town was small so there weren’t that many kids in it.
On the other side of the building was a sort of fork, to the right of the fork was a place they called the office, and living quarters up stairs for the owners and the staff, who in later days it became apparent that the owner and her son were the staff, with the occasional hired help. I never knew what was upstairs, nor did I have any interest, I was only staying a week, those upstairs meant nothing to me. On the other side of the fork however, was the most important room of them all, though not my favorite in the house. This room showed life. It wasn’t clean in fact it was extremely lived in and terribly dirty. “This is the play room,” an old lady had told my mother. “A place where the kids spend most of their free time, especially when it is storming all year outside.” It had stormed a lot that year which was a shame because the building had a great big back yard full of more toys to play with. The room had more toys than I had ever seen, and certainly more room then the other had. It seem strange to me though that there were blankets every where, covering the floors, over the dressers, wadded up in corners, I wondered why they hadn’t just left them in the room with all the beds.
A loud bell sounded over head and I could hear voices coming from down the hall. The kids were headed this way, but before they got to me, they were shuffled out the front door into the back yard. I remembered they all looked so stiff and mad, like all of them were mad. I felt them staring at me as my parents were taken into the office. Their eyes made my stomach pains once again return, and all I wanted to do was try to convince my mother that this was not the place for little old me after all. I didn’t know what I would say to her but it seemed to me that the kids in this place had no intention of sharing their room and toys with the new kid, and I was determined to get my way.
It was a long time before my parents came out of the office, and by then, the eyes had gone back to the toys in the yard. I pleaded with my mother who shoved me back as I tried to wrap my hands around her waist. The harder I clung to her the more she pushed me away, until giant arms behind me took hold, and I watched my mother walk out the front door, without so much as a glance in my direction. Not even a wave or a nod, or some sort of response to let me know that it was just a week and that she loved me. But she had said a week and in a week I would be back home with her, and everything would be fine. She meant to say she loved me she just forgot. And as my parents drove away it kept turning in my mind, one week, that’s all just one week.
I watched them leave and felt the tears come, but I made them go away, and instead took my place in a dark corner. I crumpled my body into a small ball lost amongst the blankets. The kids came in from being outside and shuffled into the play room once more, I watched them as they took off the nice clothes and surprisingly neatly folded them and put them into one dresser, which was then locked by the woman who liked slamming the ruler. She didn’t seem strict though, just distant, like it was all an act and what she really wanted was to be free of this place. That was the first day she had been there, it would also be her last, she never came back.
The kids came up to me once in a while, the ones my age and smaller, looking at me, and offering me their toys. I wasn’t having it. I sat in my corner all day, and at night when it was finally ready to go lay in the bed I knew I would enjoy so much. I finally got up to go, and they all laid down to sleep. The lights went out, the noise died down and all that could be heard were the sounds outside the window. I didn’t understand, there were perfectly good beds in the other room, why were we in here. So I took my stubborn self out to the hallway and decided I was sleeping in MY bed. About half way down the hall, however, a woman’s hand touched my shoulder. She guided me back to the play room and pushed me in. It wasn’t harsh, but it wasn’t gentle, it was a swift reminder of who the boss was. “This is where you sleep.” She must have been waiting, it must have happened too many times before. Somehow I knew not to argue with her, so I took my seat back in my dark corner and I watched the moon outside my window until it disappeared over the top of the building. Somewhere between “what now?” and “what about all my stuff?” I finally drifted off to sleep.





 
 
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