Inanimate Eyes

Once again I had to reenter the billion year old house where my Grandmother hides from everything. It is a crypt filled of lost belongings which are surrounded by a grim smell. The smell of death and ancient dust. My Grandmother slowly crawls out of her room, fixing the curtains as she passes. I say hello and kiss her soft falling cheek. In Spanish, she tells me how I should smile more. I pet her cloudy white hair. The same hair my Mother has, but always paints. Then I give a fake smile and drift away. I sit in the wooden frame that is embedded in pillows. My Mother sits with my Grandmother in the lace dining area. There’s a room in the corner where my mother says she was born, and in the walls there are rumors of forgotten caskets. They start to talk about family and gossip. I begin to slowly fall into tedium.

Before I know it I am dreaming. Imagining I am back home. Seeing my loud little black dog, barking and hopping in excitement. I tell her to shut up. All I want is my soft bed. All I want is to be surrounded by my books once again. Then I get to my bed. I lay down, and then the books begin to multiply. Before I know it the books are surrounding me. Then all of the sudden they disappear, my room becomes pitch black, and a Mexican priest comes out of the shadows. He is telling me to become a believer once again. To rejoice in God’s name and allow his love to surround me like the books that took his place. I start to smell menudo and soon I realize that it was a dream.

I wake up; notice my Grandmother turned on the television. It never shifts from the religious channel. Today there is a Mexican priest speaking about believing. I don’t believe him. I slowly sit myself back up, but my butt is asleep and I have a stomach ache. I need to pee, and the smell of menudo has woken up Hunger. He had only fallen a sleep a few hours ago. I decide to go to the restroom, not realizing how much danger this would put me in. I wait for my butt to join Hunger and wake up. And then I stand up on my tired feet. I was wearing Doc Martens, though it was too hot for boots. It’s always to hot for boots in Mexico. But I knew I was coming to this house, and this house always has a chill. I move one boot in front of the other. Watching the cracked floor as I move, but they catch me: The dolls, the old photos, the saints and gods, and even the eyeless stuffed animals. I move faster; ignoring them. I can’t look up. I just can’t. If I look at them I will be sure to panic. Those ancient dolls with their red eyes. Those vintage photos with their dead eyes. Then the saints and gods with their believing eyes. And even the stuffed animals that no have no eyes.

They will all look at me the moment I look up. They know everything about me. What I do at night, and how I’ve started smoking. They probably even know about that one time I wore that revealing shirt, went to that ugly place, and did that one thing I will never do again. They know everything, because they have been following me ever since the first day I entered that house. Ever since I was less than a year old.

These dolls are the reason for my, indescribable, fear of all inanimate things that have or should have eyes. Well it is describable. But, because I am panicking about my, quite describable, fear of inanimate things that have or should have eyes, I run into the metal bathroom door. My Mother screams at me asking what happened. I tell her the bathroom doors ran into me, and then I open those cruel doors. While there I do what people usually do in the bathroom, but, unlike usual people, I have to sit on my Grandmother’s old lady toilet seat. I pretend I am levitating. I do the rest, you know, empty my bladder, and then wash my hands in the small pink sink. The weak water barely can fight off the little amount of soap that I’ve put on my hands. .

When I exited, I remembered not to look up, but I did not go back to that pillowed wood. Instead I take a right turn into my uncle’s room. The room where I have spent multiple nights in as a kid. In that bed, with red old sheets, I had attempted to sleep as the world outside the window screamed at me. Some years, when my uncle would visit; he and his son would take that same room. In that bed his son had very moist dreams. Mischievous dreams that loved emptying his bladder. And those came again and again until he was 16, but that is only because he stopped visiting when he was 16. I sit on that same bed, still not looking up. I remembered that one year I fell asleep when I arrived from the airport. When I woke up there was a dead rat next to my face. On that bed, with the same red old sheets, I became an insomniac. Finally, I look up, and there was the only photo I could never be afraid of. It was the photo of my late Aunt, a woman everyone said I looked like. She was my Mother’s best friend. She had died before I was born. In the same crash that took my Grandfather. Two people I would have loved to meet, but also the same two people I will never meet. My Mother has always talked so fondly about them. Telling me stories that are always changing.

As I look at that picture, she smiles at me, like she always does, and I smile back. At that moment, I forget about everything. I forget about the red sheeted bed that once was moist and that made me an insomniac. I forget about the bathroom and the levitating toilet. I forget about running into the door and the walking on the cracked floor. I forget why I ever wore those boots. I forget the priest telling me too believe and the books once surrounding me. I forget my dog and her repetitive barks. I forget my Grandmother’s old soft skin and how one day she was sure to disappear. I forget my Mother who always gossiped, and how she has my Grandmother’s curly hair. I forget I fell asleep. I forget the dusty smell of death that I kept inhaling. I forget all the gossip and the rumors that echoed inside these walls. I forget that one day I might just be a photo on those walls. And most importantly, I even forget my fear of all inanimate things that have or should have eyes.

For that moment, all those inanimate eyes were off me.