Inanimate Eyes
Once again I had to reenter the billion year old house where my Grandmother hides from everything. Waiting in her crypt, she 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 give a fake smile and drift away. I sit in the wooden frame that is embedded with pillows. My Mother sits with my Grandmother in the moldy dining area. Next to them there is a small window that leads into a corner room where my mother says she was born, in the walls are rumors of forgotten caskets. My Mother and Grandmother start to gossip about the family. I try to ignore their Spanish batter and begin to slowly fall into tedium.
I soon fall back to reality and notice my Grandmother has turned on the television. Today there is a Mexican priest speaks about believing. I don’t believe him. I slowly sit myself back up. I need to pee. I decide to go to the restroom, not realizing how much danger this will put me in. I stand up on my tired feet. I move one foot in front of the other. Watching the cracked floor as I move, 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. Even the stuffed animals that 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 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 doors. I open those same, cold, metal 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.
When I exit, I remember not to look up, but I do not go back to that pillowed wood. Instead I take a right turn into my Uncle’s room. The room where I spent multiple nights in as a kid. In that bed, with ratty old sheets, I had attempted to sleep as the world outside the window screamed at me. I sit on that same bed, still not looking up. 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 died before I was born. My Mother tells me stories about her 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 forgot about everything. I forgot the dusty smell of death. I forgot all the gossip and the rumors that echoed inside these walls. I forgot that one day I might just be a photo on those walls. And most importantly, I even forgot my fear of all inanimate things that have or should have eyes.
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