3:05 PM
It was Spring Break and I had nothing to do. All of my friends were either somewhere exotic or downtown having fun with their friends. But not me, I was sitting at home staring out the window at the shack across the street. Just look at it I thought. It was covered in vines and leaves going in all directions. The yard did not have beautiful blooming flowers like all the others on Dante Street. Instead, it had a random white lawn chair, (a dirty white lawn chair to be exact) big, shiny, black Hefty brand garbage bags lined on the far right, a broken circular table in the center of the yard and the skinniest tree I have ever seen. Hanging from a limp branch was an empty gallon of milk carton, open on one side, filled with kitchen scraps. A brown little bird along with two others fly over to the milk carton and pick their beaks at the scrapings.
I have always wondered what that house across the street looks like up close. I have never walked by that house, so I would not know. I can only see a few things from my seat by the window. However, more than that, I have always wanted to know what it looks like in the inside. Is it as messy as the exterior? What does it smell like? Is the floor covered in yellow shag carpet not thrown out during the 80’s or are the walls covered with Picasso paintings. My siblings and I have always wondered such things but there was no way of figuring them out. Actually, I do not know a lot about the woman in that house. All I know is that she is very tiny and old. Other than that, I am clueless about her. I know what I can do today. Instead of sitting here looking at the most unfortunate house I have ever seen, I could ask Bubba about the woman across the street.
Bubba was an old woman who was seventy-five years old who lives next door to me. It is a well- known fact that she has been living on Dante Street for fifty years and knows about everyone who lives in a two-mile radius of her house. How she knows such things I would like to know, but that is beside the point. It has also been said that she was once a rebel in her twenties. Actually, Bubba was the most interesting person on my block. So I decide to go next door and interrogate Bubba. I open the worn iron fence which creeks and run up the three steps to her house. When I come to the screen door, I pull the red string hanging from her bell. I yank the worn string and I can hear the echo of the bell yelling “YOO-HOO!” in the living room. I walk in because Bubba’s door is always open and she doesn’t mind and I remember to take off my dirty Converse low tops at the door. She is very particular about her Andy Warhol inspired rug of her cat Cactus. I hear her in the kitchen cooking so I walk down the hallway towards the back of the house.
3:10 PM“Hey Bubba” I say once I enter.
I can see that she is making smothered chicken, my favorite!
“Aloha Nelly, what’s shakin’” Bubba asks me.
I never understood why she always greeted me with an “aloha” because she is not even Hawaiian. In fact, Bubba is Creole and was born in New Orleans to tarot card readers.
“Ah nothin’. I just wanted some information on Ms. Flemming. You know, the lady who lives in that tacky shack across the street.”
As Bubba tried to recollect all the facts that she has learned about Ms. Flemming over the years, she place a drumstick over an island of rice that sat on top a mystic blue plate.
“Here you go Nelly,” she said while she drizzled extra sauce on my chicken and placed the plate in front of me. “Well… let me think. She moved here to Chicago in the 1950’s with her mom and dad. They were sharecroppers like most people and had little money. Ya’ see she was a real activist in the 1970’s and was an animal rights activist. Ya’ see that’s why she cares so much about animals. Hence the empty gallon of milk container in the yard” Bubba explained.
As I stuffed the last few grains of rice in my mouth I asked, “Bubba, how do you know so much about Ms. Flemming anyway. I mean, I never see you talking to her…”
“Well… if you must know Nosey Posey, I know a lot about her because when she first moved on this block everyone thought she was a witch.”
“Well, she always had cats, dogs, birds and rats in her house. She felt bad for the birds because they were malnourished, and for the rats because they were always bein’ ate up by the cats in the winter. Therefore, she figured that if she took the animals into her house they would be safe. Talk ‘round the town back then was that she had chicken and rabbit feet hanging over doorways and sacrificed doves and chickens were found in her basement. It was also said that splashes chicken blood could be found on the floors of all the rooms of her house,” Bubba explained.
“Why would she kill them?”
“I don’t know Sweet Potato, I really don’t. And why ya’ wanna know all of this” asked Bubba as she started to get upset.
“I’ve just always wanted to know what it looked like in that house,” I said.
“Well, I actually don’t know what it looks like in that house. Ya’ see I’ve only heard rumors about it. Anyways, why aren’t you hangin’ out with your friends? That what you youngins say today?”
“Yes Bubba, that’s what us “youngins” say nowadays. But if you must know I wasn’t invited to go anywhere with my so called friends. But look who’s talkin’! Shouldn’t you be planting coin-settias or something” I asked jokingly.
“They’re called POINsettias and I was getting ready to go to a funeral tomorrow.”
“Who died?” I asked abruptly.
“Ms. Flemming’s daughter. I felt as if I should go because when Josephine was little she would always bake me cookies” said Bubba as she reminisced Josephine’s small round face and the warm smell of her double chocolate chip cookies she used to make.
“So when is it?”
“The funeral is in about an hour so if you would kindly exist my establishment, I would like to get dressed.”
“Okay Bubba, but don’t kiss Josephine alright” I said as I slipped back on my shoes.
“And why not? Everyone gives the person who has just passed a peck as they file out the room when the services are over” Bubba said concerned.
“Well if you wanna kiss a dead lady, go right ahead,” I said as I walked out the door. As I closed Ms. Flemming’s prehistoric gate I heard her laughing so I chuckled myself.
3:51 PM
I walked over to my house with my head hanging down because I knew that once I entered my screen door, I would have to entertain myself. Whereas when I was next door, I was doing half the work. I entertained Ms. Flemming and she entertained me in return. But that was all over now. I had entered the house already. I plopped on the big, black leather couch and turned on the TV. Nothing was on, and I mean nothing. MTV was rerunning episodes of True Life, BET reran the Game, and Teen Nick had a marathon of Degrassi episodes from 2001. I finally turned to my favorite show Phineas and Ferb. In every episode, Phineas says “I know what we’re gonna do today” and I knew what I was going to do as well, but I needed some rest before I could make this bid discovery. The last words that I heard before I fell asleep were from the Phineas and Ferb theme song. “There’s one-hundred and four days of summer vacation and school comes along just to end it. So the annual problem of our generation is finding a good way to spend it…”
4:45 PM I woke up refreshed and ran to the window. Bubba’s 2008 Prius was gone and so was Ms. Flemming’s yellow 2004 Ford Focus. This was my perfect opportunity; I would finally know what the shack across the street’s interior looked like. I figured that funerals would last about two and a half hours, which would be plenty of time for me to enter the house, look around and get out of there. Before I left, I grabbed a jacket, and a camera. I was set for my journey. I turned on the alarm and left.
As I locked the bottom lock on the screen door, I zipped up my jacket and walked swiftly across the street. I knew that it would be easy to break in because Ms. Flemming was old and the old people on my block never locked their doors. I made my way through the cluttered yard and entered. I held my breath because I thought that the smell of dead chickens and doves would be too much for my nose to handle. However, I was wrong; so wrong…
4:51 PM
As I used all of my might to push the door open, a very misty breeze slapped my face. I clenched onto my jacket and zipped it all the way up. I wiped the salt water from my face and turned around to close the door. As I turned around a surfboard hit my toe. I looked around the room in awe; my eyes grew bigger like a cartoon character’s would. A strong wind blew strands of my hair from my loose ponytail. I used my hand and brushed the frayed strands. It was a beach! Ms. Flemming’s living room was a beach in Hawaii. There were surfers everywhere catching big waves on their newly waxed surfboards. I looked down at my self and expected to see the front of my pants to be wet but they were not. Instead, I was wearing a sleek, black wet suit.
“Aloha, wanna surf,” said someone in the background
Aloha. Aloha. I replayed those words in my head. Aloha. What does that mean? Who is saying this? Is he or she talking to me? How did I get to Hawaii? A million thoughts were running through my mind. I felt as if I was in the Twilight Zone. I heard the voice again and I turned around and saw a beautifully sculpted person standing there talking to me.
“Aloha,” he repeated
“Aloha,” I mimicked, hoping that what I said made sense.
“Dude, if you wanna surf you can rent a surf board from the board shop over there,” he said pointing to a small stand similar to a lemonade stand but instead constructed of bamboo sticks.
Aloha. Do I want to surf? Do I know how to surf? Whom is this handsome person talking to me? Without replying, I walked over to the stand made of bamboo. The owner told me to come behind the counter to pick a board. There were so many to choose among. Ones with swirls, ones with polka dots, others with stripes, and some were blue, others pink and yellow. I decided to choose the one with a pink and white zebra print. As I extended my hand and on touched the desired board, I felt a tingle and entered the Twilight Zone again. I was unaware of my surroundings and did not know how this was happening to me.
5:13 PM At first, I felt my face was beginning to get hot. It felt as if the sun was shining directly at my face from three feet away. Then I felt massive drops of sweat running down my face as if they were racing each other and the finish line was located at the bottom of my chin. Wait, I heard something. It was as if another person was talking to me. Snap out of it Nelly. C’mon, come back. Make out those words being spoken to you. “Are”…”you”… wait, aren’t those letters? R and U. “Okay?” Okay… those are two more letters. Do they spell something? RUOK. Ru-ok? What does ru-ok mean? ROOO-OK. There it was again. It was the same voice as last time, yet I could not make out his words. He comes over to me. His face blocks the sun from my eyes. Wait, he asked me if I was okay. yes, YES! I’M OKAY! If only I could say it to him.
“Y-y-eee-ssssssss,” I force out of my mouth. I wondered if I said the right thing and if he understood what I said. He didn’t reply so I tried to say it again.
“Y-y-es. Yes. I’m okay,” I say. Once that is said, he moves his head and the sun comes back and beams on my head.
The road beneath me is rocky and my body, along with the bodies of the other passengers sway left then right, left then right. We stop shortly and the same person that stood over me has something in his hands. He walks forward and holds the thing to his mouth. It is a black stick with a silver ball on top of it. He announces us to look to our right so we did. There I saw a large brown animal hiding in tall brown grass. It reminded me of a field of wheat. The grass blew in the wind, left then right as we did minutes before. The brown animal had sharp pearly white teeth and medium brown hair framed his face. I have seen this animal before but I cannot remember his name. I remember seeing an animal like it in a movie once. Finally, the name of the movie came to mind. The Lion King. Yes, it was a lion! But wait, where do lions live. Yes, I remember, Africa! I was on a safari in Africa!
The tour guide asked us to look to our left as the car started to move. Tall giraffes stretched their necks to reach the leaves on the tree. I finally knew where I was and I felt safe and comfortable. I enjoyed the laughter of the people in the car when we saw a baby giraffe trying to stand on his own but kept falling down. As I started to relax, I heard a faint voice and a knock. I tried to make out the rushed words but I could not. “Police” I heard. “Police! Open up!” Once I heard those three words, the beautiful amber sky of Africa faded until it became completely black, the car beneath me stopped swaying and the people’s laughter became silent. I was no longer in Africa or Hawaii. I was standing in an ordinary living room. Hardwood floors, a love seat, a long L-shaped couch, a TV, a rug and a chandelier made up my surroundings. I must be in Ms. Flemming’s living room. I realized that indeed I was standing in Ms. Flemming’s living room. I looked down and noticed that I no longer had on a wet suit, but instead my blue and purple windbreaker. The voice came again and a pound at the door followed. I was very nervous. I stood there frozen and felt a wet sensation on the front on my pants. I started to cry and then it happened. The front door was kicked in and it fell towards the ground. Three seconds later, so did I.
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