Living in Squalor!

 

I head downstairs, the overwhelming scent of mold permeates throughout the room. Garbage and wet clothes are scattered everywhere and makeshift hammocks adorn the ceiling. A dirty rabbit hutch reeks of urine and feces, and the rotting smell of dead mice or some other mysterious animal buried beneath the filthy ruble burns my nose. As the intense aroma penetrates my eyes, they begin to water incessantly, I don’t think I can handle this. With a trash bag in one hand and plugging my nose with the other, I proceed down into the dingy basement. I  begin wading through the plethora of items in my path, deciding what to keep and what to throw out, I’m disgusted at what I see, my mother would have never let it get like this. 

I stand, staring at a massive pile of clothes laying on the damp floor by the washing machine. It feels like just yesterday my mother died and suddenly life went from living in splendor to living in squalor. For me, living in “splendor” didn’t mean living in some extravagant mansion with marble floors and a spiral staircase, to me, it meant living in a quaint little townhouse decorated with precious moments figurines and glass animal knickknacks. I look around, I can feel guilt mounting, how could we let this happen, what would my mother think right now? 

I start grabbing clothes by the handful and stuffing them into the garbage bag. I take my time, I have no interest in doing this and to no surprise the boys aren’t helping any, they think this is a joke. My father is upstairs with my grandmother, aunts and uncle. My grandmother is a tyrant, a wretched witch in my opinion. My siblings may feel otherwise but I have zero respect for her, she is an enabler, she feels some sort of obligation to “help” my dad because he is a widow with ten kids. The funny thing is, her idea of helping is by providing him with alcohol or a  ride to the store to buy alcohol, therefore, she is utterly useless, in fact she is aiding in the abuse by feeding his disgusting habit. 

I continue to work, slowly plugging away, section by section. My grandmother makes her way downstairs, she is furious at the lack of progress that has been made and I start to see Hitler making his appearance. Much like Hitler would begin a speech, my grandmother  stands there, arms crossed in total silence, making us wait in anticipation for what she has to say. Eventually, she starts to speak slowly in a low, condescending tone, slowly building to a crescendo of fury. Face red and spit spraying across the room, she makes her point, we offer our salute and continue to work until my grandnazi decides to relieve us of our duties. 

Today, I often wonder if that house is where any reminder of my mother remains. Before she died, she wrote all of her children letters, she entrusted them to my father, sadly, a poor choice because he decided to hold onto the letters until he felt we were old enough to read them. We never received our letters, my father was to busy wallowing in self pity to pay attention to anything of value or importance, like those letters or his children. The house was falling apart beneath him, but, he was to consumed with alcohol and his desire for his own daughter that he didn’t even notice. I think those letters  were left in that house, trapped beneath the remains of precious moments figurines and never to be seen again.