willful forgetfulness

Sid fell asleep on the floor.

The floor was swept clean of dirt, old broken chips, and all memories of the girl whose room it once was. Pastor Hartman and his wife argued over whether to leave her room intact or to clean the mess. His wife wanted to hold onto the feeling that she was still alive; the paster wanted cleanliness. This was the last argument the girl had been a part of; her name was now left out of conversations. Willful forgetfulness had become an art to the good pastor Hartman and his wife Danica. Willful destruction had become a game to Sid.

“Sid!! Come here.” Pastor Hartman was not the type who liked to repeat himself. Obedience was a core value. If Sid didn’t respond, it would be disobedience. If he didn’t respond, the pastor would assume Sid had gone running off to find sin with friends which would lead to a different kind of unpleasant conversation. Sid chose not to respond. He had always been safe in his sister’s room. His father hadn’t gone into the girl’s abandoned room in two years.

The room was considered to no longer be a part of the house. It stood as apart from the house as an abandoned shack in a farmer’s field. The floor was cold in her room. Only Sid knew that because he would sometimes go in, open her window, lie down on the floor, and feel the wind breathe and the sunlight flicker like a girl jumping on the bed. The girl flickered – between 4 and 17 – for his first and last memories of her and then flickered away into the light of the soft orange sun. For all the sermons in the world, the only spirit he could sense in the world had been hers and now nothing except sunburn. He and his sister had been taught young how to pray, but the thought of praying to a stranger in the air felt aimless. The only time felt like he was praying was when his thoughts spoke to his sister.

Sid rolled to his side to look under her bed for the pencil sketched angel she drew when she was 6. She thought it would protect her from the monsters in the dark. Their dad would have been angry if he knew, but mom found it before he did. Together mom, Sid, and her pushed the bed to the opposite side of the room, so that the angel could safely hide without the risk of being washed away or painted over. They painted the other walls light blue when she turned 13 and she begged them to keep the white wall as an accent colour; dad didn’t know it was to protect her angel.

Loud footsteps up the stairs. The door opened. Pastor Hartman stood in the doorframe. Sid lay with eyes closed. A quaking loud clunk shook Sid’s head as the pastor dropped a pile of empty brown cardboard boxes, a boxcutter, and packaging tape. Sid hit his head on the bottom of the bed as he rushed to push himself up from the floor.

“Did you not hear me?”

“I was asleep.”

“Since you’re not busy, you can clean up this room.”

“It’s spotless. What – you mean dust?”

“Put the things you want to keep in your room; the rest we’ll put in storage.”

“It’s Alana’s room.” As Sid said her name, the pastor turned his head away. “We don’t use this room for anything. There’s no reason –”

“Alana isn’t here.”

“What do you have against Alana?”

“We’re getting two foster kids instead of one, so we need the space.” The pastor recoiled from the room as if it were a dead thing.

The one fear Sid had was that his father might find the angel and recoil from that too. It was just a drawing on a wall to Sid before – when she was alive. When she died, it became a living thing, or it had always been alive as something she etched into creation, and he was just now beginning to see it for what it was. It was as if it were here to protect him too, just as it had done when she was a child.

The room had been mostly decluttered two years ago. Her most precious items had been given to friends and divided amongst the family. What was left were the things she really used on a daily basis and now were left useless.

Things that should have a purpose, but now cannot fulfil their functions like incomplete sentences. A hairbrush that would no longer be used to detangle. Clothes not to be worn. Everything in a box.

In a small hole in the wall behind a shelf in her closet, he found her secret hiding spot. He found some pills, and a bottle of vodka. Half empty. Sid closed the door before opening the bottle. Not to drink, but imagine his sister opening the bottle too and how she must have hidden it from the pastor.

At the first party he went to in high school, Sid drank enough to walk in circles and heave up puke before he realized he was vomiting – vomiting right on his family’s doorstep. He tried to clean it up, but made so much unintentional noise, the pastor woke up. With loud steps he came down the stairs.

“I didn’t raise you to seek your own destruction.” The pastor spat. “Live in your filth.” And he locked the front door.

Sid woke up on wet porch, breathing in cold mist.

Instead of being grounded, his father sat him down on the couch. And asked him how he felt. Sid said he felt fine. His father slid a glass to him and poured a glass of whiskey. His father asked him again how he felt. Sid said he felt queasy. His father waited for him to finish the drink and he asked him again how he felt. Sid said he was sorry. His father poured another drink. Sid didn’t want to drink it. In the end Sid puked again. He fell asleep in his sister’s room.

Sid reached his hand deeper into the hole in the wall and pulled out a brown paper box – tapped tight shut. Again, he lay on the floor and turned his head to the angel.

His father saw the box in Sid's hand. "She had many sins too."