Finding My Voice

If walls could talk, I suppose I might be the one the people ask to pipe down a bit from time to time. That is not to say being a wall with major plumbing running through my core bothers me too much. Nor does it mean my voice is the result of loose pipes rattling below my surface, I assure you I can speak.

Plus, there are a lot of perks to having hot water pipes course through my insides. I mean, I am always warm. At first I didn't really see it as a positive, I was indifferent to my warmth. When I met my best friend, he convinced me that my warmth was one of my best attributes. Let me tell you our story.

It all started one night. Mom was saying her prayers. Wait. Let me go a little further back.

Me and the other walls had spent quite a bit of time alone. The emptiness of our rooms when no one was here was like a dark winter in the hottest of summers, it was cold and drafty, mostly the water didn't run, the lights were always off, air hung dead in the expanses between us. We all kept to ourselves, we live in a house, house walls see the most and least of a person's life, we hardly ever carry on conversations amongst ourselves. We aren't as glamourous as the theatre walls, we don't bear the same burdens as church walls. House walls mostly don't even get names and when we adopt names most of the time they are undignified descriptors of our hangings. My studs once held a wall up called "Sweet Pin-up Baby". Three guesses how that wall got their name! I didn't adopt my name until I met Rex and Mom. All in all we are pretty mediocre walls, our construction is decent, sheetrock, concrete plaster for stability and decor, we are definitely eggshell, but our plaster is beautifully textured. Rex says watching the light move across my texture is one of his favorite games to pass the time.

One day in the fall she arrived. Her friends helped her, it was mostly just clothes and a bed and blankets and pillows everywhere. That is what I remember of that first day. I remember wishing I could scream, "Put the bed here so I can keep you warm!"

I remember all of the walls bargaining for purpose with entities that would not and likely could not fathom carrying on a canversation with a wall in the first place. The other rooms buzzed with pleas for posters and boxes overall I think the vibrations reflected a overarching joy in the presence of people. Walls are expected to suffer in silence, we see everything, we hear everything, we know only what we can witness in our own rooms. Here again there a great many famous and infamous walls in this world, I am not one of them.

You see, people don't listen, so I stopped bargaining for purpose, I stopped begging for existential fulfillment. Instead I piped down a bit and started observing how the proverbial chips fell. I assume because I am a wall that the chips are paint chips or wood chips, afterall those are genuinely the only chips I had ever encountered falling. Nevertheless I persisted in my new found empirical vantage point.

She brought in a different pile of blankets. I was still amazed a bit that she chose our room at all. We have only ever been a guest room, never ever had we been the main bedroom, how exciting this was turning out to be.

So these blankets that she brought in, some were fuzzy and some fluffy, there were a few that looked tattered and worn; some of them were brightly colored. She threw the whole pile down in the corner I share with "Street". Street was estatic.

In the corner Street shares with "North Ex" the lady had started setting up the bed. North Ex was so cocky.

That wall actually asked me, "How do you feel knowing the person has chosen to lay their head and ground their dreams so near to my surface and not yours?"

I feel like North Ex is always looking for reassurance neatly wrapped in passive aggressive notions. We face eachother, how could I tell North Ex my viewpoint of the lady was far superior to any angle the wall could see her from. Imagination is not North Ex's strong point, after all their name came from a small pencil mark on the back of their sheetrock, it wasn't a proper name it was the label they were given during construction so North Ex and I would not be confused with one another. I couldn't bear to break their heart. When a wall's heart is broken the whole house shudders, so I stayed quiet. The lady left the room when she came back again she had another set of blankets and plopped those right on to the bed. I was so confused. What were these blankets for that were still piled high in the corner I share with Street.

Her phone rang and she promised someone that she would be right over to pick him up. She then anxiously spun around the room and sharpened her eye to the pile of blankets. There was a long sigh and she began taking the blankets one by one from the pile. She folded each one with care and laid them all one on top of the other. I had no idea what she was doing. Don't blankets go on the bed? When she had finished folding them all she scooted the edges into the corner Street and I share and made sure the long end of the pad she had created creeped along my baseboard. I had not touched anything in quite some time I even thought just then my adopted name might become something along the lines of "Blanket Stack" or "Blanket Master". I am sure glad I did not choose one of those names. Mine would soon arrive.

She left again.

It seemed like a long time she was gone. When she came back there was a terrible sound. It was like a freight train had found its way up the stairs, suddenly this giant black and brown mass came bounding through every room of the house, the walls were gasping and groaning. Sometimes we call them Woof Woofs, or GrowlyGrumps.

This one had a name, the lady had a huge smile on her face and she called him RexRyan. He was the biggest woofwoof I had ever encountered. Stud told me once that there was a woofwoof that peed on Sweet Pin-up Baby. I hoped this would not come to pass. I observed and said nothing as the giant stared at all the walls. He came near the blanket stack stepped on top, circled a bit then laid down. As he slept he started to snore, I didn't know woofwoofs could talk, but hey, most people don't recognize talking walls so how crazy could it be that this woofwoof could also speak. He snortled a little chuff and then curled into my textured plaster with his fur. This was the first time I met Rex and I am certain he must've heard us talking amongst ourselves while he slept. I know when he curled in and leaned closer to my surface I felt for the first time the sensation of a hug. As difficult as it is for a wall to have a hug this woofwoof did it in the first 5 minutes of our new life together. I pretty quickly lost interest in making friendly with the lady and focused my voice, intentions and love directly into this big ball of fur along my baseboard.

The days would come and go. Rex and I became friends. First I could just feel him speaking to me when he was alone. To his surprise the first time I spoke back to him he was having a bad time. Rex was afraid of sirens. He would cry and howl, he thought the sounds were coming for him. He would plead for help because he knew what was behind the sounds, they had come for him before. I would get so mad. Walls don't have a concept of money, we do not understand how a person can not take up spaces for living for free like the trees or the flowers, we do not compute the concept of working for money to have a space to not be in at all times. It was depressing. I didn't know how to help my friend. All he wanted ever was for his Mom to come back to tell him it was ok and that they were not coming for him. So that's what I said.

First I waited until the awoos of his howl had subsided and then I whispered to the woof,

"Hey Rex, it is going to be ok. The woo woos are not coming for us."

He looked up from his cower, and stared deeply at my texture the sun shining through the blinds cast shadows through all of the nooks and crannys of my plaster. He tilted his head as if he had heard me. That night though he was getting a little too old to make the jump to the bed he hopped up and slept as close as he could to Mom. She didn't hear me but he did.

I whispered, "good night RexRyan"

He snortled chuffed and leaned in hard to his mom. After that night Rex and I became friends very quickly. We started talking all the time. He would tell me about outside, and carrides, he would tell me about his food and the life he lived before Mom found him.

Mom was and angel to Rex and she would become an angel to me, even though we only saw her when she slept, or when she anxiously paced the room, we saw when she lovingly spoke to Rex and encouraged all of his positive movements towards becoming a well-adjusted Woof.

The years have passed and my friend has marked me his best friend with drool marks, and snow droplets, when he had his first bath here he absolutely shook out all of that water so close to my surface I knew what it was like to feel the rain on my face. I love Rex and he loves me. My experiences of everything outside of this room are from him.

One day a few months ago Mom moved the bed next to my wall and lowered it so Rex could get in. North Ex was pretty angry but I think they see now all they had not seen before. Mom and Rex lay their heads near Street, but I am reserved for the length of their bodies. I am the reason Rex does not fall out of bed. In the winter I warm him with my pipes when Mom is working, and in the summer he leans gently on the coolness of my plaster. I am the one who is here for him more often than Mom.

One night Mom was saying her prayers. She does it every night, she prays gratitude to the Universe, then health to Rex and herself, followed by health to everyone she has ever known. Every night the same prayers. One night not long ago she was tired and sad, it is hard to be a wall that talks to the woof but not to the person. She sobbed her prayers that night, Rex leaned toward her, then he got up and he went around the other side. Rex only sleeps on my side of the bed he is my little spoon and her little spoon at the same time most of the time. This night in particular he pushed her sad body closer to me and made sure that I knew tonight I could speak to her.

I gently whispered to Mom, "My name is Ezra, because when you pray I hear this word and you say that you need help for this and strength for that, but sometimes you just sob yahweh ezra and while I don't understand it I liked the sound of it. I just wanted to tell you that Rex and I love you, we see your hard work and when you think Rex is sad and lonely he is not because he knows you will come back each day for us."

She looked up squinted her eyes and said, "why didn't you tell me all of this sooner?"