river bridge house

Open gate

We are not heathens, just from another country, not knowing english yet. We are the town curiosity, the zoo that people visit, to see how we live, what food we eat, how we talk. Some visit regularly, especially the church ladies. They come to give us printed papers, single fold with Jesus stories and other biblical messages. I’m sure their hope is that, not only will they help us learn english, but they will gently nudge us onto the path to salvation as well. My parents were of Presbyterian and Catholic persuasion, so they needn’t have bothered. We knew what church was. We even went to a white Presbyterian one, just up the street.

Sometimes they brought many of the same story, a stack of cheap paper printed with one ink, usually blue or green. Never red. Brownish, gray paper, ugly to look at and uglier to touch. The kind of paper children learn to write on, with thick solid lines and dotted ones in between. The only time I really liked this paper, was when we tore it up and glued the pieces onto a balloon that soon became a pig. I was very proud of my pink and green pigs. They were supposed to be piggy banks to save money, the trouble was, you had to cut them into pieces to get the coins back out. Just another stupid idea in my opinion.

They usually stayed for a chat and tea. A long chat and tea usually. I think they were trying to teach my mother to read those ugly things. I would rather learn from picture and comic books, much easier and prettier.

I saw him crawling, why was he outside? I was all the way down by the river playing with stones in the water. He was moving towards the bridge, crawling towards the bridge. The gate was open! the ladies didn’t close it behind them, they must have left the front door open too. I yell at him to stop, but he’s little, he doesn’t understand me. I run to him as fast as I can, he’s already on the bridge, my heart is aching and my head is hurting. The bridge has no sides, only ropes grownups can hold onto. I crawl towards him and latch my hands onto his slippery little feet. He is wriggling to get away. I hold tighter. I can’t see his head any longer, the only things I see are his feet and my arms, we are crossways, the wrong way, dangling above the river, he on one side, me on the other. I hold onto his feet as tightly as I can, and scream…and scream…and scream…and scream…

I wake up in my bed. I must still be alive. I run into the other room, he is sleeping in his cot. Was it real? Did I just have another nightmare? But of course it happened, because she has a new story to tell about “How I almost lost BOTH my children, even though the gypsy said only one will die” and a long, drawn out, description of her valiant rescue of both her children, pulling them up from the brink of certain death, and carrying them with superhuman strength to safety.

I wonder if he remembers? I wonder if he remembers the rocks below, the water flowing underneath him.

I have a reminder of that day. I know it happened because my voice was torn from me that day. I think my screams floated down the river and the eels feasted on them, they feasted on every single one, until they were bursting full. That’s why they wriggle, even after they’re dead, they wriggle because my trapped screams are trying to leave them and come back to me.

–Ossibell

River Eels

The river ran deeper where it turned sharply. That’s where the eels lived. I could sit on the bank on the opposite side and wait for them to come out of their holes. They were dark and fast little snakes. If I moved, they’d hide right away, so I had to be still for quite awhile to see them. I didn’t like them much, but others did, to eat I mean. The people across the street caught some and ate them. They kept moving on the plate after they were dead. They thought that was funny. I almost threw up at the thought of eating something that wriggled in my mouth, then in my stomach. People do some strange things.

Sometimes, when the river was raging, I didn’t see them at all. I wasn’t supposed to go near the river then, but I crept down there when everyone was busy with their busy things. After it calmed down their places looked different, I think the water pushed stuff into their houses, and took stuff away from their houses. I think they got a new house with every storm. I wish we would get a new house with any storm. This is the meanest, darkest place. It was painted white, but it was still the meanest and darkest house in the world.

For one thing, it didn’t have a front garden. The other houses on the street did. Or a back flower garden either, like the lady across the river. The back of her house was full of flowers and sunshine. Completely the opposite of this house, and it was next door! But the river separates us into darkness and lightness. My father planted his favorite flower in the darkness between the shed and the door we went into. It was just a dark door above one step after a small uneven footpath. They were pretty little things, but not bright and happy like the ones next door. He planted other things we could eat on the other side of the house in the sunshine, far away from the river. Maybe that kept him happier, tending the vegetables in the sun.

The worst thing about this dark house was the bridge. We had to cross the bridge to get to the house. It started from the street gate next to the mailbox, then swung across the river to the gate leading to the side door. Two gates, a bridge and a river to cross every time you came home. The small wooden boards were tied together on the bottom, and you could see the river between them. The ropes and boards moved with every step. If big people walked on it at the same time, it would swing more, and move up and down too. I thought I was riding an angry eel every time we crossed it.

It was this river that stole my voice, but it was this dark, dismal, house that tried to steal my life.

–Ossibell

Gypsy

Someday I’ll tell you how I lost my voice, but I’m thinking, not today.

I always knew he had a soft hold on the world from the minute he was born. So I watched over him better than anyone else. Even better than our mother, who loved to tell trash like “A gypsy told me I’d have two children, and one of them will die.” I was sick of hearing that. Who needs to tell people shit like that? For one thing, why say such things! For another, the more you say things, the bigger and harder they become, and the more difficult they are to bring back under control. Anyway, while she was talking shit about gypsy curses, I was watching over him. I was his guardian, his playmate, his best friend, his protector. It was because of him I lost my voice, but I’ll tell you about that another time.

How can you tell if someone has a delicate hold on the world? I don’t know, its a feeling, like they’re floating, like they’re not quite on the ground. Like their body is not dense and thick like other people. I can see through them sometimes. Other people can’t. Some people say sickly and broken people are not long for this earth. But it’s not like that. I’ve seen sick and broken people chained to this place with concrete on top of that!

It was his fault I lost my voice, well, I really shouldn’t say that. Sorry. He wasn’t connected to this place, and that wasn’t my fault either. It was just written that way. Trying to keep him here, was like trying to catch fast flying bugs, or running after someone who is much bigger and faster than you. He stayed longer than I thought he could. His going leaves a hole in me so deep, if I filled it with ink, I couldn’t write enough words in a million lifetimes to use it all up.

—Ossibell

Invisibility

The strangest part of being invisible is that you are able to see things that are brewing in the invisible unformed space. They’re not non-existent, they’re just not fully formed, like a pregnancy, the child is there but hasn’t manifested into the world yet.

In the invisible space, you can see it is a boy or girl, it has blue eyes and red hair. You can see it will be bitten by the neighbor’s dog, get sick and die.

So here’s the worst part:
No matter what you say to the parents of the baby,
“Please move away for the sake of the baby!”.
“Please do things to protect the baby from that dog!”.

No-one listens! They might see and hear you, but they believe you’re a little crazy.
When “the thing” happens, you cry even more than they do, you feel the pain, then you feel their pain and then the pile it all on me pain of being unable to change things.
That’s the worst part of invisibility.

—Ossibell

Losing my voice

I lost my voice when I was almost four, but that’s another story for another day. I became invisible too – so invisible in fact, that people couldn’t see me, even if I was right in front of them. So invisible, that they would bump into me when I was walking on the street., I’m not a ghost, so they couldn’t walk through me, so I got some nasty jolts and bumps on occasion.

This is not a fantasy, it’s real, and it was painful then, but now I’m grateful. This condition made me an extraordinary “fly on the wall”. An invisible, extraordinary, “fly on the wall”.

My powers of observation were honed to a degree, that I could see beyond what was said or demonstrated. I could feel them, smell them, all the invisible memories and thoughts. The thoughts and memories would bounce from them onto a screen in my mind so I could watch them there.

Sometimes I would feel them there too. Sometimes, I could see other movie clips of other times. But after a while, I chose not to. Mostly because it became too jangled inside me. It became difficult to separate my movies from theirs, and it was a pain, a nightmarish pain to separate it all, especially because feelings slide around, they’re slippery and sticky at the same time. They will stick to yours so you don’t see them at first, then pretend to feel like your own, but they’re really not.

That’s also around the time I just got tired of people. My friends became the books. Books became my real family, and my safe place became the space between the rows and walls of them. Whole entire tribes of them. They became my insulation from the bothersome feelings and thoughts floating around other people.

Hearing one thing coming from their faces was one thing, but seeing and feeling the inside percolating with something very different was confusing, unsettling, and very annoying. I was very irritated because others around them couldn’t see the inside of what that person really was. That their words were lies. Smarmy lies that covered dirty cores, dirty cores full of desire to cheat and hurt.

So, on occasion, the rare occasion I’d come across someone who was whole and complete, which to me means, the same on the inside as the outside. In those rare instances, I would just be still. Or the opposite, my words would flow out like chipmunk chatter, an endless flow of thoughts, dreams, and observations.

They would just nod and listen. Didn’t happen very often. I can count the times on one hand.

—Ossibell