Haunted Rooms
Claire Wittlieff
Haunted Rooms
By Clare Wittlieff
I lay in a bedroom of my aunt’s house, scrolling through Zillow, listening to my family talking downstairs and giving myself a few quiet moments, preparing my social battery. It is here, in the room that once occupied my cousin John, with remnants of his life including a lacrosse poster and Lego sets, that I see our family home for sale.
I’m floating above myself as I parse through the photos of each room, and I’m overwhelmed by how desolate it is. Mattresses are completely stripped of their bedding, bare floors are uncarpeted, the wood paneling on the walls is a sickly green color from the camera’s flash. Why does my childhood resemble Amityville?
The best part is the pictures of the huge family room with the stone fireplace. There, on the mantle, are my grandparents’ urns, with black and white photos of them to emphasize that yes, this is a shrine. Their remains were dumped in the river a few years ago, but it’s just as obtrusive as seeing an empty coffin. What the actual fuck was the realtor thinking?
This all happened when the house was no longer able to be maintained by my mother, the main taxpayer, who made up the difference of her fourteen siblings, in more ways than one, for her entire life. Shit went sideways quick.
The house has a corner of my mind that it occupies with full force. All my phases are embedded in the floorboards. All my flaws are in the gravel driveway, along with used cigarette butts. There are football games in the road, and the time I punched Sam under the water when he wouldn’t stop grabbing my legs, and he surfaced with a bloody nose. There are parties I threw, with boys on the roof and bicycles ridden through the living room. There’s the college version of me home for the summer, attending cookouts and ignoring my phone to cope with the fact that I wasn’t wanted by those whom I yearned for.
A lot has changed since then. I’m an academic advisor, a writer in Alma College’s MFA program, and someone that isn’t opposed to going to bed at 9:00 pm. The house, however, stands with a sign out front and St. Joseph buried in the yard. No, really. My dad took his own mother’s statue and planted him in the ground, per Catholic tradition. It’s sold a lot of houses. When I told my therapist about this, she took notes, concern etched on her face.
In a wonderful world, it would be mine. In an immaculate world, my grandparents never left. If it were not for the blowout argument that split my family in two, I would be whole again.
And now, it is finished. I get up from the bed, and I walk down the stairs to the voices below.
Claire Wittlieff is an academic advisor and a student of Alma College’s MFA program. She reads copious amounts of books and loves telling people about them.
