Saturday came up bright and cold.
The kind of March morning in Iowa where the sky is so blue it hurts your eyes. And the frost on the yard doesn’t melt till ten.
Dale ran two space heaters upstairs at six in the morning to take the chill off the closed-up rooms.
Hannah vacuumed what looked like twenty years of dead flies off the windowsills. She made a face the entire time.
“Mom. This is disgusting.”
“That’s farm living, honey.”
“This is not farm living. This is a fly graveyard.”
We hauled all the Christmas boxes out to the machine shed. Dale took the old crib apart with a socket wrench and carried it out piece by piece. The treadmill took both of us and a lot of words I won’t repeat.
I put clean sheets on the old double bed in the east room for Jeff. Dale hauled Hannah’s old bunk beds up from the basement for the boys and put them together in the west room. He tightened every bolt twice.
Kenzie would get the little room under the eaves. The one with the slanted ceiling and the round window.
I slept in that little room until I was ten years old. So did Jeff, after me, before he graduated to the east room.
I cleaned that whole little room top to bottom myself. I washed the round window inside and out. I scrubbed the baseboards on my hands and knees. I found a pink curtain in the hall closet, from when Hannah was small, and I hung it on a tension rod.
I did not open the closet in that little room.
I knew what was in there.
I wasn’t ready for it yet.
At noon, Jeff’s pickup came up the gravel with a queen mattress tied down in the bed. Black garbage bags full of clothes were wedged in all around it.
I was carrying a box up the porch steps when they pulled in. It said KITCHEN in my brother’s handwriting.
Jeff got out of the truck. He took a duffel bag and a pillow out of the cab. And then he just stood there in the driveway holding them.
Looking up at the house. Like he’d never seen it before.
Brody climbed out with his backpack. His shoulders were hunched up around his ears.
Kenzie climbed out with her backpack. Her hair was hanging down in her face. It needed brushing.
Cole got out last.
Very slowly.
With his backpack on, and a goldfish bowl held out in front of him in both hands. Like he was carrying the offering plate up the aisle at church.
“This is Pickles,” Cole told me. “He’s a fish.”
“Hi, Pickles,” I said. “Welcome to the farm.”
“Does Pickles get his own room?”
“Pickles gets the dresser in your room,” I said. “Best view in the whole house.”
Cole looked at me very seriously.
Then he nodded. Like we’d just shaken hands on a deal.
Ethan Blake is a skilled Creative Content Specialist with a talent for crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives. With a strong background in storytelling and digital content creation, Ethan brings a unique perspective to his role at TheArchivists, where he curates and produces captivating content for a global audience.
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