In order to silence her emotional terrors, a woman finds peace in the act of adopting and refurbishing homeless material objects who, like her, are abandoned, alone, seeking safety, and a loving home.

Chapter One
The Desk

I am greeted by the musty smell of dust and decades. I pull a long breath in through my nose. Warmth and happiness tingle through my limbs and wrap my chest in a hug. The heavy peal of a rusted bell bounces against the wooden door as I force it into its tight door-jam behind me.

“Good afternoon,” says a woman from behind a roughly constructed barn-board desk.
“Hello,” I force myself to say.

My eyes meet hers so I dart them away and turn my back to her. I proceed into the mass of antiquities and ignore the glimmer of an antique, nickel-bronze cash register that sits unused beside her. Such a beautiful relic, one I’m curious about its story and imagine a huge price tag, however, I refrain from inquiring—making it clear that I have no desire to initiate conversation. I hope.

Once I am sure I have avoided the torturous and coiled trap of small talk I slow my pace and begin to scan the clutter of artifacts. If she follows me, asks if I need help, or an “Are you looking for something in particular,” I will answer shortly and leave if she doesn’t let up.

My eyes scan the melange of treasures cluttering the spacious, and unheated barn. I feel like a child in a toy store. A buoyant array of bliss and creative intentions swirl in my forehead. I welcome an artistic wave of energy darting through my brain settling a focused pleasure between my ears.

The disquieting sound of two women with booming and excited voices vibrates nausea through my chest. They are browsing the antique shop at the far end of a narrow path between old books and records. I turn away immediately and direct myself in the opposite direction—as far from their disruptions as possible. A squealed laugh from one of them digs into my shoulder blades. I exhale a loud breath with force from my lungs. I blink so slow it is as if I am closing my eyes. Blackness behind my eyelids renders their noise invisible. Until it recurs. Such an unsatisfying disruption in my salubrious treasure hunting.

I close my eyes again. I attempt self-assurance—They cannot ruin this for me, repeated silently. I am my own personal cheerleader, and I totally suck. I know that if I am irritated enough to call upon my self made spirit-cheer, I’m already doomed. My quietness, the stillness within chaos, rarely tolerates intruders. Sometimes I flee. Today, I hope I am strong enough to bear my heavy armor in order to share this space with the two co-shoppers who clearly have are oblivious to my desperate need for alone.

I open my eyes, I make eye contact with the trove of pearls that surround me. Scanning thousands of objects in a small space seems to bring calmness to my internal turmoil. I can see past the disarray, and focus on beauty. I look up. The clutter continues to the ceiling. An impressive chandelier hangs above me. I am moved to smile.
I have always assumed that the value of each unclaimed object is determined by its level of rarity, maybe popularity, however, finding a specific item that replaces a torrid memory with an imagined new one is value enough for me.
Today I do not know what I am looking for. I rarely do. I know that looking, whether my visit ends in a purchase or not, brings me joy. Perhaps I revisit a rare feeling of bliss embedded in my core. Few moments of my childhood felt safe but Yard Sale-ing with my mother did.

“Oh, a yard sale,” she would say then slam on the brakes. We would visit the homes of strangers and paw through their items for sale. A well cut lawn with large blankets polka-dotted with toys, clothes, and nicknacks. Always better than our things and only if my mom’s coin purse could afford it.
We were always welcomed onto their property with a large cardboard sign and smiling faces. Fathers, mothers, families, and neighbors actually tending to the needs of strangers. My mother always opened up to them. Bore her secrets proudly like decorations of honor.

“How much for this set of twin bed-sheets,” asks my mother. A woman wearing a button-up white shirt and a money apron around her waist joins her at a cardboard box of unmarked bedding.
The woman bends down to her knees with my mother and paws the set for a few seconds then says, “How does fifty cents sound?”

My mother presses apart the clasp of her change purse and digs her fingers into mostly pennies and nickels. “Tarzan ruined Tina’s sheets,” explains my mother as she searches for the money. As if this woman knows my father or at the very least the (nick)name. Tarzan—most people seem to recognize it.

“He came home drunk and he wouldn’t leave me alone. I went into Casey’s bed and he followed me in there, so I went into Tina’s bed and he frigging followed me again. Three of us in a tiny twin bed.” My mother looks up at the woman as she places two dimes and a nickel in her palm. Her fingers disappear into the coin-purse in search of more.

“Oh.” The woman stands up. She turns her head toward me. “And this is Tina?”
“Yea.”
“Tina was asleep?” She asks my mother.
“Yup.”

No, I wasn’t. Just because I’m quiet does not mean I’m asleep. My father was drunk and pleading for something and my mother refused but as always he remained persistent and desirous. I never remember what happens next.

“He ended up ripping the fitted sheet with his boot,” my mother adds.
“Oh dear,” says the woman. She closes her fist, “Twenty-five cents will do.”
“Oh, thank you.”

I go to my mother and take one of her hands. We look through the rest of their unwanted belongings while we make our way toward our car. I marvel at the downy furniture, so clean and comfortable looking, that lines the driveway.

“I wish we had stuff this nice,” says my mother. We sink into the couch and pretend to nap. We both choke out fake snores and genuine giggles.
We climb into the dark green and rusted car. As I pull the passenger side door closed a loud screech of metal on metal turns the heads of the other yard-salers. The door doesn’t shut all of the way. I open it again and with half of my bum dangling off the front seat I use all of my strength to slam it shut. My mother’s first attempt to start the car is never successful. I don’t usually worry until try three. She got it on the second try this time. We smile at each other.
“Tina, did you see that little girl? The one playing with the barbie dolls for sale?”
“Yea, why.”
“She was so beautiful. Did you see her looking at you?”
“No.”
“I think she wanted to be your friend. She was so pretty and her hair was so blonde and perfect. Maybe you’ll be that pretty someday.”
“Yea, maybe.” We smile at each other again.

I pull my large handbag off my shoulder which allows me to squeeze through a small space between a tall bookshelf filled with old cameras and a glass display case containing a twenty-four piece set of yellow-rose dishes.
I spot a desk with a familiar color—light brown, almost orange. It has thick sturdy legs and a simple square design. The top is deeply scratched and has a white circle stain from the moisture of a warm cup. The white circle pulls me in. Nostalgia rears its ugly head—a moment I haven’t recalled in over forty-five years. I run my fingertips along the top and rub at the white ring as I try and erase the thoughts callously acting themselves out in my mind. Orange and brown blurs my vision. The white circle stain spins. I become dizzy and place my hand on the desk’s corner.

My mind travels far away and long ago. I can see my curled unruly hair and my tiny finger-nails on the hand that hugs my dolly around her neck. Small freckles of pink nail polish remains and dirt colors in the edges of my fingertips.

My mother’s cries. My God her cries. Long, drawn, and howling. My ears haze over with a numbness—ringing. I am frozen. I cannot breathe nor move. Her sadness is frightening. I want it to stop. I want her wails to quiet and for her to hug me and tell me she is strong and that everything will be okay. If she is not okay I surely am not.

What can I do? How can I make this stop? I press my dolly’s yellow and tangled hair with a firm cupped palm. My mother’s bellows intensify. She hollers out calls of sadness and pain for the world to hear, for the world to bear. Above her children, beyond the control of sanity. She wants someone to hear, to know how she pains. Hopelessness and fear pound out of my chest.

I put a teddy bear around one of my ears and press the opposite ear against my pillow. I can still hear her. I close my eyes, and wrap my upper arms around my teddy and my pillow and press my upper arm tight around my head.

“Stop, Mom. Please. Stop,” I whisper to myself but wish I could command her. She continues. Her howls vibrate through the walls, through my bedsheets, my armpits, my arms roping my teddy and pillow, and into my ears.

I pull myself up from my toddler-sized bed. I wade through the drowning sound of her cries. The air I walk through feels heavy and resistant. I force myself through it to find her. I feel lost and confused. I expect the sharp edge of a knife into my back or the face of a monster from under my bed. I brave on.

My mother’s face is red and shines with tears and sweat. Her wails continue in my visual presence. Her eyes hold mine for a moment then she turns away. She paces from sitting on her bed to the living room and back again to sit.

“Mom?” She continues. I am invisible. “Mom? Why Mommy’s sad?”
She points to a small wicker basket next to a light brown desk with a white, circle water stain. In the basket of trash, I find crumpled pieces of paper. I want her to stop. I want her to be okay. I pull the pieces of paper from the garbage. I unwrap their imploded edges and smooth them out on the desk. I press my tiny straight fingers and a firm palm over the wrinkles.

“I fix, Mumma.” There may have been one or there could have been five, I don’t recall. I have no idea what the words on the paper read but I am sure her upsettedness comes from their crumpled ruin. I continue to press my small hands across each paper and give my best attempt to smooth away my mother’s grief.

She crumples them again and fists them to the floor.

Her loud, long, and drawn out, calls of sadness continue. They echo with hot heat in my ears. My chest feels heavy and my heart panicked. My entire body is devastated with fear. My knees are weak and my limbs are numb. We are not okay–aworld-ending feeling. The air is knocked out of me and my desire to survive the moment pulls me away from her and into my closet.

Where was my baby brother at this moment? How could I not have thought of going to him? If I am so young, unable to read, I too must be a baby. Maybe on the other side of baby when you don’t wear a diaper anymore, however, a baby none-the-less. If I was three, my mother would have been eighteen, my brother—one and a half.

Our mother should have been preparing to graduate high school by now. Rather, she was a sophomore year drop-out with school being the least of her worries. The least priority of her’s and decades of generations’ before her.

My brother, Casey. Always rendered invisible in my memories by the desperate edge of survival. As absent as the hug from my mother or an empathetic, “Everything’s going to be okay,” or perhaps the confidence instilled in a child that her parents can take care of her.

My brother.

God, I wish I focused on him and not her. If only I had received compassion perhaps I would have learned to display it. As alone as I felt, he must have submitted to the lack of love as an understanding that he was insignificant, as his adult self still believes.

Horror and guilt, afflictions with likeness—an encumbrance of helplessness.

I walk away from the desk, an attempt to walk away from the memory. A loud, “Look at this,” from across the room presses an invisible tac into my palm. I swallow the fear and insecurity that has returned as familiar as the day it happened; after a few breaths I have calmed. This awakened moment, a door opened in the corner of my mind, however difficult to relive, mild in comparison to others I think of daily.

The fate of my demons is always the same—swallowed quietly. Unchanged remembrances that only become more difficult the older and wiser I come to be. The more I see how wrong things were and the more I want better. Better for me, my daughter, and my husband.

Some years later, my slightly older self asked my mother about that day. I asked her what she was crying about, “What were the papers I was trying to fix for you?” Her words won’t come to me. I won’t let myself revisit the truth of her upsettedness that day. And for days on end after that.

This moment for my mother was unmistakably one of the many that broke her. She would never be the same. This moment was a continuation of the devastation of what she was—a young girl who needed love.
I focus on the desk.

This desk is not for me. It’s much too reminiscent of the apartment in New Jersey where we were isolated, alone, and too far away from our family in Bar Harbor, Maine. A desk so similar to the one I used to smooth crumpled letters from the white wicker basket, and that day, my earliest childhood memory, the day my mother’s grief pounded my soul with fear. The first time I can recall wrapping a teddy bear around my neck and over my ear and pressing my biceps tight around it and my pillow.

I must find a desk of a contrasting color. A variance of shape, with a dissimilar, let it be imagined, history. I must clothe this child within me with a fabricated apology from my, now dead mother, and correct this moment in time. I must explain through the details and praise my older self for acknowledging its neglectful horror.

I will cut the picture from the reel by procuring a new desk—an antique desk. One that has belonged to and was shared by a family of wealth. Where the children did homework and the parents paid bills. Where a novel of romance and love was written. One where I will write my novels, poems, and flash fiction. It will bring me love, success, and fortune. I will share it with my family, it will be passed on—an heirloom of us and a broken cycle of abuse.

My eyes begin focusing through the chaos onto the muddled tables throughout the shop. There are dozens crowded and piled. Bureaus, coffee tables, sofa tables, and desks. The objects distracting the eye from their supportive presence disappear. I see through them. I am focused on my mission of finding a desk to the point of developing the ability to see nothing but.

Then, I find her. Camouflaged with two lamps, a crocheted table-runner, a large vase filled with dusty, silk flowers, and four hat boxes pilled on top of each other. I find her. She is beautiful. A dark mahogany, ebony maybe, writing desk with ornate hand carvings in its architecture. My heart thumps. I caress her edges and test her wiggly-ness. She is solid and strong. Able to withstand the burden of my past. I pull the heavy wooden cover down and closed over the drawers, storage compartments, and its writing space. I touch the ornate metal key inside the lock, twist, and pull it out. She is meant to be mine. She has been waiting for me. I slide the key into my coat pocket. I would hate to lose the key.

I remove the artifacts carpeting her bosom and set them aside. The two women shoppers approach. I can feel the pointed invasion of their eyes and inquisitiveness pressing against the back of my neck. It tingles up to my scalp and the air around me becomes sparse.

“Do you need help,” one asks.
“Nope.”

Please ignore me. Go away; pretend you don’t see me. Don’t hold the door, and if you must hold the door do not expect gratitude. I don’t want nor need your help. Your judgment of me incurs a gesture of kindness which I am feverishly trying to avoid. I want to be left alone.
It is not that I am not thoughtful, loving. Nor that I lack the ability to be so, rather, my introverted-ness is survival. Invisible—my shelter.

I bend my knees and press the end of the desk into my stomach. I find a solid hold with my hands and as I stand up the desk lifts with me. My strength in this moment of fear and defensiveness intensifies and I carry the desk to the woman at the register. I place it down and eye the shiny gold cash register that caught my eye when I came in. I smile a silent hello at it.

“How much for the desk?” I ask. As if it matters, I’m not sure why I ask for the price. I suppose in order to complete the transaction one must know the price. My petulance, as always, desires an efficient execution of the sale. Nothing else really matters at this point. I need this desk. I won’t be able to think of anything else until she is mine. I will lose sleep. I will recall the day in New Jersey to endless fatigue. I will smooth the papers over and over in my mind until I own her. I need to move forward therefore, I need this desk.
“Three-hundred and ninety-five dollars,” the clerk answers.
“Okay, I’ll take it.”

I place her gently into the hatchback of my car and push her over the collapsed back-seats. I exhale and relax my shoulders. Contentedness releases the tension in my chest, and I am overcome with love for this object. I am so appreciative for the calm it has bestowed at a time when I wasn’t expecting such a nightmare to awaken. However, not surprised; I’m sure there are more.

The drive home is tranquil. The bright sun warms the inside of the car and the black leather upholstery cradles me as I drive. This act of purchasing a remedy–medicine that gives me purpose. I am a collector. I adopt heirlooms who seek shelter in dusty antique shops with hopes of finding a new home. I rescue them to fulfill my innate desire for love, and they repurpose their lives to save mine.

I am filling my home with archives—remnants of a past that has been given up, someone’s past, but not mine. I’m covering my ruin with a vestige of serenity and safety. Objects that exude longevity, family, and love.
Perhaps these objects have secrets of their own—bore witness to worse than I have, yet I can only see beauty and perseverance in their tattered upholstery and gouged edges. They will protect me from the pain of my youth. They will impart an asylum from harm—love. Material shepherds of the comforting notion of longevity, constancy, and predictability. History, but not mine.

I sit in my car with the new desk. Silence and the ticking of the cooling car engine soothe me further. My phone lights up—a text from my daughter at college two hours away. “My last final is over. I can’t wait to see you, Mommy. I’ll be leaving in the morning.”
I respond, “Congratulations! Happy summer. You kicked freshman year’s butt. I’m so proud of you. Your hard work is paying off. Let me know when you are on your way home. Drive safe. See you tomorrow.”

I revisit the letters that broke my mother’s heart. So broken it became unrepairable. I can hear myself ask her what they said. “Mom, remember those papers in New Jersey that I tried to smooth out for you? Why were you so sad about them?” I was still too young to hear the answer—nine.
“They were love letters to your father, from my sister. They’ve been having sex.”
“Aunt Sheila?” I ask.
“Yes.”

My mother married my father when she was fifteen. She was pregnant with me after all. They divorced when she was eighteen, but never really separated. Through relationships with other people even. They remained rightfully each other’s above all others. Jealousy roared through our lives. My brother and I were silent witnesses to their rage and infidelity. Our lives were chaos running on poverty that was never too poor for cigarettes and booze. There is no safe home when love is defined by the betrayal of alcohol and its late-night explosions.