The Wall

In the first house I lived in there was a stonewall of stacked stones. Gray on dark gray. And then some more gray. Standing 20 or so feet tall. Past the second story of our small home. It was pushed back to the farthest border of our backyard, standing on the edges of forgetfulness.  Where it hid behind trees and moss, and some vines that were too shy or too frightened to grow in the sunlight.

I cut my finger on the stone.  A dot of red on my skin. Scraped my elbow and knee where I tried to climb.

I never understood the mystery behind the wall. The neighbors next door didn’t have one. We never knew who built it or why. It was no rock climbing wall like the rec center had. Just a hideaway for anything the size of my 6 year old thumb. Such as lizards and spiders, ants and honeybees. Sometimes hornets and cicadas depending on the season. Daddy always blamed that area of the backyard  for the mosquito's that seemed to swarm every humid season.

  In my young mind , for some reason, was always the wall humpty dumpty sat on. Somewhere in the trees where no one could see him. Or maybe the wall was where the fairies hid?

On summer days it smelled like grass and mud, with the faintest scent of flowers. I swore the stones sung whenever it rained.  Water drops trickling through the crevices rhythmically, like a quiet symphony.

I found the cap of an acorn sitting where the rainwater had pooled in the stone. It sat like a broken umbrella on a forgotten beach.

I left wild strawberries, small red and white beads along the stony shore line. The next day they were gone.

Mama said a mouse had eaten them. The same mouse that lived under the floorboards in the kitchen. The one that made Mama jump onto a chair when he ventured out from his hiding spot. She didn’t have her glasses on and until Daddy chased it off she couldn’t tell if it was a giant bug or a rat.

Yet on calm nights I swore I could see them. The supposed Fairies of my imagination. Tiny dots of blue and pink and yellow, fluttering in the distance. Daddy said I was just seeing Fireflies.

Every time I left strawberries or mulberries or blueberries that summer on the wall they disappeared, along with an unwrapped jolly rancher that went missing in action. I knew ants loved sugar, but they couldn’t devour it that fast. Could they?

Mama still insisted it was the mouse.

One summer our neighbor claimed she saw a snake. Two weeks later she saw the snake again while she was in her garden and promptly chopped its head off with a garden hoe.

After that everyone saw snakes. Serpents curled in perfect circles underneath frisbees. Hiding in the pruned hedges. No one wanted to walk barefoot in the grass anymore. No one wanted to feel the moss or the mud between their toes or under their heel.

Then I saw a snake, sitting on a low branch, green and brown. Disguised as a vine. Still and sleeping. Its stomach fat and bulging from its recent lunch.

The berries I had left on the wall looked wilted, untouched since the day before. The acorn cap was gone. The fairies probably needed their umbrella back.

I told Mama that the fairies were gone and I blamed the snake.

Mama didn’t mind. Since the snake came, our house guest the mouse had gone away.

That autumn the leaf piles grew. Raked into orderly mounds until the last leaf fell from the branches. Daddy never liked to rush things. One morning, a leaf pile at the base of the wall appeared smashed. The red and brown leaves scattered as if someone had fallen into it.  All I found were small red and white and yellow pieces that looked like a broken nursery toy. No one seemed to want to merit an explanation.

We moved away that year. Mama started having nightmares about the snakes. We didn’t go far, just a town over.

There are nothing but condos there now, in the old backyard where the wall once stood. Pink Floyd plays on the radio whenever we drive past.

Mama claims she doesn’t remember it. The wall I once claimed fairies and other things lived in when I was a kid some fifteen years earlier. She Looks at me through her glasses and tells me I was dreaming or imagining things again. Yet in the open fields and in what remains left of the farmland, I can still see the pink and blue and yellow lights, dancing in the distance. As if the stars had fallen down from the night sky, searching for a new home.