Just Under the Surface

A Story by erik ewing

one of the stories/essays I've written about growing up in a single parent, overtly religious, and slightly weird environment.

The shattered glass was everywhere.

On the floor, on the couch, jagged pieces stuck up from the bottom of the windowsill looking like the monstrous teeth of some invisible cannibal taunting me to come closer.

I was frozen.

Standing in the doorway between the kitchen and living room staring at the purse that had caused the damage. It was a big leather thing with dozens of pockets and flaps, designed more for function than fashion, which was the hallmark of most of my mothers possessions. Its contents had spilled out when it hit the large living room picture window. Lipstick, loose change, a wallet with pictures from ever year I had been in school, a notepad, a couple pens and sitting straight up a bottle of aspirin, like it had been placed right there at that spot on purpose. These were the things that I had rummaged through almost everyday of my life looking for gum or the occasional rogue lifesaver stuck to the bottom. The notepad lay open, covered in child’s drawings of spaceships and futuristic cars, it was how I passed the time at church on Sunday mornings and my mom kept it in her purse all week just so it could keep me distracted during the long and boring sermons.

I looked back up at the serrated gaping mouth that was once a window.

The same window I would sit at and watch the winter snow cover the yard, or the spring rain soak the grass that looked so dead and brown, but knowing that deep under the surface roots were drinking in the warm rain and using it as a catalyst for re-birth… hiding the green just under the surface.

The same window that I would stand at on Saturday mornings waiting for my dad to pull up in the driveway in his silver Mercedes with a sunroof and a phone built right in the dash.

I continued to stand in the doorway motionless, it is amazing that in the silent moments of life we tend to reminisce and remember days gone by, the memories that we connect when things are broken. That window had meant nothing to me, until I saw it in shards glistening on the carpet. The gaping hole and the wind that blew in and moved the sheer curtains was an intrusion, a normal action when the widow was opened to allow air and noise from the street into the house on a nice summer day, but when the widow was slide open these visitors were welcomed… almost encouraged to enter and become a part of the sensory soundtrack of our lives.

But this was not a welcomed encounter it was an intrusion, an invasion.

The wind blowing in through the curtains was not just unwelcomed and cold, it was a reminder that the unseen safety of the glass was gone and that now we were vulnerable. A sense that we had both been feeling long before the widow became the focus of frustration and anger.

How did this happen? What caused this sometimes dramatic but mostly laid back women to reach a point that if she didn’t break something external something might have shattered internally?

We were getting ready, moments before to go to the Laundromat. A chore that I always looked forward to, the Laundromat had everything a young kid thinks is cool; big loud machines, strange people, vending machines, they even had these chairs with little black and white televisions built in and for fifty cents you could watch like an hour of TV and all I had to do was help carry the big dirty clothes bag inside and maybe help fold the warm fresh clothes at the end of the cycle. To me it was shaping up to be a pretty Good Friday afternoon.

Then the phone rang

Just when we were heading out the door

She turned and answered it.

Less then five minutes later the receiver was slammed down, and the purse was airborne smashing through two panes of storm windows denting but not breaking through the screen that sent the purse back into the house spilling its contents all over the floor. Seconds later the screen gave in to its assault and fell out in to the bushes, leaving us with the sadistic grin and open maw that now symbolized the breakdown of peace and normalcy in our house.

I was scared, not because of the violence but because of the situation that had caused it. Only two things would have elicited this type of response from my mother. The first would have been a family tragedy, the death or severe injury of someone we loved, but she was far too emotionally and spiritually strong to respond to news like this. And the way she had slammed the phone down made it pretty obvious that the second option was more likely. Only one person made her this upset, although never to this extreme, it had to be her ex-husband…my dad.

Putting these broken pieces together in my mind helped, it made the violation, the shattering of peace as well as glass make some sense. He had done something to hurt her again and this time I would not take his side, this time I had to support her, as much as still I hated her for driving him away, her outburst had brought on a sympathy for her and her circumstances I never saw before. It was as if the window breaking had allowed not only the outside world to have free reign of our sanctuary but it had destroyed a barrier of understanding for my parents divorce that until this moment I was happy to live behind, casting blame like emotional hand grenades not caring who they hurt, because in my young perception no one cared how bad I was hurting, just a pawn in their hate filled game of who-was-wrong-or-right chess game.

But that narrow yet justified position had changed, I now no longer had any solid ground to stand on it had fallen away in the split second that purse hit the glass and caused the first crack, I saw now that both of us were in pain, both of use had been shattered.

She sat in the hallway and wept.

I stood in the doorway, still frozen. Not just physically but emotionally as well, I knew, just knew, that if I took one step forward or back that it would be the wrong thing to do, that by simply moving my body, creaking a floorboard that the rest of the house would collapse and that a damage would be done that would be beyond repair. I loved my mom and I loved my dad and there was no way I could see justifying the actions of either, it was as if I was doing something wrong when I was with one or the other, somehow betraying the other by having fun and loving one. I wanted to run to her sit next to her and cry, let out in tears the fear and emotion of the past ten minutes, but I couldn’t I was paralyzed by years of bipartisanship.

So I stood there.

And prayed.

But, not the “Dear God, please make everything alright, I’m so scared ” prayer. No it was a much more honest and enraged “hey God, who the hell do you think you are” prayer. A conversation with the divine that was devoid of all tradition and pretence. I knew He was there, and I knew He was listening, I had attended enough Sunday school classes to know that much, and so I let him have it. I told him what I thought about him and his Son and all the other people I read about in the Bible and how it all amounted to jack s**t at this particular moment. Because my life had broken, it had been shattered in to a million shiny sharp points and that I was the one, not him who was going to have to clean it up, and I was going to get cut…deep, and if all that “love” crap I had been hearing at church was for real he had better hop on the next flaming chariot from heaven and he better bring a broom and dustpan, because I’ll be damned if I’m doing this alone.

It was by far the closest I had felt to God, the freedom to rail against and insult him, to blame him for my parents separation, and to feel no judgment or condemnation. It was a transforming conversation that I still look back on today.

I never went over to her

I did move…eventually, slowly, quietly stepping around the shards of glass bending down low carful not to put my knees or hands on the floor. I reached towards her disheveled collections of odds and ends that had been organized in the many pockets of her purse and picked up the one item that I thought I could use to help put things back together, tearing a piece of the notepad out I stood at the kitchen counter and drew a picture for my mom, it was a simple stick figure picture of her and I sweeping up glass into a trashcan with a little help from some guy with a long white beard and a robe.

A picture that she still keeps in her desk drawer and an image that has changed the way that I look at a God who interacts with those of us who are broken beyond repair and the love and pain that we hold onto just under the surface.

© 2013 erik ewing

Author's Note

I think it goes without saying that this particular piece is in the "unedited" phase (as is most my writing, so be gentle in your reviews on my punctuation and grammar, but feel free to be honest about content. Godspeed.

My Review

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Reviews

CreativeStroke

You penned this story nicely and I like how you captivate your reader into the heart of the story, not being able to escape until the end. You did a great job with your descriptions and your overall content.
A few areas need worked on, reigned in, but as you mentioned in your note you are in the 'unedited' phase. So, with a little more work and polishing, you will have yourself a nice gem of a story here.

Posted 11 Years Ago

Kate Whitaker

This is powerful, neighbor And a very good look into the mind of a shocked child (term used loosely). It's that moment of frozen "What the *hell*?" and you captured it very well