Sara’s Story: Whatever the House Takes
One winter day before school, rather than waiting for her mom’s guidance and with the boldness only a 10-year-old has, she grabbed the white earmuffs herself, placing them on her own ears before her mother had her chance. She stood before the hallway mirror examining the large puffs of white squishing her ears closer to her head in a tender hug.
“And where do you think you’re going with those?” her mom’s humoured voice drifted towards her from the kitchen’s entryway she was leaning against, eyeing her daughter’s game of dress up. Sara knew her mom’s voices well, and as if they had their own language, could immediately tell what she felt just by the tilt of an exclamation, a whisper or mutter under her breath. And maybe anyone looking at her mom’s upturned lips and sparkly eyes could tell she was seeing a younger version of herself, glad to have someone wanting to keep a little piece of her with them wherever they went, so much that they would resort to stealing, albeit goodheartedly.
“Uhmmmm ….” Sara giggled and looked up exaggeratingly guiltily at her mom, her lower lip jutting out and eyes widening into two blue saucers on her childish face, knowing she wasn’t in any real trouble.
“Okay, okay, you can have them just for today,” her mom said with faux exasperation as if those ratty old earmuffs were her dearest possession. Sara promised to take great care of them and bring them home safe and sound.
Every day thereafter, it was an amicable battle of mother and daughter, and their earmuffs, seeing who could get to them first. Sara’s stealthy operation involved shoving them in her bag before her mom could notice, then at the end of the day, returning them from their sabbatical to their rightful spot in the closet basket, as if they had never departed to see the world from atop her head. None of her winter hats could compare, angrily flattening her wild dirty blonde hair, where the earmuffs allowed it the grace to curl and bounce. Eventually, Sara’s mom unofficially withdrew from the race, and they covertly became Sara’s earmuffs, although her mom never would have formally announced this passage of heirloom, for fear of losing their playful bickers and unspoken game of tug of war that she had begun to look forward to. Over the years, the earmuffs became tattered and their colour turned from a crisp white to slightly cream, not being able to maintain their sanctity in the face of coffee spills, daily yanks out of the closet, and snowfalls that absorbed into their cushion. If anyone were to look closely, they’d see some pulled thread amid little flecks of memories that were only knowable to Sara. But as they got beaten up, she loved them even more for it.
The earmuffs were not impervious to the fickleness of time that passed through them, touching everything in its wake without question or consideration. As Sara grew older, her mother got sicker, and home bickers turned into regular hospital visits, which then turned into memories.
Two weeks after Sara’s mom lost her battle with cancer, Sara decided to take a trip into the city to get her old cello fixed. She had worn her earmuffs every day since, feeling a small piece of her mom embracing her, and as she boarded the bus that late morning they dangled from her backpack as her fateful journey companion. The 94A was her regular route, but this time it was more crowded than usual, and flattened against other commuters at the very front, Sara’s eyes drifted over moms holding their kids’ hands, old men nodding off in the accessibility seats, teenagers nodding their heads to music blasting from their headphones. It was both reassuring and jarring watching life go on around her, when her world was laden with tiny fractures that she had been tiptoeing around in fear of a complete sever. Her cello case only added to the forces weighing down her body, holding far too much to withstand the entire route, so when a spot freed up in the very rear, she beelined and sat down in alleviation of her aching back.
Sara thought she would be in and out of the music shop, but getting her cello set up was no easy feat. It was a dual of strength between a girl and her instrument, perhaps afraid it would be forgotten about and abandoned in the shop, and therefore refusing to stand on its own. Finally, the cello gave up on its hostility to Sara’s relief, and rested on its own, awaiting its physical. Sara turned to leave, she planned on returning upon the cello’s reinstated health as she had done on past occasions, then grimaced noticing the shop lady’s outreached hand, holding a clipboard with a form that had far too much printed type on it for Sara’s liking. She took it from the lady, along with a pen, understanding it as the only way she would ever get her cello back in working condition. It was an hour until it was eventually fixed, the strings in their correct positions, its sound just as sharp and clear as when she played it for the first time.
Finally, Sara sprung out of the music shop, thankful for her mended cello, and decided to walk home. It wasn’t so cold and after being forced inside for much longer than planned, she took her time deeply breathing in the brisk air. She walked on until a familiar whir began to crescendo behind her and turned to see the illuminated 94A sign growing larger in the distance until her bus pulled up to a stop beside her. If the bus precisely chose this moment to roll to her, then she had no choice but to board and allow it to take her home – it would have been rude to decline such a gesture of goodwill, and she had forgotten just how bulky her cello case was. She smiled at the driver and made her way through the empty middle aisle to the very back, to the same seat she had sat in on the opposite way, for old time’s sake. There was trash on the ground where she was meant to sit, and as she glanced down with curiosity, it was not trash that stared back at her, but her white fluffy earmuffs nestled within the grime.
Her eyes widened – were they following her? Had some otherworldly miracle occurred, that gained them sudden sentience and on an adventurous whim they had decided to dictate their own whereabouts? She remembered watching Jack Frost at Christmastime as a child with her mom. She pawed at the side of her backpack where they were meant to be hanging but encountered nothing. Her cello case must have knocked them down when she was hurriedly gathering her belongings as she neared her bus stop, and her earmuffs had patiently waited for her return, on the filthy bus ground covered in dust and footprints. Of course, the thought crossed her mind that they could have been just any old earmuffs, some other careless person’s who left a trail of possessions wherever they went. But her earmuffs were too familiar to her, with their same pills and threads and markings, each one from a different wear over the years. Out of all the busses in the city and all the seats she could have chosen, all the timings and possible scenarios that would have meant her earmuffs were gone forever, the universe had somehow calculated this one just for Sara. After all, she hadn’t planned on getting back on the bus in the first place, let alone on spending more than twenty minutes in the neighborhood that day. She smiled remembering her mom’s voice telling her to take good care of them when she first sneakily stole them away.
Bewildered from the unlikely reunion, unaware prior to it that she had lost anything, she recalled a pattern of her belongings wandering off without her knowledge, just to reappear in some improbable way. Searching corners of her home for her favourite handmade gloves for weeks, just to reencounter them on the windowsill of the university bathroom she happened to wander into one day. Things that were never hers to begin with, special gifts and borrowed belongings would regularly displace themselves in complete silence, perhaps visiting another weary soul for a day or two, and then surrender their nomadic spirit to remain in Sara’s good graces.
She hugged her earmuffs tight to her chest, whispering that she would take better care of them from now on, she promised, feeling a pang of déjà vu to her ten-year-old self facing her mom before school. Perpetually losing one thing or another amid daily disarray, Sara’s frustration often reached a breaking point after many furious searches, and then would promptly dissipate with her mom’s proverbial reassurance ringing out: “Whatever the house takes, the house will return,” and enigmatically, yet always certainly, it did.
kasia halawa