Forgotten Child

He took the envelope off of the counter and dusted the gray fineness off of the crisp yellow whiteness. The window was closed, and the sun streaming in like the answer to a prayer long forgotten. The old whitewashed counters faded dully beside the rusted pots and pans. A glass jar of ginger sat by the sink under the window. The little rooty things writhed faintly. Listening to a bird trilling outside, he ran his fingers across the table, nails catching on the edges of the peeling paint that reared up in dryness. There was nothing else in the pale green cupboards, spare a dead spider or wood bug. He almost drowned in the silence. It was a shared thing, this silence. It was the way it stretched through the walls and down through the floor into the cellar where they had once explored with torches. It went down past the caskets of cider and boxes of withered apples and came back folding on itself, this silence, until to existed in all the times before and in between. It had never been his place, the little kitchen. It was always summer’s. Or was it autumn? Or winter? And thinking back on it now, was it spring’s too? Apple-Tree outside  nodded her head sagely with her head heavy and laden with dripping redness.

The afternoon had come scandalously wrapped in a yellow sheet and tripped along the path to the window and peeked her sunny head in. He sighed. They had danced down that path, everyone of them, laughing or crying or storming and found themselves at this very door. The little burgundy door in the little white house by the sea. The first one was the one he knew best. Her warm hands were the first friends he ever had and her voice the first one he ever loved. She always wore dresses. Sundresses. Or little overalls with striped red and white shifts that danced like little silken sails in the tidal wind. She never wore shoes. Said they shackled her. Plump and painted red lips that kissed the sun and the sand. Wild, windy hair that curled and writhed around her face. She helped him make his first sandcastle and laughed and cried and shrieked when the waves rolled in and melted the little towers away. He never knew her name. Well, her names. She came and went and always told him something different. Who would care in the end? She whispered a promise in his ear whenever they bid farewell on the steps of the kitchen door with the sun slanting down in their faces. She never went inside.

The second one was the one with the lusty laugh and freckled arms. She reminded him of a pumpkin. Round, orange, but strong. They had wheelbarrow-ed the squashes into the kitchen and let them roll across the floor when they overflowed. They would kick the leaves and jump in the drifts. Horseback riding in the fiery passionate trees and licking the sweet sap that dribbled carefully out of the bark. They spent the days in the earth, their smeared working denim hanging by the fire at night to keep out the chill. There were pies. Pumpkin and apple pies. The kitchen was busy. She came swinging down the path with a whistle caught behind her teeth and a shovel over her shoulder. She ate and worked like an ox and left only the harvest in the cellar.

The third one was the one he would never understand. She limped up to the door one night when the drifts of paleness nearly got to the windows. She didn’t say a word, but he let her in. Her hair was icy and wet as it melted. It was white. But as she warmed, it turned the sheen on the yellow moon liquid in the snow. She’d let him touch it sometimes. She was pale. She never got the rosy tint in her cheeks. She talked softly. Her smiles were rare, but he’d feel something in his throat when her cold lips curled up into a gentle smile. They went on sled rides in the snow. She liked building forts better then snowmen. Said it made her sad to see friendly faces melt. He was afraid of her, most of the time. When the rages came, he tried to stop her, but she would throw herself crying and wailing until the sobs overtook the screams and she had to sit down or fall down in exhaustion. Then he would wrap his arms around her until she slept. She would always leave as silently as she came and would leave a little puddle of melted snow by the door.

The forth would knock and then climb through the window and get stuck. She brought laughter and weak watery sun, at first, then came with violent bursts of rays. Her hair was yellow as the rhododendrons that grew outside. She had accidentally eaten some and had gotten so sick that she couldn’t get up, but she couldn’t die. She was immortal, even when her sisters put her to sleep. The wicked glint in her eyes would dim the sun as she climbed trees and chattered to squirrels. The new moons rang with her song she sang in harmony with the new wolf pups hidden in the bud laced trees. He grew used to the smooth palms of her hand, soft as a baby’s belly. Her face would blaze with excitement when pulling him like a sack of grain through the trees, yet her guileless blue eyes would fill with wisdom and ancientness when she sat by the melting rivers and foaming breakers. The kitchen would be full of flowers and little birds that followed her in. She had seen everything and touched everything and the grey cardboard sky would split into hope as she caressed its dry wintry skin. She liked to pretend to be a lady and wear her skirts, but tear them off for white cotton pants and shirts that floated around her frame like the clouds fawning over the sun. He loved her the best. But she told him that her sisters needed him more. I can’t choose! He cried. She never had an answer, but clung to him like a child when she had to leave. The gravel crunched when she walked away.

The envelope sat sadly beside the dustless rectangle it left when he had picked it up. They had all left him now. Or he just forgot to open the doors. They had never knocked, but they never will. It wasn’t their job to remind him. Only angry, nest headed morning dragged him from the bed, hurried, brisk and sharp noons grabbed his lunch for him and delivering papers to go along with them; frustrating afternoons that slide into accusing evenings of silence. They cycle through every day, every week. He’d forgotten when the bigger change outside his window and in the air. But he put the envelope back. He never kept the promises he made to the forgotten child.