The Bursting Bubble, Part II
The gates of heaven are always locked when the devil is toasting your heels.
I yanked at the back door—a wall of sliding glass that gave me a dim view into my house but blocked me from getting in. My fingers, slick with sweat, scrabbled against the handle and slid, impotent, down the glass. Seconds ricocheted across my brain, clocking time before the man made it across the field to my backyard…to me.
Squinting through the shadows, I caught the silhouette of my sister, Cara, on the other side of the living room, standing in the kitchen. I shouted. She stared. I kicked the door. She put her hands on her hips and gave me the “have you lost your mind?” look that years of contempt had perfected.
“Open it!” I pleaded.
She picked up a cup and began to wash it. “What?” she yelled.
No time, no time…
“Open it,” I wailed. My fists bounced against the glass. “It’s locked!”
She rolled her head. “Go to the front!”
I gaped at her in confusion. Front what?
Front door!
I stumbled and slid my way around the side of the house, nearly twisting my ankle and tripping over a pair of discarded roller skates before crashing through the front door. Locking it behind me, I ran to the kitchen, arms waving.
Words tumbled out. “Call the police! Some man ran at Jeanie and me! He jumped the fence—call the police!”
Concern replaced the sneer on Cara’s face. Glancing over my shoulder, she snatched the telephone from the counter. Her fingers flew over the buttons.
I fled to my bedroom, cocooning myself into the corner of my closet. I was in my home. The doors were locked. I was safe.
I heard Cara’s muffled voice through the walls, giving our address to the person on the other end of the phone. I rocked against a pile of dirty jeans, my fingers digging fiery grooves into my knees. My body still quivered, not yet getting the message from my brain that it could relax.
Too agitated to sit still, I eased out of the closet and belly-crawled into the hallway. Passing the kitchen, where Cara was now trying to get ahold of our parents, I inched across the living room to the back door. I snatched at the vertical blinds that dangled above my head, dragging them behind me as I wormed my way toward the sofa. The sunlight trickled away, banished, leaving the room in a bubble of complete darkness.
Comforted, I wriggled onto the sofa. Everything was good now. The man didn’t get me. Jeanie had made it to her house before me, and her parents were home, so I knew she’d be okay. The police and my parents were coming. My sister would watch over me until they got to us. It was over.
A knock rattled the glass.
I didn’t move. My eyes slid to Cara, who was talking frantically into the telephone. She hadn’t heard it.
Another knock. Beside me. Harder.
Time stopped. Thoughts stopped. Only my eyes moved: slowly…toward the door…through a slit in the blinds…to a pair of grubby jeans on the other side of the glass.
My heart lurched. And the tears began to fall.
Blinking past a wavy blur at the faded denim, I melted deeper into the sofa. A wail clogged my throat, but I couldn’t let it out—not even to alert Cara. If she came into the room, the man might see her movement through the blinds and know someone was home. He hadn’t seen me run into this house, so he couldn’t know for sure I was in here. He had to be guessing.
But he’d knocked…
Instead of giving up the chase and running away after Jeanie and I had spotted him, he’d marched up to a house on a secured military base and knocked. Without even knowing whether or not adults were home, he’d just announced himself at the back door. And what was even worse, he actually expected me to answer.
My terror level inched up another octave. Someone who didn’t respect the borders of a military fence and wasn’t scared of the law or angry parents was someone without boundaries. And boundaries were what kept the world from falling into an abyss of chaos and mass destruction—my kindergarten teacher, Miss Blevins, had said so. No boundaries, no control…and no limits to what he might do to me if he got ahold of me.
A standoff ensued between his jeans and my body. Time stood still and waited for one of us to blink. Determined for it not to be me, I waited through agonizing seconds until the jeans shifted impatiently and turned away, flashing a Jordache logo at me from one hip pocket. They started across the lawn to another house and disappeared from sight.
It took a while for me to breathe. And when the police finally pulled up to my house and rang the doorbell, it took even longer for me to move. Like an oversized piece of forgotten lint, I lay tucked into the crevice of the sofa, stuffed between the cushion and arm. Only the sound of legal authority booming from the doorway coaxed me into the open.
I told the police my story. I told them about the weird, grubby guy pacing in front of the fence, watching me and Jeanie, and how he’d chased us across the field, eventually appearing at my back door. But when it came time to describe him, his image was a vivid picture in my head that my mouth couldn’t quite translate. The word that came out to the police was “hippo.” They stared at me, and it seemed all credibility was lost, as though I was just a dumb little kid making up stories for attention.
I sometimes still wonder if they knew what I meant. Hippie was the right word. Hippie.
My parents got home later, bringing protection and rightness with them. But the police never found the guy, and the world never returned to what I’d believed it was supposed to be. When I finally stepped back into the field behind my house, I no longer saw ants on the other side of the fence. I was now the bug under the magnifying glass, and every stranger who passed by was a big shoe waiting for me to drop my guard so it could squash me.
And that shoe did fall, some weeks later, when I stepped outside of a 7-Eleven and saw the man again.
He was across the street, walking with four other guys. They were dressed like him, with ratty clothes and swinging bandanas. Young men—not much older than teenagers, I realized. They strutted down the block as though it belonged to them, not paying attention to anything outside their circle.
My brain shut down, and my body flipped into “flight” mode. I scurried into the car, my dad behind me. He offered me a piece of his candy bar. I shook my head, mouth pinched as I quickly flipped the automatic lock on the doors. As we waited for my sisters to come out of the store, my eyes stayed glued to the side mirror. I watched the group move down the street, wringing the Tangy Taffy I’d just bought into a misshapen lump. My heart didn’t stop racing until their backs turned the corner.
Yes, there were a lot of things I should’ve said to my father about those men across the street, but I was afraid. Afraid of what five of them could do to my one dad. Afraid of a group of people who didn’t follow the rules that had shaped my life: the ones that said grown men don’t jump over military base fences to chase down little girls; they don’t boldly come to your house and knock on your door, expecting you to let them in before they huff and puff and blow your world in; and they don’t show up across the street from your favorite store a few weeks later, when the police should’ve had them locked away for the next twenty years. And I was afraid of what could happen if the bogeyman I’d barely escaped from somehow found a way to snatch me back into the nightmare.
So I sat quietly in my seat and sucked on a piece of grape taffy, listening to the tinkling shards of my bubble fade into an echo in my mind.
The gates of heaven are always locked when the devil is toasting your heels.
I yanked at the back door—a wall of sliding glass that gave me a dim view into my house but blocked me from getting in. My fingers, slick with sweat, scrabbled against the handle and slid, impotent, down the glass. Seconds ricocheted across my brain, clocking time before the man made it across the field to my backyard…to me.
Squinting through the shadows, I caught the silhouette of my sister, Cara, on the other side of the living room, standing in the kitchen. I shouted. She stared. I kicked the door. She put her hands on her hips and gave me the “have you lost your mind?” look that years of contempt had perfected.
“Open it!” I pleaded.
She picked up a cup and began to wash it. “What?” she yelled.
No time, no time…
“Open it,” I wailed. My fists bounced against the glass. “It’s locked!”
She rolled her head. “Go to the front!”
I gaped at her in confusion. Front what?
Front door!
I stumbled and slid my way around the side of the house, nearly twisting my ankle and tripping over a pair of discarded roller skates before crashing through the front door. Locking it behind me, I ran to the kitchen, arms waving.
Words tumbled out. “Call the police! Some man ran at Jeanie and me! He jumped the fence—call the police!”
Concern replaced the sneer on Cara’s face. Glancing over my shoulder, she snatched the telephone from the counter. Her fingers flew over the buttons.
I fled to my bedroom, cocooning myself into the corner of my closet. I was in my home. The doors were locked. I was safe.
I heard Cara’s muffled voice through the walls, giving our address to the person on the other end of the phone. I rocked against a pile of dirty jeans, my fingers digging fiery grooves into my knees. My body still quivered, not yet getting the message from my brain that it could relax.
Too agitated to sit still, I eased out of the closet and belly-crawled into the hallway. Passing the kitchen, where Cara was now trying to get ahold of our parents, I inched across the living room to the back door. I snatched at the vertical blinds that dangled above my head, dragging them behind me as I wormed my way toward the sofa. The sunlight trickled away, banished, leaving the room in a bubble of complete darkness.
Comforted, I wriggled onto the sofa. Everything was good now. The man didn’t get me. Jeanie had made it to her house before me, and her parents were home, so I knew she’d be okay. The police and my parents were coming. My sister would watch over me until they got to us. It was over.
A knock rattled the glass.
I didn’t move. My eyes slid to Cara, who was talking frantically into the telephone. She hadn’t heard it.
Another knock. Beside me. Harder.
Time stopped. Thoughts stopped. Only my eyes moved: slowly…toward the door…through a slit in the blinds…to a pair of grubby jeans on the other side of the glass.
My heart lurched. And the tears began to fall.
Blinking past a wavy blur at the faded denim, I melted deeper into the sofa. A wail clogged my throat, but I couldn’t let it out—not even to alert Cara. If she came into the room, the man might see her movement through the blinds and know someone was home. He hadn’t seen me run into this house, so he couldn’t know for sure I was in here. He had to be guessing.
But he’d knocked…
Instead of giving up the chase and running away after Jeanie and I had spotted him, he’d marched up to a house on a secured military base and knocked. Without even knowing whether or not adults were home, he’d just announced himself at the back door. And what was even worse, he actually expected me to answer.
My terror level inched up another octave. Someone who didn’t respect the borders of a military fence and wasn’t scared of the law or angry parents was someone without boundaries. And boundaries were what kept the world from falling into an abyss of chaos and mass destruction—my kindergarten teacher, Miss Blevins, had said so. No boundaries, no control…and no limits to what he might do to me if he got ahold of me.
A standoff ensued between his jeans and my body. Time stood still and waited for one of us to blink. Determined for it not to be me, I waited through agonizing seconds until the jeans shifted impatiently and turned away, flashing a Jordache logo at me from one hip pocket. They started across the lawn to another house and disappeared from sight.
It took a while for me to breathe. And when the police finally pulled up to my house and rang the doorbell, it took even longer for me to move. Like an oversized piece of forgotten lint, I lay tucked into the crevice of the sofa, stuffed between the cushion and arm. Only the sound of legal authority booming from the doorway coaxed me into the open.
I told the police my story. I told them about the weird, grubby guy pacing in front of the fence, watching me and Jeanie, and how he’d chased us across the field, eventually appearing at my back door. But when it came time to describe him, his image was a vivid picture in my head that my mouth couldn’t quite translate. The word that came out to the police was “hippo.” They stared at me, and it seemed all credibility was lost, as though I was just a dumb little kid making up stories for attention.
I sometimes still wonder if they knew what I meant. Hippie was the right word. Hippie.
My parents got home later, bringing protection and rightness with them. But the police never found the guy, and the world never returned to what I’d believed it was supposed to be. When I finally stepped back into the field behind my house, I no longer saw ants on the other side of the fence. I was now the bug under the magnifying glass, and every stranger who passed by was a big shoe waiting for me to drop my guard so it could squash me.
And that shoe did fall, some weeks later, when I stepped outside of a 7-Eleven and saw the man again.
He was across the street, walking with four other guys. They were dressed like him, with ratty clothes and swinging bandanas. Young men—not much older than teenagers, I realized. They strutted down the block as though it belonged to them, not paying attention to anything outside their circle.
My brain shut down, and my body flipped into “flight” mode. I scurried into the car, my dad behind me. He offered me a piece of his candy bar. I shook my head, mouth pinched as I quickly flipped the automatic lock on the doors. As we waited for my sisters to come out of the store, my eyes stayed glued to the side mirror. I watched the group move down the street, wringing the Tangy Taffy I’d just bought into a misshapen lump. My heart didn’t stop racing until their backs turned the corner.
Yes, there were a lot of things I should’ve said to my father about those men across the street, but I was afraid. Afraid of what five of them could do to my one dad. Afraid of a group of people who didn’t follow the rules that had shaped my life: the ones that said grown men don’t jump over military base fences to chase down little girls; they don’t boldly come to your house and knock on your door, expecting you to let them in before they huff and puff and blow your world in; and they don’t show up across the street from your favorite store a few weeks later, when the police should’ve had them locked away for the next twenty years. And I was afraid of what could happen if the bogeyman I’d barely escaped from somehow found a way to snatch me back into the nightmare.
So I sat quietly in my seat and sucked on a piece of grape taffy, listening to the tinkling shards of my bubble fade into an echo in my mind.
The gates of heaven are always locked when the devil is toasting your heels.
I yanked at the back door—a wall of sliding glass that gave me a dim view into my house but blocked me from getting in. My fingers, slick with sweat, scrabbled against the handle and slid, impotent, down the glass. Seconds ricocheted across my brain, clocking time before the man made it across the field to my backyard…to me.
Squinting through the shadows, I caught the silhouette of my sister, Cara, on the other side of the living room, standing in the kitchen. I shouted. She stared. I kicked the door. She put her hands on her hips and gave me the “have you lost your mind?” look that years of contempt had perfected.
“Open it!” I pleaded.
She picked up a cup and began to wash it. “What?” she yelled.
No time, no time…
“Open it,” I wailed. My fists bounced against the glass. “It’s locked!”
She rolled her head. “Go to the front!”
I gaped at her in confusion. Front what?
Front door!
I stumbled and slid my way around the side of the house, nearly twisting my ankle and tripping over a pair of discarded roller skates before crashing through the front door. Locking it behind me, I ran to the kitchen, arms waving.
Words tumbled out. “Call the police! Some man ran at Jeanie and me! He jumped the fence—call the police!”
Concern replaced the sneer on Cara’s face. Glancing over my shoulder, she snatched the telephone from the counter. Her fingers flew over the buttons.
I fled to my bedroom, cocooning myself into the corner of my closet. I was in my home. The doors were locked. I was safe.
I heard Cara’s muffled voice through the walls, giving our address to the person on the other end of the phone. I rocked against a pile of dirty jeans, my fingers digging fiery grooves into my knees. My body still quivered, not yet getting the message from my brain that it could relax.
Too agitated to sit still, I eased out of the closet and belly-crawled into the hallway. Passing the kitchen, where Cara was now trying to get ahold of our parents, I inched across the living room to the back door. I snatched at the vertical blinds that dangled above my head, dragging them behind me as I wormed my way toward the sofa. The sunlight trickled away, banished, leaving the room in a bubble of complete darkness.
Comforted, I wriggled onto the sofa. Everything was good now. The man didn’t get me. Jeanie had made it to her house before me, and her parents were home, so I knew she’d be okay. The police and my parents were coming. My sister would watch over me until they got to us. It was over.
A knock rattled the glass.
I didn’t move. My eyes slid to Cara, who was talking frantically into the telephone. She hadn’t heard it.
Another knock. Beside me. Harder.
Time stopped. Thoughts stopped. Only my eyes moved: slowly…toward the door…through a slit in the blinds…to a pair of grubby jeans on the other side of the glass.
My heart lurched. And the tears began to fall.
Blinking past a wavy blur at the faded denim, I melted deeper into the sofa. A wail clogged my throat, but I couldn’t let it out—not even to alert Cara. If she came into the room, the man might see her movement through the blinds and know someone was home. He hadn’t seen me run into this house, so he couldn’t know for sure I was in here. He had to be guessing.
But he’d knocked…
Instead of giving up the chase and running away after Jeanie and I had spotted him, he’d marched up to a house on a secured military base and knocked. Without even knowing whether or not adults were home, he’d just announced himself at the back door. And what was even worse, he actually expected me to answer.
My terror level inched up another octave. Someone who didn’t respect the borders of a military fence and wasn’t scared of the law or angry parents was someone without boundaries. And boundaries were what kept the world from falling into an abyss of chaos and mass destruction—my kindergarten teacher, Miss Blevins, had said so. No boundaries, no control…and no limits to what he might do to me if he got ahold of me.
A standoff ensued between his jeans and my body. Time stood still and waited for one of us to blink. Determined for it not to be me, I waited through agonizing seconds until the jeans shifted impatiently and turned away, flashing a Jordache logo at me from one hip pocket. They started across the lawn to another house and disappeared from sight.
It took a while for me to breathe. And when the police finally pulled up to my house and rang the doorbell, it took even longer for me to move. Like an oversized piece of forgotten lint, I lay tucked into the crevice of the sofa, stuffed between the cushion and arm. Only the sound of legal authority booming from the doorway coaxed me into the open.
I told the police my story. I told them about the weird, grubby guy pacing in front of the fence, watching me and Jeanie, and how he’d chased us across the field, eventually appearing at my back door. But when it came time to describe him, his image was a vivid picture in my head that my mouth couldn’t quite translate. The word that came out to the police was “hippo.” They stared at me, and it seemed all credibility was lost, as though I was just a dumb little kid making up stories for attention.
I sometimes still wonder if they knew what I meant. Hippie was the right word. Hippie.
My parents got home later, bringing protection and rightness with them. But the police never found the guy, and the world never returned to what I’d believed it was supposed to be. When I finally stepped back into the field behind my house, I no longer saw ants on the other side of the fence. I was now the bug under the magnifying glass, and every stranger who passed by was a big shoe waiting for me to drop my guard so it could squash me.
And that shoe did fall, some weeks later, when I stepped outside of a 7-Eleven and saw the man again.
He was across the street, walking with four other guys. They were dressed like him, with ratty clothes and swinging bandanas. Young men—not much older than teenagers, I realized. They strutted down the block as though it belonged to them, not paying attention to anything outside their circle.
My brain shut down, and my body flipped into “flight” mode. I scurried into the car, my dad behind me. He offered me a piece of his candy bar. I shook my head, mouth pinched as I quickly flipped the automatic lock on the doors. As we waited for my sisters to come out of the store, my eyes stayed glued to the side mirror. I watched the group move down the street, wringing the Tangy Taffy I’d just bought into a misshapen lump. My heart didn’t stop racing until their backs turned the corner.
Yes, there were a lot of things I should’ve said to my father about those men across the street, but I was afraid. Afraid of what five of them could do to my one dad. Afraid of a group of people who didn’t follow the rules that had shaped my life: the ones that said grown men don’t jump over military base fences to chase down little girls; they don’t boldly come to your house and knock on your door, expecting you to let them in before they huff and puff and blow your world in; and they don’t show up across the street from your favorite store a few weeks later, when the police should’ve had them locked away for the next twenty years. And I was afraid of what could happen if the bogeyman I’d barely escaped from somehow found a way to snatch me back into the nightmare.
So I sat quietly in my seat and sucked on a piece of grape taffy, listening to the tinkling shards of my bubble fade into an echo in my mind.
