Gimme Shelter Feb 26 2023

A person reflects on their experiences growing up in a dysfunctional household. They describe the desolate location of their house in Nevada and the familiar yet broken interior. They discuss the presence of "monsters" who brought pain and chaos to their lives. The person wishes their neighbors had intervened and apologizes for the inconvenience they caused. Moving frequently, they carried the burden of their belongings and the cracked mirrors that symbolized their fractured identity. They express the idea that shelter is not always a sanctuary but can be a trap. The person reflects on their mother, who was both their foundation and a part of the problem. This white house sits in the middle of a desolate valley in the center of Nevada, miles from the town of Austin, and hours from a real grocery store. Someday, I'm going to buy it, just to bulldoze it to the ground, like Forrest Gump did for Jenny, because he wanted to set her free. I freed myself, but the ghosts still trapped there deserve a way out. I was fifteen and hadn't ever lived in the desert, so the outside of this house was unfamiliar. Sagebrush bloomed pastels after it rained, clouds blanketed the valley like a patchwork quilt, fine dust draped my bare skin with a powdery lace, jackrabbits juked left and right to escape bored boys' guns, and regal wild horses reared up like the heroes of bedtime stories. But the inside was too familiar, looking like every place we'd ever lived. A silver school bus, low-income housing, motel rooms, apartments over bars, houses we didn't live in long enough to unpack, and our battered little house in Lake Tahoe that also begged to be bulldozed. Silk scarves draped over lamps, macrame plant holders, crystal prisms in the window bouncing rainbows, mismatched bowls and plates, and antique wooden buffets with sticking drawers and missing doors that we kept anyway. I think broken things reminded her of her own brokenness. Or maybe it was our need to fix things. She tried to fix him, I tried to fix her, no one tried to fix me. Three blind mice, see how they dumb. But the monsters she moved in also liked broken things, used and worn in, nothing shiny and new to protect or keep safe, rusted cars and busted humans, the more dense and dings the better, less screaming because the pain is familiar. We'd be thrown away anyway, we were disposable, trash, white, poor. We were the neighbors you didn't want living next door, the ones you closed your curtains on but peeked through because you had to know when to call the police. I wish you called sooner, called more often, made them stay, take him away. I always wanted to apologize to our neighbors, don't worry we won't be here long. For people who moved as often as us, usually twice a school year, we shouldn't have kept more than we could carry, but my back was strong for my age. I hated moving the cracked mirrors and wondered why we never threw them away, because they split my reflection in two, two-faced. One face for the outside world, smiling, organized, perfect. The other faced the inside world, eyes down and lips sealed tight to keep myself from saying all the things I'm writing down now. A love letter to the little girl with a strong back and a ransom note to the monsters, holding their breath hostage as they wonder what I've written after all these years. Shelter is not a home, sometimes it's not even protection. It's a trap, cage, an open casket. One monster made me paint our house, our yellow house red. He called it brick, but to me it was dried blood, the only shade of red I'd known since he moved in. Maxville Parish prints from the Salvation Army covered drywall dented by fists. Duran Duran posters hid the holes from his steel-toed boots in my bedroom door. I wasn't supposed to shut it. You see, the monsters owned every inch of every place we lived. They decided when lights were turned on or off, when kitchens were open or closed, what TV shows played and how loud, and when doors had to be open or better fucking stay shut. The monsters also owned every inch of her, the only home I'd ever known. She wasn't always safe and only sometimes a refuge, but she was my foundation, although cracked like the mirrors we hauled from place to place, the ones that split her face in two. Two. Maybe that meant something to her, seeing her reflection in parts, like Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, parts and pieces sloppily sewn back together. But wait, then that would mean she became one of the monsters. Right? I did.