If Walls Could Cry

The old woman shuffled into her kitchen, a bucket in hand, as Johnny Cash crooned “Folsom Prison Blues”, the song distorted by a small, old stereo. She stumbled to reach it, sending empty beer bottles clanging across the filthy floor while a black cat hissed, its sleep disturbed. The old woman cut off the stereo with a satisfying click.

“I always hated his music too, Moses!” she said to the cat, settling her bucket on a rickety chair.

Moses just sat cleaning his only front paw. His other had been the victim of a BB gun for the crime of sitting on the front porch. The old woman thought it had been a harsh sentence and pitied the mangled creature, so she secretly nursed him back to health and gave him a name. Then at a great risk, she continued to save him precious scraps of food.

Moses hadn’t ever been inside and with him here, she thought the space was already cozier. She surveyed the rest of the kitchen, eyes darting past the russet stained rug.

The night that stain set marred her memory: the house- settled into a drunken stupor, her swollen eyes, tears streaming past her broken nose. On hands and knees, she scoured her own blood splatters, the physical evidence of a life full of unimaginable horrors.

Now on the table she saw an overflowing ashtray nestled among empties and Marlboros. The cigarettes were eager to be lit, greedy to send up their signals to the god of chaos and destruction. She once begged him to smoke outside, but she only received a cold stare, making her regret the plea. Like some lustful mistress, his vices demanded constant attention.

Today, the old woman almost smiled as she crushed the pack in her fist. She emptied the ashtray, fine ash cascading like a powdery waterfall, while fingering the only remaining half-smoked cigarette. Somehow, she couldn’t quite make herself throw it away.

Fumbling with a lighter, she brought the cigarette to her lips, its end glowing as it was revived. She hadn’t smoked since she was seventeen, when that first cigarette burned her throat, making her hack. Thus, she couldn’t explain why she did it now, but in the silence of the house with the lit stick between her lips, it just felt right. She wanted it all to burn.

She ambled to the sink on protesting knees, letting the basin catch the ash. Over the sink was the room’s only window; one she’d refused to look through for so many years.

The house, handed down through her family, had a whole acre of promise for a bright future. Back then, she imagined this window would show a yard full of children running with infectious laughter as she fixed supper. Violently, he took that from her too, leaving nothing but an empty womb. After, she never looked outside, keeping the shade and her heart drawn tight.

Now with each drag she took, the past burned, memories falling like ash, and it was time to look beyond her isolated world. The old woman flicked the remnant butt to the sink, it snuffed instantaneously, and she set to opening her forbidden window. The discolored, sallow shade flapped as it resisted, and the glass groaned from years of disuse. It took most of the old woman’s strength to push it open, but inch by inch it slid. An early spring chill caressed her cheeks, and she drank in the fresh air, a drag more intoxicating than any cigarette.

At first, she could only see the overgrown limbs and intertwining vines, like a great fist choking the life out of the little house. The wrist thick vines were poison ivy, a fitting manifestation of her inside world. They both contained poisons that had been festering for too long. Sighing, she looked beyond her prison through leafless branches to the splendor of the landscape. Crocuses pushed up their heads while snowdrops carpeted the yard, the simple beauty forcing the old woman turned from the window, for her eyes had forgotten how to cry. Dared she believe winter’s long and oppressive dominance was over?

“Moses, I think I’ll plant some sunflowers this year. I always did like them.”

The old woman reached for her bucket and started to hum. She scrubbed the grimy wallpaper, the tar from years of cigarettes ran in rivers of red. As the walls wept their own crimson tears, the woman took comfort in the promise and hope of tomorrow.