When the phone
rings I expect one of two voices, the angry voice demanding to know where my
uncle is, or the urgent voice seeking my grandfather’s help with some stalled
boat in the bay.
This black phone
sat on a desk in the dark corner of the front hall of the old house, a
foreboding place full of other people’s ghosts, yet haunted me, deep brown
molding framing walls of dirty gold.
I was not supposed
to answer the phone, yet got yelled at if I let it ring – double jeopardy I
still feel when my own phone rings at home.
This haunted
space between the front door no one was allowed to us, and the kitchen
everybody did, with the stairs rising into the upper floors as if to heaven.
All illuminated
by an under wattage light bulb, and this odd sense of being in a shoe box, floors
creaking under every heavy step,
On the desk, next
to the phone, barely illuminated, a yellow pad on which I jotted down the message
for each, leaving out the curse words for my uncle.
The angry and
kind calls, documented for eternity, written out like a criminal confession,
used later as evidence against me.
Why did you? What
were you thinking? How did the other person sound, angry or desperate? My voice
unable to articulate any of it.
My grandfather’s
stern jaw jutting out over me as if from Rushmore, his stare demanding I never
do such a thing again, and yet, I always did,
Trapped in this
place between right and wrong, necessary and unnecessary, with the siren’s song
on the far end of people whose faces I never see,
My uncle later
yelling at me for saying what I should not have said, telling the ghosts if he
was home or not home, and why he could not come to the phone,
This black phone on
this dark desk in this dim all, perpetually ringing but always with the same
two kind of people on the far end,
None of them ever
calling for me.
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