The Lush Grass of Spring
There were buckets everywhere and the stench of human waste filled the air. Blankets hung in the doorways in an attempt to keep the rancid smell from travelling through the house, they didn't help.
This room used to be a grand dining room where family dinners were enjoyed and holidays were celebrated, but it was transformed into a wasteland of milk-jug toilets. Cut off to capture excrement, spilling over sometimes freezing and sometimes steaming in the unregulated temperatures of our unheated and uncooled house.
I lived here tiptoeing through this putrid environment to get to the kitchen - open concept - where the only water in the house was available.
Sink filled with dishes moldy with food left from the last family dinner that ever happened in the room. My mother would wrap these dishes, covered with years of filth, with aluminum foil and we would eat our meals huddled on the couches in the living room unaware that our home was not the status quo.
After dinner, we would throw the foil in a corner stacked high with after meal waste and play hopscotch with the cleanest spots on the floor to return our plates to the sink and then promptly back to the living room.
I was nearly 9 or 10 and so badly wanted to have a birthday party like my sister had had before Nanny died. My mother told me that if I cleaned the whole house, I could invite my friends over for a party.
In the February cold I went to the back yard and stated digging. The frozen dirt barely cracking under the weight of my shovel. I had to create a graveyard for the waste - forbidden from putting it out on the corner where everyone could see our shame. For hours I returned to the earth, fingers stiff and painful and slowly it became easier for me, the deeper I got. I thought of how grand it would be when I finished. Not only would I be able to have a party, but the dining room would be returned to its former beauty.
For days I made my pilgrimage to the back yard continuing my work and when the hole was of a sufficient size, I began to carry the 2% gallon jugs one or two at a time, depending on how full they were, out the back door to the pit and I would drop them in, watching them hit the ground, tipping over, spilling the bile and the urine. With each trip, the hole filled and more and more excrement seeping into the dirt polluting the life of the underground, but I didn't care because it was the only way I could rid myself of this mess.
After many long walks back and forth, the work was done. All that was left was to cover our secret sin and smoothing the dirt to hide years of filth from the world.
Once the buckets were gone, it became clear that my dreams of having a party were going to remain dreams. The smell still hung in the air and the stains from the endless splashes made from bowel movements had while hovering too high above the rim of a jug were only minor indiscretions when compared to the piles of shit that still sat on the floor left by children too small to understand that it didn't belong there.
Through tears I picked up my own feces along with that of my siblings and mother and placed it in plastic bags and began scrubbing the once beautiful carpet. And while I knew that getting this room clean was going to make no difference, I continued. My little body yearned for something to be proud of, something to clean the black tar spots that had built up inside me.
Eventually, after scrubbing until my hands were raw, I was finished and I stood back acknowledging the broken splendor of my toil when my mom walked in, a new buck in hand asking me to step out for a minute. Months passed and slowly the stench of human waster returned as the number of cut off gallon jugs accumulated once again.
The resting place of the previous buckets covered by the lush grass of spring. At least nature can forget.
This room used to be a grand dining room where family dinners were enjoyed and holidays were celebrated, but it was transformed into a wasteland of milk-jug toilets. Cut off to capture excrement, spilling over sometimes freezing and sometimes steaming in the unregulated temperatures of our unheated and uncooled house.
I lived here tiptoeing through this putrid environment to get to the kitchen - open concept - where the only water in the house was available.
Sink filled with dishes moldy with food left from the last family dinner that ever happened in the room. My mother would wrap these dishes, covered with years of filth, with aluminum foil and we would eat our meals huddled on the couches in the living room unaware that our home was not the status quo.
After dinner, we would throw the foil in a corner stacked high with after meal waste and play hopscotch with the cleanest spots on the floor to return our plates to the sink and then promptly back to the living room.
I was nearly 9 or 10 and so badly wanted to have a birthday party like my sister had had before Nanny died. My mother told me that if I cleaned the whole house, I could invite my friends over for a party.
In the February cold I went to the back yard and stated digging. The frozen dirt barely cracking under the weight of my shovel. I had to create a graveyard for the waste - forbidden from putting it out on the corner where everyone could see our shame. For hours I returned to the earth, fingers stiff and painful and slowly it became easier for me, the deeper I got. I thought of how grand it would be when I finished. Not only would I be able to have a party, but the dining room would be returned to its former beauty.
For days I made my pilgrimage to the back yard continuing my work and when the hole was of a sufficient size, I began to carry the 2% gallon jugs one or two at a time, depending on how full they were, out the back door to the pit and I would drop them in, watching them hit the ground, tipping over, spilling the bile and the urine. With each trip, the hole filled and more and more excrement seeping into the dirt polluting the life of the underground, but I didn't care because it was the only way I could rid myself of this mess.
After many long walks back and forth, the work was done. All that was left was to cover our secret sin and smoothing the dirt to hide years of filth from the world.
Once the buckets were gone, it became clear that my dreams of having a party were going to remain dreams. The smell still hung in the air and the stains from the endless splashes made from bowel movements had while hovering too high above the rim of a jug were only minor indiscretions when compared to the piles of shit that still sat on the floor left by children too small to understand that it didn't belong there.
Through tears I picked up my own feces along with that of my siblings and mother and placed it in plastic bags and began scrubbing the once beautiful carpet. And while I knew that getting this room clean was going to make no difference, I continued. My little body yearned for something to be proud of, something to clean the black tar spots that had built up inside me.
Eventually, after scrubbing until my hands were raw, I was finished and I stood back acknowledging the broken splendor of my toil when my mom walked in, a new buck in hand asking me to step out for a minute. Months passed and slowly the stench of human waster returned as the number of cut off gallon jugs accumulated once again.
The resting place of the previous buckets covered by the lush grass of spring. At least nature can forget.