The House I Went Back To

When I got the call. Found out he was back in the hospital, I didn’t think. I packed a bag, and I went. I didn’t consider optics. Didn’t realize I’d be toppling a pyramid of roles and politics that had nothing to do with me.

The scorpion, holding her spot under false credentials, trying to look the lamb.

The coyote, all about himself. Take no prisoners, assemble quiet slaves.

The snake that had slithered into our home, assuming control little bit by little bit.

They coexisted, because it served them.

The stupid elephant, me, acting from the heart. Protecting my mother. Helping the man while the fox and the scorpion surveyed, and the snake positioned himself. Angry, bitter, meaningless in the world but meaningful in that house, and that made him big.

My mother was there, struggling. The man was there, failing.
So I went, but the house felt different. Not the place I’d grown up in. No traces of my own dad but instead a shrine. To oil, to murdered animals, to exploitation among the marginalized, all symbolized by “art.”  

The lightness was gone. The heaviness soaked through the walls. The heat from the flames licked everything in sight.

There is no greater sorrow than to recall in misery the time when we were happy.

I did what I needed to do, supressing the nausea and shutting my mouth. It wasn’t worth surfacing pettiness, power moves, and politics. None of that would ever be acknowledged – the hell that home had turned into. The hell that worked for the scorpion and the coyote and the snake. And me the linchpin.

I cooked. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, mothering my mother, mothering a man that would plunge the knife into my back. I felt it well before it happened. I knew it was imminent but didn’t allow myself to believe myself. Instead, I tried to make the place feel like a home again.

I woke early to greet the nurses. Worked around the clock to ensure medical schedules were upheld. Stayed up at night when he needed help. Picked him up off the floor when he fell and looked at me pleadingly – it broke my heart.

The scorpion and the coyote stayed away, regrouping. The snake made his move.
I managed what I could, filled in where needed, and tried to make something out of something that wasn’t.

I didn’t think about whether anyone else would do it. They wouldn’t and they didn’t. Not once. But at the time, I barely noticed. And because I didn’t notice, I didn’t see.
I just did the work. Like a soldier, not a human being. It was the only way to keep going.

There were things in that house I hated. Elephant tusks carved into elephant families. Symbols of mass slaughter, mounted on red velvet and lined by gold. A celebration of victimization. That family’s family crest. Their coat of arms. Their inhumanity. Shared anger. Assumed superiority. Their spears.

The man had moved them in, moving us out.  Spiritually at first. Then physically.  

The man died.

I gathered up the ivory, and the relics of discrimination and put them in a box. The scorpion told the snake, and the snake attacked. The coyote was overjoyed, unable to contain his glee he howled and howled.

The house was almost free of the objects. But it was heavier than ever.

Politics, loyalties, and unspoken rules. Things I was beginning to realize. Guns at my head. The ones cocked by the ghosts at the onset of this thing, now as clear as day.

The first bullet hit me in the chest.
The second one came before I’d even steadied myself.

One after another they just kept coming.

The elephant had become the scapegoat and the scapegoat the target.

How frozen I became and powerless then and now. All language insufficient.

None of what I had done existed. Vanished. Replaced by the script. The Black Arts. Invisible roles restored. The snake strikes. The scorpion on a branch in a tree, watching, waiting, ready for her turn. The coyote, playing both sides then overplaying his hand, revealing true colors. But only to me.

How can this be all that they see?
How can this be what defines me now?

Did any of it matter?

The hardest part wasn’t the criticism and salvo.

It was the feeling that I had stepped forward when no one else did,
given everything I had to give,
and somehow ended up the enemy.

But even in that feeling, there is something I know is true.

I didn’t go to that house because I wanted recognition.
I went because I couldn’t imagine not going. I’m not like the scorpion, I’m not like the coyote, and I’m not like the snake. I don’t need what feeds them.

That doesn’t make what happened okay.

It doesn’t extinguish the hurt.

But it does mean this:

What I gave was real.

Even if it was distorted by predators, now picking the bones.
 

When things fall apart, people hold tightly to the version of events that assuages their conscience, truth be damned. In those moments, being the one who acted with care becomes a foil for those that didn’t care. How could they? There’s nothing left when your focus is on yourself. Integrity? Now it’s just a word. And words are meaningless, aren’t they?