Where is home (if not with me?)
By: Marve Micheal
Tags: Marriage, Sad, Fiction, Black Writers, Drama

We have plenty of time.

I turned away from him as he carried a basket load of laundry up the stairs. His heavy feet stomping each stair as though he was climbing the dark side of a mountain into battle. I sighed and fought the thoughts that hoped he missed a step. Those words made my blood boil! In his world time waits for him, and in reality, time screws us over again and again and like idiots, we repeat the same patterns. Him, rolling his eyes and insisting that time is his mistress, and me in the corner agreeing through gritted teeth and silent smiles.

He reached the top of the stairs safely and smiled back at me, his smile was always so warm and kind. Like a portal, always throws me back in time, stuck in memories thinking of the days gone by, the days when he was- well he wasn’t much different than he is today. He still kisses me when he wakes up in the morning, he still makes breakfast and falls asleep on my breasts. He is still him, so maybe it’s me.

I nod and smile and continue packing up the last few boxes for the moving van. In a few minutes, the truck will arrive and go before us to a land flowing with milk and honey. Well, maybe not so, but it better be for I am moving my whole life in search of something new, something exciting, something absolutely life-changing. That’s what I tell myself, but in truth, we’re moving to the other side of the country because he got a nice new job and what better way to celebrate ten years of marriage than to wrap up the past, pack up the present, and thrust into the future! His words, not mine. In a few hours, we will be aboard a sixteen-hour flight and so this new land must have milk, honey and everything nice- my life depends on it.

They have come and gone. As the driver carried the last box out of the house, I closed the door behind him and turned back to see the empty beige coloured walls of the house. Without furniture and paintings and bookshelves and everything that made this a home, it looks like the inside of an eggshell. Standing there, I remember those words again and my feet could no longer carry me, so I let myself fall to the ground, staring at what was once a room of many colours. I realised how much I hate these beige walls, I remember when we first viewed it, I loved the space but wanted to change the colours, I wanted each room to be its own unique space, I wanted to make this palace my playground. ‘There’s plenty of time to do that’, he said. Five years down the line, here I am staring at the same ugly beige walls. This opened the floodgates of every time I heard those words.

When our friends travelled the world during our college days, ‘We have plenty of time’, he said.

Yet this trip to our Neverland is the farthest I’ve been from home.

When we had dated for 4 years, and we began to speak of marriage, ‘We have plenty of time’, he said. My father died long before I walked down the aisle 3 years later.

When I thought about having kids, ‘We have plenty of time’, he said. And now- well time may be his mistress but she has been ever so cruel to me.

I could feel the tears burn and fill my eyes, tilting my head up I held them there, there’s no time for tears, not here, not now. I held my eyes shut, holding them until the tears returned to where they came from. He was standing before me when I opened them, ‘I’m ready’, he said with a grin, stretching his hand out to lift me off the floor. Moments later, the doorbell rang, it was the taxi driver. It would be the last time I would hear that melody, the last time I would see these walls. There I was, leaving just as I had arrived, with nothing- if not less.

He led me out the door and into the car. Waiting in the back seat, I watched as he lifted our boxes and loaded them up into the trunk. The way his muscles flexed beneath his shirt, the way his body moved. I closed my eyes at the familiar sight, smiling and remembering every time my hands rubbed against those arms, every time my body leaned into his allowing him to lift me into himself. Interrupted by the driver’s voice, I opened my eyes. It was time to wrap up the past and sit in my present. Two hours late for a six-hour ride.

I lost the first couple of hours. I can’t for the life of me remember what I was thinking of as I stared blankly out the windows. I remember thinking about how fast the trees were moving, and how it made me feel like I was going back in time but nothing past that. The sound of his voice brought me back to him. He held my hand and repeated what he said but still, I could not quite understand. I looked up and caught the driver’s eye in the mirror. He was looking at me, also waiting for a response.

‘You are going to love our new home’, he said for the last time.

‘Yes, yes. I will’, I said and smiled squeezing the hand that was holding mine.

He turned away immediately, satisfied with my response. I looked up and again staring into the driver’s eyes, he saw my smile fall and fade away almost as quickly as it appeared.

I returned my gaze to its safe space, staring out the window, and I thought? Where is home? The house I grew up in? The house we shared as roommates in college? The house where we said our vows? The house we lost time in? Or the one with the ugly beige walls?

I wonder where home was to him. The one where his mother died, the one where he broke my heart? The one where we are going to? Or the one with the ugly beige walls?

What if I remove myself from the narrative, what if I didn’t make it to this new house with him, will it still be home? If the walls were beige as before, and all our old furniture and pictures were put up. If all was the same but for the postcode, would it still be home? Where is home? Where is his home, if not with me? I wish I didn’t know the answer to this, but like all things, time revealed this to me.

Two hours to our final destination, the driver asked a question. In hindsight, this was an absolute point.

‘Sir, shall we keep to the highway?

I looked at him, also waiting for his response. He went on about how the inner roads were smaller and darker but everyone avoided them and so should be faster. Then he looked at me and said, ‘We have plenty of time- we’ll make it’.

About an hour later, there was a loud bang, and then the car began to crawl and finally it came to a stop. In the middle of this lonely inner road, the worst had happened. A flat tyre. We got out of the car and waited and watched as the driver scrambled to fix his spare tyre as quickly as he could.

We both walked a few yards from the car and I let out a deep sigh.

‘It’s not my fault’, he said quietly.

‘I didn’t say it was’, I replied, rolling my eyes, avoiding his gaze.

‘But you think it is, don’t you?

‘You have no idea what I think. Drop it’, I said sternly.

‘Because, you never speak to me! We have spent the last 5 hours in silence!’

I looked at him, ‘Yes, this is your fault?’

And honestly, I was fine until he raised his voice and I just lost it. I could no longer hear every word that he said but I was determined for my voice to be louder. I didn’t even notice the driver who had fixed his tyre and was now staring at us in shock.

‘If you didn’t waste all that time-’

I didn’t let the words drop out of his mouth. I had heard enough. ‘If I had not wasted time?! We had no time! I didn’t waste any time, you wasted our entire lives!’, I shouted back at him.

He was dumbstruck. I could see in his warm eyes that my words hurt, and I would have taken it back if it wasn’t the truth.

‘You wasted your life’, he said quietly and returned to the car.

For a moment, I could not lift my feet to move from the spot where I stood. Finally, I walked to the car in silence. Raising my head up, holding those tears in because this was not the time or place. Again in silence, we finished our trip, arriving at the airport just as our plane took off.

Standing outside the airport, surrounded by a crowd, I felt so small, so alone, so broken.

I stood still as he rolled his box forward into the building. He took a few steps before he realised that I wasn’t next to him. When he did notice, he stopped and looked back, he stared at me, for the first time, knowing my thoughts without hearing my words, for the first time, seeing the tears that formed in my eyes roll down my cheeks.

I smiled silently as I often did. He did nothing, allowing his tears to fall too.

I turned back taking nothing, as I came with nothing, and entered the car that brought us. I sat in and could not take my eyes away from its safe space, out the window, looking at my husband, my home. Where is home, if not with him?

As we drove out of sight, the driver said, ‘I’m sorry you missed your flight’.

In tears, with a broken heart, I said, ‘We were never going to make it’.