Something was broken: perhaps a pipe or a leaky toilet. Or maybe the problem was caused by a child who let the bathtub overflow just for fun. More than likely it came from a bit of old plumbing that had a crack or a broken seal, causing the water to expose the lie she had been told: that she was safe inside her home.
The leak turned the ceiling brown: a small circle at first, then a storm cloud, the head of a bear, a murky summer pond.
She told the owner about the stain.
“It’s an old building,” he said, taking her rent check. “What do you expect?”
What did she expect?
She knew the ruin that water could make, and worried the ceiling might soften over time and fall if she touched it. So she let it be.
Over the next three weeks she watched the stain on the ceiling grow and darken. Nothing truly horrible happened until the first day of the fourth week, when a slow trickle of water began to drip onto her dull-beige living room carpet.
It wasn’t a lot of water. Just an occasional droplet that eventually stained the carpet a rusty brown like the ceiling. She bought a wide plastic bucket to catch the water when the droplets increased, becoming a light tap-tap-tapping as they fell into the bucket in a rhythm not unlike the ticking of a grandfather clock.
She had to dump the bucket each morning before she left for work and again in the evening when she came home. It brought some focus to her life and made her feel like she was doing something to save herself.
When it was time to pay the rent again, she knocked on the owner’s door and told him the stain had grown to be a rather large, dark-brown pond on her ceiling, and it was now dripping into a bucket that sometimes overflowed onto her carpet, creating a dark-brown stain that mirrored what was happening on the ceiling.
“No one else has complained,” was all he said, and he shut the door.
She rattled the doorknob and called out his name.
“You must be doing something wrong,” he shouted back through the closed door. “There is no water. You’re safe here. It’s all in your imagination.”
That night she dreamed about her mother and the darkening spot on her ceiling and the water collecting in a fetid puddle in the middle of her living room carpet.
“It’s not your imagination,” her mother whispered in her dream.
Her mother was standing in the middle of the living room, holding the bucket that caught the water that was dripping from the ceiling.
“Your ceiling is leaking. Your floor is wet. Your carpet is ruined.”
With that, her mother held the bucket high over her head and let the water spill out into a deep ocean of doubt and fear.
When she woke the next morning to the sound of water dripping into the overflowing bucket and spilling out onto the carpet, her mother’s message had become clear. She had to leave.
She took all the books off the shelves and held each one until the heat of the words within its pages traveled through her hands to her heart. When her heart was full of beautiful words and she was done remembering their stories, she put the books into boxes and left them on the sidewalk so people passing by could take what they needed or wanted.
She took the photographs off the walls and brewed herself a large pot of tea, drinking one cup after another as she breathed in the pictures that she’d taken of all the places she’d been and the people she’d loved. When she was done dreaming and remembering, she put the pictures in a box and left them at her neighbor’s door.
There were knickknacks, of course, small gifts from friends scattered here and there throughout her house like touchstones. She picked them up one by one and offered a silent prayer for each gift giver.
The souvenirs from those who had already left this life were harder to let go.
She dreamed of sewing a coat of many pockets in which she could carry all these small relics with her wherever she went. Instead she put each one in a paper bag, like a party favor, tying the bags with ribbons she’d collected over the years of giving and receiving gifts. Then she nestled these wrapped memories in a box and set it on the sidewalk by her books with a note that said: Please take one for yourself and give another to a friend.
She put on her mother’s wedding ring and the small cameo earrings her mother had left her.
It was easy to let go of her furniture. She was not the kind of person to allow a chair or a table to claim her memories. They were just things of utility and comfort that could easily be replaced.
By the time she had carried the last chair to the sidewalk, along with the bits of her bed frame, and bumped her mattress down the stairs, the water falling from the ceiling was more than a drip. It now fell in a staccato stream into the bucket, splashing onto the already-soaked carpet.
She knocked on the owner’s door.
“What are you doing giving everything away?” he screamed at her. “There’s nothing wrong. There is no problem. It’s all in your imagination.”
Then he shut the door.
She hurried back to her apartment before the ceiling could inevitably give way in a torrent of water and wet plaster.
She used the claw end of her hammer, the only tool she had not given to the building’s janitor, to loosen the tacks along the edges of the wall that were holding the damaged carpet in place.
One by one the tacks snapped as she wrestled the wet carpeting from the floor. Pulling back the ruined bits inch by inch, she stripped away the lie that she was safe in order to reveal the rot beneath it all.
There she discovered blackened, waterlogged floorboards crusted with years of dust and dirt that had been pushed aside rather than swept away. Most alarming were the cracks between the boards, which were now as wide as her thumb.
There was little left to hold her.
She stood up and cautiously walked on her tiptoes from board to board to her bedroom closet, careful not to get caught stepping on the cracks.
Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.
Once she reached her closet, she pulled her mother’s well-traveled suitcase from the top shelf and proceeded to fill it with all she had left.
She didn’t know where she was going or what she might need, so she took every bit of clothing and packed it together with all the dreams she’d once had, not knowing anymore where she might arrive.
