The key they’d given me still fit the lock, but the house no longer felt like home. I’d been away a long time, so logically there was no reason for it to be anything more than a house I once lived in. A house that had captured my childhood and locked it away. Yet as I wiggled the key in the lock, its reluctance to give way a mirrored how I was feeling inside. I felt the tears come. Maybe from loss, maybe from remembrance, maybe from what had never been—but was still somehow wanted.

The house itself was a simple two-bedroom shotgun house and was in remarkably good shape given its years of abandonment and neglect. Moss grew on the edges of the north facing windows. The shrubs on either side of the front door were wild and unruly reaching out in all directions desperate for connection. I understood that.

When I stepped into the living room—the darkness swallowed me. Darker than I remembered. It took my breath and wouldn’t give it back. It was early afternoon the brightest part of the day. Yet this darkness was thick and heavy and all encompassing. I fumbled in the plastic grocery bag for my cellphone and turned on the flashlight and slowly swept the room.

I saw not only the debris of passing squatters: beer cans, cheeto wrappers, cigarette butts, broken candles, hair and dust, old socks, a watch cap. I saw my little brother Tommy when he was about three. I saw his perfect golden skin, the way wisps of light brown hair framed his face. He was squatting on the floor, his matchbox cars all lined up, the teddy bear he had inherited from me propped against the bottom of the sofa. My mother had been so proud of that sofa—not new—but new to us and in far better shape than anything we had ever had. I saw my mother’s legs as she sat in the wooden rocker my gramma had give us. Just her legs—torn from a larger memory.

It was a happy memory and it pleased me—rare as an angel’s eyelash. I hadn’t even known it was there.Tears fell gently down my face like a Spring shower. My gramma used to tell me that tears were God’s blessing. They let out all the big emotions: rage and saddness, grief and frustration, love and joy—so they couldn’t overwhelm us and take us down. I didn’t understand it then. I think I understand it now. Gramma was the beginning and the end. I miss her. I loved her and I hated her. It all bubbles together in the cauldron.

From the living room there was a short hallway that lead directly to the kitchen. One small bedroom on either side. One for my brothers and me. The other for my mother and her friends. My mother had a lot of friends. Temporary friends, I realize retrospectively, but abundant. I didn’t open the doors to the bedrooms. I wasn’t ready for that and depending…. I might never be ready.

I aimed the cellphone light directly down the hall to the kitchen and quickly realized it was unnecessary. I’d forgotten how much natural light came from the two windows in the kitchen. The doorway to the kitchen still held the hinges from a door that had been there when we were all children. It had a hook lock, high on the door so we children couldn’t reach it. A hook that was necessary, my mother said because food was constantly going missing.

The brickwork linoleum was the same as I remembered it. It always looked old and and dirty. There was no stove only a gap in the cabinetry where one had been. We had a stove. I remember that. It never worked. My mother stacked the can goods she got from the church ladies on top and shoved dirty dishes and clothes in the oven when she heard them knock on the door. My mother rarely cooked. She and her friends were always busy, but we children became adept at using the hotplate and the Hamilton Beach 2-slice toaster. It was mostly me and my older brother Eugene who did the cooking. Tommy never got old enough to try.

A very old fridge remained in the kitchen. It could have been the same one I remember—but more likely it was the same vintage. The doors stood open and fortunately there was precious little rotting or moldy food in it.

Off to one side of the kitchen was a lean-to addition which was the bathroom. A sink, a toilet, and floor drain shower. Precious little insulation. In the winter the pipes would freeze and several times over the years the pipes burst and we had to shut off the water to the whole house until one of mother’s friends could be persuaded to fix it. We often went months without running water in the house. Using instead gallon milk jugs which we filled at the Texaco three blocks away.

I was suddenly exhausted. My legs felt wobbly. I was shaky and weak. I stepped out of the bathroom, one hand against the wall for support and made my way through the kitchen and out the back door to sit on the cinder block step. My chest felt tight. Air unable to get in or out. Yet it did but just enough.

I reached into my plastic grocery bag that held pretty much everything I took with me from the State Hospital and brought out a half back of Marlboro Reds (my first real luxury in years) and a bic lighter the cab driver had given me. I was almost too weak to light the cigarette—if you an believe that. Finally after four or five attempts, I got it lit. I was too eager. Took in too much smoke, coughed and sputtered and hacked until I was sure I was going to die. It hurt. My lungs and throat. The beautiful pain of it. The chaotic body response. This, not the house, was my home.

What I couldn’t work out at first was why the house was down to me. Why would anyone leave anything to me? It seemed off. I spent the rest of the afternoon on the cinder block step, smoking and thinking, and smoking some more. It came to me quietly when my mind and body settled into the tobacco stupor that the house was mine because I was the only one left alive or released from an institution.

They were all free either in death or the sanitized walls of their respective wards. I had it worse. I’d merely exchanged one ward for another. Only this one was more terrifying. It reeked of secrets and was bouyant with memories.

I deserve this. I was the worst.

I wonder if the Texaco is still there. If they still sell cigarettes and let customers use their bathroom.