There were people in every room, as always. An assortment in the kitchen, arguing how much seasoning to throw into each pot. The teens were the worst, so determined to spice it up and prove they could 'take it', while the parents knew the little ones would just spit it out, and even held back on the salt. So the bickering started, and the stern talks, and I retreated to the living room where some of those same, spitting little ones were playing under the watchful eyes of the one old lady who hadn’t dozed off in the heat. Well, her eyes were open, so I assumed she was awake. The voices of the children created an eerie, sing-song babble that made no sense except to them, and then a harsh shriek tore the air when the wrong child touched the wrong toy, it was madness! I moved on to the study, which was quieter, but all the desk space was taken over with the stitching and sewing and everyone was busy and I crawled up the stairs instead, hoping I’d find a quiet corner to do my own work. It wasn’t much, I just had a few new words to work out, but I liked to change them up once a week or so, to give them all something new to listen to. I needed quiet to think, and space, and to know that no one was watching me and wondering what I was thinking - I couldn’t think like that.
Well, one bedroom was locked and at the next I heard giggling on the other side and I knew better than to intrude. The third was where the mothers nursed their babies and let them nap, and I knew that would be the wrong sort of quiet for me! I turned and went outside instead - the garden is accessed best through the greenhouse. It would be a wonderful place with its earthy smell and the light filtered green through the large leaves and everyone loves it in spring, but it was far too hot and humid at the moment and I hurried through as quick as I could, keeping low to the ground to avoid those leaves and vines that overhung the pots. It would be fine outside, I thought, until I emerged into the sun and open sky and the children out there laughed at my bent back and ungainly walk.
“Like a dog!” they said from under their enormous straw hats, and I knew they meant it good-naturedly, but I felt like one then, sloping off with my tail between my legs, metaphorically speaking.
The garden was multi-layered; on the ground, was storage space, up on the platform, crops grew in rows, and there were strips of grass where people stood to water and weed, or - like now - the children played games designed to go back and forth, or side to side. Games that fitted the space available.
I climbed underneath, and sat among the detritus deemed worth saving, anything that might have a part that could be used in the future, a cog or wheel or motor. There were many old things there, rusted and broken, or with empty tanks and uncharged cables. I found a spot between two posts where I thought I’d be safe to sit, but no - I heard the children’s voices coming closer, and had to bark at them to go:
“Not safe for kids down here!”
Space was at a premium, but we couldn’t afford to let them roam where they might get hurt, and there were plenty of sharp and rusted things down below they might hurt themselves on. And so it was my space, today. I settled into the dark, forgotten patch between two white, bent, rust-eaten walls and took out my old notebook with the pages bound by twine. It was no sacred text but it was special to me, it was what I could give back to these people who clothed me, fed me, let me take a turn in the beds. I had no skills to speak of, all I had was the stories I could remember, or made up, or thought I might have remembered but mostly made up anyway - but what was the harm? Not many remembered the old stories now, and there was always room for new ones.
It was for the evening, when the light was dim and I sat in the shadow, just out of reach of the fire’s light, and I told them how once this world had been wide and beautiful, with plenty of room for everyone, only people had squabbled over it and fought over its resources and sold bits of it to each other, until all that was left of it was these narrow islands of exhausted earth and poisoned waterways and angry, burning skies. Until one day people had looked around and said, you know what? This isn’t helping anything… And those with homes had shared them, and those with food had offered it, and the rest of us had given whatever we had to give, even if it was only words.
And everyone was grateful.