It had been long since I had turned down this road. Yet, fifteen years seemingly took no toll on this street. I carefully stepped over the familiar uneven crack in the sidewalk that children and their scooters fell victim to time and time again. Orange, red, and yellow leaves scattered the street, on the cars that flanked the road, on the sidewalk, flattened and imprinted into the concrete by shoes that had come and gone, clinging onto the brittle branches of the autumn-ridden trees, pulled so and pushed forth by the crisp, sharp air. Despite the guilty amount I had paid, the air still seemed to penetrate my woolen sweater. The shiver that came over me was not from the sharp air but the cease in my walk. It had been fifteen years since I had walked on this sidewalk. I looked at the freshly painted gate that adorned an “Open House” sign, welcoming passersby inside. I couldn’t say I was surprised to see this sign. I knew the previous owner had long departed the premises, and this listing had shown up in my feed a couple of weeks ago.

I gazed at the entrance. The gate was freshly painted, quite the sharp contrast to the neglected, cracked, ashy gate I had grown accustomed to. The gate through which my sister and I had weaved and entangled our little bodies into like a playground. The stone pathway where we refused to let anyone step in between the large slabs for fear of the lava we insisted was splashing and spewing between.

The doorway boasted a large, dark wood door furnished with a brassy knob, the same knob that seemed to now furnish all the doors on this street. Long gone was the slamming screen door that nobody ever cared to close lightly. I stepped inside. Inside. Inside my childhood. Of course, the memory of this house had always lingered in my mind; memories that stirred me on long, silent nights. But being here, inside, overwhelmed me with clarity. I felt a pang of nostalgia in my heart for the walls and floors that supported my childhood. Yet that same nostalgia knotted an indescribable feeling in my stomach that I hadn’t felt for fifteen years.

The quiet, empty foyer seemed to suggest the real estate agent was absent. I made my way to the kitchen, walking carefully to not disrupt the peace that cloaked these rooms. I approached the kitchen. It was a pretty small kitchen, nothing remarkable. I ran my hand over the unrecognizable granite countertops, now painted a shiny marble. I could tell someone had put much effort into remodeling this house to fashion the scene for a happy, picture-perfect family. Yet, I knew the ins and outs of this house better than any renovator. I knew the cabinets were inconveniently low and close to the countertops. We could only wedge the height of our blender between the countertops and cabinets because the cabinets were higher on one end. I smiled at the still-crookedness of the cabinets. It pleased me that the renovator had failed to notice this imperfectness.

I glanced at the tall, stainless steel refrigerator that loomed on the far wall of the kitchen. It even boasted a water dispenser on the outside. How different this fridge was from the shabby white fridge, insides yellowed with time, I grew up with.

Every summer, my grandmother would depart the warmth of Hawaii to spend a month with us. When the heat would reach the rare, suffocating temperature of 100 degrees, my sister and I would rush to our grandmother, eagerly reminding her of our summer tradition. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, white. Slowly and impatiently, we stacked the rainbow dessert. My sister and I had always favored the vibrant, artificial red and blue jello that painted our tongues. Our grandma ate the white jello, preferring the creaminess to the sweetness. 

I haven’t had rainbow jello since my grandmother passed away, and with her, so too did my memory of the taste and recipe. Standing in this same kitchen where I stood for half my lifetime floods me with longing. I treasured and still do treasure the feeling of security and happiness those sweltering days brought because days like that were a rarity. She had the ability to light up the whole household for the mere month she came. Even my father, even he was happy. And my sister and I were happy because he was happy. But as “nothing gold can stay,” one month renders negligible in the face of a whole year. 

My grandmother had transformed my father into a stranger. A stranger with a foreign smile and easiness my sister and I never trusted.  We dreaded the day our grandmother took her leave, begging her to stay for another day. Because the day she left was the day the stranger left. Her presence was a fleeting oasis that never satisfied us. When the rainbow jello disappeared from the fridge, bottles cluttered the inside. Or rather, the fridge was usually empty of bottles, emptied into the greedy mouth of our slumped father. That mouth of his spewed hatred and rage. His words slashed and flew like the beer-drenched bottle shards from his unwieldy, untrustworthy hands. The wild look in his eyes and the chaos in his steps was wholly influenced by those bottles.

I willed myself out of the kitchen, no longer wishing to reminisce anymore from that room. I looked up the narrow stairwell off the main hallway. Instinctively, I slipped up the stairs. Muscle memory avoided the loud warning creaks and groans of the old stairwell, though the renovator most likely solved that issue. As I neared the top of the stairs, I noticed the dark, dank hallway was now infused with soft light from the newly installed skylights. It gave the hallway a light, airy, open, inviting feeling. This was the kind of setting my sister and I had imagined when we would traverse down the hallway in frumpy gowns we had long grown out of, stepping on the legs of the stuffed animals we lined the hallway with. Our childhood dream wedding was down this hallway. We did not mind that the wallpaper was peeling in the corners, that the floor creaked and groaned with each step, or that there was a large, fist-sized hole that had been carelessly thrown into the wall next to our bedroom door. For none of that seemed especially alarming to us. Nothing could impede our childhood fantasies. We believed what we wanted to believe. Child-sized me wanted to believe this hallway was the most extravagant aisle a bride could walk down. But adult-sized me pities the girls who sang and laughed because that’s all they could really do to hold tight to a childhood they so desperately wanted. Transforming this hallway into a magical wedding venue was the only way to ignore the heavy footsteps that rattled the burnt-out sconces on the wall, caused creaks and groans in the floor louder than any foot of a child could make, and stirred up dread and fear in our little hearts.

Before I could take one step down the hallway, the second door to the end of the hallway opened. A lady with voluminous blond hair steps out. Her exuberant gaze seems to catch us both by surprise. She smiles widely and struts confidently down the hall, the only sound on the floor coming from the clacks of her uncomfortably high heels.

“Hi! I’m so sorry I didn’t hear you enter the house! I’m Clarissa Jenkins, the real estate agent. I have a sheet of information about the house downstairs. I’ll grab one for you, and we can chat more about the house!”

She gazes at me expectantly. All I see, however, is a bright, flashy woman standing in a bright, flashy house where the floors don't creak, the walls don’t have fist-sized holes, the counters don’t have granite, and the gates don’t have rust. Nothing here is the same as it was fifteen years ago but me.

“Are you okay, honey?” The lady brushes my shoulder. She wears a face of worry as she looks me up and down searching for a reason for my lack of response.

“Yes, I’m good, sorry. I was just making my way out.” I blankly said, not registering that my body had begun to take the initiative down the stairs. With an obvious look of disappointment at my sudden disinterest, the realtor nodded reluctantly. I did feel bad for leaving so abruptly. However, I knew I had no intention of purchasing this house and reclaiming the long undisturbed feelings that welled at the bottom of my stomach. Shamefully, I made my way out of the house, suddenly feeling that I did not belong there. I muttered “thanks” in the direction of the clickety-clackity heels that trailed me. I left in a hurry without one lingering last look. I knew that if I took that last look, I would try to memorize every little detail and grasp onto any little piece of my childhood. Yet, I knew that no matter how hard I looked, the house had moved on from fifteen years ago and adopted a new look, projecting a hopeful future. The only thing that hadn’t been turned anew was me. I was still the helpless little girl who clung to the memory of this house for god knows what reason.

~~~~

Now, upon examination, the house finally recognized its former inhabitant. Remnants of the girl’s past were obvious in the way she lingered in the rooms with a sense of familiarity no stranger could feign. Yet, despite everything the house had seen and the pain it felt and still carried for the girl, was it only one-sided? The sureness in her steps and the coolness of her gaze exuded a sense of self-respect that had long been wrongfully missing from her life. Perhaps the house had been too absorbed in recognizing a girl from fifteen years ago than a girl fifteen years later. It was clear the woman had taken great care in watering her grass with intention, growing the greenest grass she could ever since she was a girl prancing down that foreboding hallway.