Dust
The spring loaded stairs creak their creak as they unfold from the ceiling. The pull string for the light is the only thing visible in the dark rectangle. She climbs the steep risers just far enough to pull it. The light bulb comes on, expanding her view from a rectangle to a room. Joyce uses her hands to help pull her up into the attic.
It should feel more inviting. The colors are all warm wood tones and golden light. Dust motes dancing. The rafters and joists unfinished, the old furniture and toys. The brown cardboard boxes. There is very little metal: a few bent nails and tarnished handles on dressers. All covered in dust. Even the musty smell of old clothes and stale air should be comforting. But not to Joyce. Not now. Now it is merely old.
She stands at the top of the stairs, directly under the peak of the roof. It is twice her height to the joists, here in the center, but slopes steeply to the sides where most of the stored items have been pushed. That is where she will need to go. Already her knees ache. There are two high, four frame windows, one on either end of the space, but it is night time and they bring in no light. Joyce walks towards one, thinking to open it and let in fresh air, then stops remembering. They have no screens and the light will attract the bugs. She nods to herself and turns to the side.
The first box she opens is not labelled. None of them are. Inside, she finds a stack of cheap plastic dinner ware, blue. Many of the pieces are broken or cracked. She sets it aside. The next is old photos: blurred rejects or extra copies of the ones in the albums downstairs in the secretary. Most are stuck to each other and unrecoverable. In the third are clothes. Old clothes. Most appear in tact, and are the childhood clothes of some relative. They are hopelessly out of style and she thinks may fall apart if stuffed into the high-powered appliances of today. Joyce folds the sides back into the box and sets it aside.
She sighs and looks around. There are many, many boxes and they are all full of the things that her mother could not quite stand to throw out. The furniture and stacks of books and old LPs and broken toys were all being saved for... something. All things that had meaning once, even if they were no longer useful. Meaning to Mother. Mother is gone.
Finally, Joyce stops looking and starts sweeping everything toward the top of the stairs. To the rectangle that leads down. Pushing and shoving, she lets box after chair after stack drop down the hole. Each bounces under the light, makes the stair's springs groan and lands in the middle of the upstairs hall.
It goes on for a while, but there is no one home to be disturbed. Joyce should be tired. Yesterday had been the memorial and then she and her siblings had spent all of this day arguing about what to do with all of the 'real' stuff cluttering the lived in rooms of the house. But this felt good. She was doing something. Not waiting and watching and being told that there was nothing that anyone could do. She could do this. She could sweep the dust of her mother's life away.
Other submissions and comments
