Laurie Boris

You hear the rumors. The stories the neighbor folks tell, trying to freak out new owners who’d never lived outside the city. But you don’t believe them. Native American burial grounds. Ghost farms. Haunted orchards. The whole of America is somebody’s burial ground; we’re all built too confidently atop a previous generation’s lives. You worry more about what’s in the aquifer from those haunted orchards and farms. Pesticides. Forever chemicals. The inspector’s test passes, but you never quite buy it. For a while you use one of those filter pitchers until it becomes a pain in the ass, all that cleaning and replacing. Somewhere between the first major repair and getting on with your lives, you stop thinking about it. There are other things to obsess over. The day-to-day of home ownership, tricking yourself into believing that the money and labor is worth the security, the independence. A little game you play. You’re good at it. Until you’re not. You bleed for this parcel of earth. Literally. Accidents with gardening implements, too many falls to count. You’re what the commercials call invested. A cozy picture of hearth and home, your giant boulder in a rocky world. With a kind of smug pride, you congratulate yourself on a sturdy roof and foundation that won’t end up on news clips after a natural disaster.

You try not to think how in the face of stronger storms you’ll be just as vulnerable as the rest of them. You try not to think that every time you hear the firehouse siren, it means someone else’s giant rock of security could be reduced to rubble. Or yours.

Then one day things that were easy are not. You take the stairs slower; you no longer chase each other, giggling, around the open-plan first floor, heady with the knowledge that there are no neighbors to disturb. And the stories you were warned you about – maybe they contain a kernel of truth. You see and hear things that might be the effects of gravity and elements over time – screen doors that whip closed by an unseen hand. A cabinet you swore you closed when you left the kitchen. But it’s kind of scary-fun to believe you have a ghost. You remember the people who’ve come to visit and died since; it’s Xavier who keeps closing the screen door, Grandma who pokes into the cabinets; the hand of your grandfather stroking your hair as you fall asleep.

A day comes when you again think about the aquifer. The ghost chemicals. The new ones. Six more houses have been built since you moved in—two are farms, one keeps horses, all drilling into the same pocket of water in the earth. That can’t be good. But there are bills to pay, and hours to work, and groceries to buy, and clothes to launder, and you wash and dry and put away the same bowls and plates and spoons and forks you’ve been using for the past thirty years and you’re seized with an urge to take them outside and smash them.

Then one day you do. One last stick lands on your camel’s back, the keystone from your carefully constructed dam breaks free. It could have been nothing; it could have been everything. Anger wells up in your chest as you wash that same glass bowl, the same forks and spoons and knives and bowls and dishes you were given as wedding presents. With a howl you raise a plate above your head and dash it against the stainless steel double sink. The crash you thought would be so satisfying is not. It’s like the tiny “thunk” when the coyote finally lands on the canyon floor. But you’ve cut your thumb and blood feathers across the broken pieces.

And then the tears come. They burn your eyes. They taste like chemicals.