I look at the three workers, each one lost in their thoughts of what I am implying, as my mind quickly reviews all the things that happened before the primary smudging.
The first night was sleepless, as usual when in a new environment. I rarely sleep in general, and new environments heighten my senses to a restless awareness, and I was prepared for the unknown. The master bedroom had previously been an unused attic, free from human contact, and now filled with more electrical wiring and fancy lights than I knew existed.
Despite anticipating some discomforts and interactions, mostly due to the horrors I had just left in our previous house, I did not foresee the white mist slamming into me, leaving me gasping and cold on the bed, aware of how exposed I was to the yawning wide staircase.
No need to tell the workers that. Nor do I need to tell them about the interaction in the kitchen while I was standing at the sink washing dishes. Feeling something behind me, I expected my daughter to grab me around my legs and hug me. Instead, she was playing in the mudroom converted into a TV room. Focusing back on the dishes, a slight breeze brushed my left ear as a woman’s tired, mournful sigh caressed my mind. I spun on my toes, to find a modern fridge and re-purposed kitchen turned pantry door staring back at me. I knew this was not my kitchen, not yet. Despite all the design decisions I’ve made, and all the moving and living I was doing, the kitchen belonged to another.
“Yeah, I have. Voices and things, mostly at the beginning.” I am regretting mentioning anything, as I see unwanted signs in their faces.
“That would explain the dirt,” Jose whispers to the second worker.
“What’s that?” the foreman asks, fidgeting his back against the brick foundation, causing red dust to paint his uniform.
“Well, um, we found dirt in holes we had finished cleaning,” the second worker whispers, scratching a grayscale, tattered American flag.
“Seriously, we would be finished with a hole, come back, and there is dirt in it. We thought maybe the plumbing guy was messin’ with us, putting dirt back in the hole,” Jose confirms as his hands form shapes of the unwanted dirt, “man, if something touches me I’m calling a stop-job.”
For a moment my mind drifts to the man made box, lined with plastic, and covered with a heavy iron slab sitting in the yard. The plumber found it while excavating the sewer line. Nope, keeping my mouth shut on that one. And these guys don’t need to hear about the bones he is finding with each square foot he digs up.
“You wouldn’t be the first, I guess,” I sigh as I stand up, putting my hands on the header to stop my forward progress, “the sellers had a hard time keeping contractors. Crews would show up for a day, work, then never come back.”
I turn from the basement, tiring of this game. I regret saying anything. Watching them come up the stairs, joking and laughing with each other about the creepy space, hazardous stairs, and even the spooky door hidden by a pony wall in our family room, my mind drifts over all my experiences.
We smudged, my daughter and me, after hearing the sigh in my ear. Really, I wasn’t worried about who sighed. But I was worried about things I sensed coming from the rickety exterior door that rested on the other side of a pony wall in the TV room. Both cats refused to go in the room, though it was where most family time was spent. And the master bedroom continued to buzz, forcing me awake and fearful of my dreams. Swallowing my fear, we began our ritual in the basement. Moving through the house and finally out the front door, Vivian and I chanted, asserted, and owned the house.
Sometimes I regret that first smudging. Afterwards, the house was dead. Like the power had gone off during a storm. There was complete silence, and an off putting sense of nothingness. Even the crows stopped cawing. Sleep refused to return to me.
Slowly movement came back, the crows returned, and life felt a little more balanced. I had drawn my line in the sand and claimed my house.
It hadn’t lasted maybe 6 months before things became a lot worse for us. My daughter started having imaginary friends, which was normal for her age. Though there was one friend I took an interest in, named Bossy Boy. She would walk around the house with him, telling me they were witch hunting. Until one day she stopped talking about Bossy Boy, naming her imaginary friends after Disney characters. I asked if he was around, and she said no, he’s upstairs sick.
Which is when they came, her new imaginary people. The imaginary people she only referred to as them, who tormented and caused her pain. Making her cry in the car as they told her she couldn’t love her mommy and daddy anymore. Saying horrible things to her as she tried to ignore them. One day while eating lunch I heard my daughter say, “why won’t she talk to us? She needs to talk to us, why won’t she talk to us?”
Confused, I responded, “baby, what are you saying?”
Her cherub face smiled up at me as she said, “nothing, mommy.” Only for her voice to continue in a low hush,”so she does talk. She talks to her, why isn’t she talking to us?”
After hearing my daughter speak in a creaky, hoarse whisper, channeling something that was not her, I called my grandmother-in-law. A Coloradan mix of Spanish and Navajo, my daughter’s namesake has one foot in this world and one foot somewhere else. She said it was time to smudge again, that my daughter had picked up someone… or something. Harmless sighs were no longer on the board, as these ones would make me go crazy in order to have her. A fight for her soul, as my daughter’s abuelita stated in her superstitious yet Catholic sermon way. Unlike our last house, I would take offensive action. I would not sit by as my daughter became a target, and me a victim.
Once again, we started in the basement as I stared down the full length of the crawl space, blowing sage and taking back my house and my daughter. My waking nightmares became worse until we smudged again, she and I making sure to get down vents and into every corner of the crawl space.
The final time didn’t get rid of everything, but it forced a treaty. The house is still breathing in its own space, separate from us. Bossy Boy plays in the upstairs bedroom, as my daughter factually states, “he likes you. He feels safe.” On the very few random nights she asks me to perform a “monster get out” routine in her bedroom, I am rushed by freezing air escaping her closet. One cat still refuses to move beyond the doorway into the family room, but my black cat now occupies the space with me, moving halfway towards the cellar door before her eyes go wild. We are no longer in open warfare, though the peace agreement for shared living is tenuous.
No, no need to share this with the workers as they hurry out of my home. After all, I need them to come back tomorrow and finish the job. I brought it up, hoping they would laugh it off and think me silly, unconsciously supporting my desire that nothing is being stirred up with the cellar ground.
Instead, these three construction workers from a town far to the South have substantiated what I sense but want to ignore: something is riled up by our remodeling. I have fought for my home and my daughter, and I’m afraid I will need to fight again.
Unabridged Me 