The room she occupies is big, the decorations the same as forty years earlier, the ceiling equally tall, inspiring the same air of grandeur it had before, it is as if nothing has changed, the house is quiet and still, the type of quiet that leads you to think and remember. She looks out the window of the old house she knows so well, sitting at the velvet covered chair she has sat on so many times.The sky is the light gray of late afternoon,outside is calm except for the occasional person walking home from work down the sidewalk beside the stone street. In front of her house is another exactly the same, like a mirror image of her residence.
She stares, at the facade, pensive. She had seen, she had witnessed, and she remembers. The confusion, the rapidness, the quiet. She looks down to her now slightly wrinkled hands and up again to the house ahead, which stares back at her. She is transported back.
She is sitting at the velvet chair—her father's spot—but he isn't home yet. This was her favorite spot of the house, she loved to sit back and watch life go on around her. At her young age, other people's life's just seemed interesting, apart from playing with her porcelain dolls this was what she preferred to do. She new the neighborhood's routine, she loved the familiarity of the street with the same people crossing past her house for as long as she could remember, she liked knowing who lived beside her. The house in front, she knew, was inhabited by a family much like hers, a mother, a father, and a little girl of about her age. She had seen the father walk inside everyday at about six pm, the mother walk in and out running errands, and the girl come home from school.
Slowly she had noticed their outings decrease, as if they only left the house when necessary. She'd never thought much of it, she was a little girl after all, the rest of the neighborhood went about their business like they always had. She'd never talked to the family across the street just watched, like she watched the rest of the street, the closest she had ever come to interaction with the family was the occasional wave of the little girl from her chair and her window in the house in front.
Nothing ever happened in the street, watching life go by wasn't a source of excitement to her but it still offered entertainment. The man who lives two houses down walks past with a bag of bread under his arm, as usual at this time, a woman closes her window on the second floor a few houses away, preparing herself for nightfall, and a dark green truck pulls up in front of the house ahead. The girls sits at the edge of the chair, stretching her neck as she tries to see what is disturbing the afternoon routine of the street. Men get off the truck quickly, brusquely, with anger, as if trying to complete the task at hand. She watches them knock on the family's door, hard, strong knocks. Finally they door swings loose, wide open, she can see the father talking to the uniformed men in tall, shiny, black boots. Seconds pass as the men interacts, she can't tell what they are saying, but the scene seems violent, like something she'd like to get away from. She can know see the mother and the daughter appear suitcases at hand, she wonders at it all. The family walks out of their home pushed, and urged to hurry by the foreign men. The girl just sits silent, watching, wide eyed as her mind formulates a million questions. The truck drives away and she can now tell there is more people on the back of it. She makes short eye contact with the girl, who just waves, a strange look in her eyes.
She doesn't know who lives there know, another family she guesses. She had not sat at the velvet chair in years before this afternoon, and it amazes her so little has changed. Everything has gone back to normal, back to its routine, the cycle continues.
