Open

Peggy’s prompt---open---15min—012810

Open. What a wide open prompt. Open mouth, insert foot. Open door policy. Open and shut case. Open, sesame. Open for business. Open for guests. Opening night. Open the door.

The door stood open, or more accurately, it stood ajar. Not wide open, not shut. But open enough to appear inviting. Or maybe discouraging, as in “I’m here but not to be disturbed.” Probably the latter. Russell never left his door wide open, not even when he was leaving the room to get something from the kitchen, or go to the bathroom down the hall. But he left it cracked a little bit, ajar, as I said, perhaps to show he had nothing to hide in there. But, peering through that opening in the door left ajar, showed little to see inside. Trust me, I’ve tried. The door is at one side of the room and the way the door is hung means that all you see when you peek through the crack is wall and ceiling, and precious little of that. All the real action is behind the wall next to the door, but no one in this house knows what’s in there. Probably not a kitchen or bathroom, because Russell comes out to use those.

Russell has been a boarder in Mama’s house for two years now. He came one day in early November, after school had started for me, because when I got home after swooshing through the leaves on the sidewalk, Russell was already set up in the downstairs room, just to the right of the front door and off the central hall. Once upon a time, that room was a parlor, Mama says. The fancy people who lived here hardly ever used it, so when we came, Mama and me, she said it was a shame to let it go to waste, what with us needing money so, and so she put a sign in the front window. Russell was the first person to ask about it, and Mama let him have it. She said she didn’t care if people talked, if they didn’t want to talk, they should give her the money for heating oil and the light bill. Mama could sound mean, but she was mostly sweet to me. Even when she didn’t have money for me to go on school trips with my class, she’d say, I’m so sorry, honey. You didn’t get a Mama with deep pockets…….To be continued