“What’s wrong?” Joanie asked as she stopped and watched my body frozen at the closed top drawer.
“I don’t know if I can open these drawers yet,” I answered.
“Alright, well, where else would they put letters they wouldn’t want you to find? Better yet…was there ever a room or place they didn’t want you to get into?” Joanie stood up and scanned the room as she meandered over to me.
“No, not really.”
“No place your grams would act strange about or get pissed when you’d play in or get into? Think, Wilson. Their safe? Jewelry box? Closet?” As Joanie named each place she pushed on her finger, trying to exaggerate her choices.
“Well, they didn’t have a safe, and my grandma’s jewelry box wasn’t big enough to hold any letters. But she was super possessive over her closet. She never wanted me to play in it. She’d always yell at me when she’d find me up here getting into her shoes and my grandpa’s coats,” I said methodically.
“Bingo! I bet those letters are somewhere in there,” Joanie said as she hurried to the small four-by-six walk-in closet and flung the old white door open.
I reached up and pulled the chain that dangled from a lonesome light bulb clinging to the center of the ceiling. There was the proverbial click before the soft glow filled the small closet. It wasn’t the brightest form of light for chasing away and pulling back the shadows cast by pretty dresses and fancy suits. Joanie took my grandma’s side and I took my grandpa’s. Every shoe box she looked in had Grams’s heels, and all the ones I opened contained Gramps’s dress shoes. We searched through three stacks of boxes, two rows deep, and found nothing but shoes. No box filled with letters, birthday cards, or mementos. There was no sign of Candi anywhere to be found.
Joanie left first before I reached up to snatch the chain that was swaying back and forth. I pulled the chain tight, and looked up at the same time. That’s when I saw a brown cardboard box, hidden under grandpa’s V-neck sweater vests. I would never have seen it, except for the fact that I was on heightened alert to find a box with letters from my birth mother.
“Wait, J, I found a box. Would you grab that desk chair and bring it here?” I hollered out of excitement.
“Where?”
“The top shelf of the closet.”
“No I mean where do you want the chair?” Joanie was curt as she carried over an old, hand-carved honey oak chair.
It looked super heavy, even awkward. She pushed it through the closet door, and it only barely fit. I was pinned in the closet and she anxiously waited outside the doorway, a bystander of circumstances. I stood on the chair. On my tiptoes I was just high enough to reach the farthest corner. I wedged the tips of my fingers into the shorter flap of the box and pulled as hard as I could. My grandpa’s rainbow collection of sweater vests, folded perfectly to hide the box, cascaded and tumbled off one another then fell past me through the air and landed on the floor. The box scraped like sandpaper as I pulled it to the edge of the shelf. It was slightly bigger than a shoe box, and seemed to have some weight, but nothing I wouldn’t be able to get down myself.
As I balanced it in my hands, my toes teetered on the edge of the chair. When I shifted my weight down on the balls of my feet, the teeter gave way to totter and I tumbled off the chair. Swimming through the air, I collapsed against the back wall and the box sailed toward Joanie. I landed hard, twisted on the floor, while the box hit the top of the chair and landed next to me. The only thing that crossed my mind was God, I must have looked graceful.
“Oh, shit, are you okay?” Joanie screamed as she pulled the chair out of the closet and landed on her knees next to me.
“OUCH…that hurt. I think I banged the top of my foot against the chair. Mother…F’er, that hurts, ahhhh,” I said as I began to chant under my breath every foul word that would make my grandma turn over in her grave.
“Does your neck hurt? How about your back? Oh my God, that was so scary,” Joanie breathed.
Truthfully, I was more embarrassed than hurt. I kept replaying how ridiculous I must have looked flying through the air. I’m just glad nobody else saw it.
“I’m okay. Can you hand me the box?” I asked as I adjusted myself to a sitting position, my back against the back wall of the closet.
I pulled my knees up, taking the pain off my lower back. I wasn’t about to tell Joanie that my back right above my tailbone was beginning to throb. J caught the flaps of the box between her fingers and dragged it toward us. Maybe it was heavier than I thought.
“Here,” she huffed as she reached around and dropped it next to me. I stretched out before we both folded our legs criss-cross applesauce on the cedar floor of my grandparents’ closet.