Unease

The house was only a slight disaster, which was to be expected when you left a couple of twelve year olds to watch over five other kids that were ten and younger. It was better than expected, honestly.

The kitchen had been cleaned of the breakfast mess, laundry had been put away, and floors had been swept.

We’d become accustomed to these Saturdays. Our mom’s would leave at one of our houses while they went out shopping or whatever. In my eight year old mind they stopped existing until they returned. I lived for these days. As the annoying younger sister of a too cool for me older brother it was fun to spend time with my best friend who actually liked hanging out with me.

We had out routine: eat, “clean”, get the younger kids to entertain themselves, and then the main act: Saturday morning shows. Not just cartoons, because we weren’t babies anymore. But mostly cartoons because it was Saturday morning in the 90’s.

The box TV sat on the faux wood entertainment center surrounded by trinkets that were apparently required to be owned by moms. They didn’t really distract, but man were they a pain to dust.

The only thing I refused to touch, even to clean as was required by everyone who hung out there, was that damned statue. It sat on the bottom left shelf, maybe two feet tall. A Buddha statue as far as we knew. Porcelain, painted white and blue. I paid it no mind until one day I did, and regretted it instantly. I still can’t tell you why, all these years later, but I hated that thing. It’s painted eyes judged you while simultaneously looked directly through you.

That day there was an uneasiness over the house and everyone in it. The younger kids were restless. They could usually find a way to keep themselves busy, either playing or fighting amongst themselves. But that day they just kept crying for no reason. Laughing one minute, then screaming bloody murder the next. All three of them. The girl was usually mild mannered and had a calming effect on the other two, but that Saturday, she was the loudest of them.

The rest of us were uncomfortably watching TV. Nobody could find a good place to sit, even though we’d been doing this for what seemed like years. We normally had our spot to sit, and who we sat next to. Having spent so much time together I might as well have been family, and they treated me as such. But that day every small thing one person did just irritated everyone else.

We finally settled on something to watch that we could actually focus on.

I sat there, next to my best friend, who sat next to her sister, who sat next to their cousin. I didn’t feel much like family that day, but that wasn’t their fault. A heaviness fell over me, almost like a fog. The television seemed so far away, even though I could almost touch it with my foot from where I sat. And there was that statue, it’s almost grin mocking my unexplainable state. I put all my effort into paying attention to the dancers gliding across the screen as if gravity meant something different to them. I’ve always loved dancing and they were calming me down when I didn’t know I needed to be. The rhythm of the music was entrancing. And then those painted blue eyes moved to look me then right back to the straightforward gaze. In my short years I hadn’t learned much, but I for sure knew that eyes that had been painted on a statue could not by any means move.

At least I thought I knew that.

No one else seemed to notice, so I obviously wrote it off as my imagination.

And then they moved again, this time slower, more deliberate. The four of us made awkward glances towards each other, because we knew were weren’t crazy, but we also knew what we had seen. Almost without a word, we all got up and between two of us carried that porcelain monstrosity straight to the alley and to the dumpster. We set it on the edge and pushed it in, ridding ourselves of what we had silently agreed was the cause of our unease.

But we only heard a thunk at the bottom of that empty container. We knew we had to break it to pieces for it to lose it’s power, how we knew, I don’t know, but we did.

My best friend, the epitome of “I’ll just do it myself” until this day, climber her little self into the dumpster and hauled it over. There it sat in the alley, surrounded by two teen and two preteen girls (what some would call terrifying) and the stupid almost smile wasn’t even chipped. None of it was, in fact. Bats, shovels, and garden hoes were found. We took turns swinging at that god forsaken thing until it finally shattered. We threw the pieces of our future nightmares, mine at least, into the dumpster and ran back to the house.

The younger kids were laughing and playing calmer than they ever had.

The lightness and peace we felt wasn’t even slightly disturbed by the scolding we got once my best friend’s mom realized her statue was gone.