White Houses
by BREANNA LOCKE
I was once told that no one ever wants to hear the ‘death of a grandparent’ story. We all have to experience a first death some time, and as children, it's usually an older relative who departs from your life first. While sobering to experience as a child, it is a perverse but ordinary rite of passage. A few days after my great-grandmother's death, I ended up finding something that disturbed me in a way very separate from this new discovery of mortality.
I remember my mother’s face when she addressed me and my sister. “Girls,” she began with concerned eyes, her hands resting on our shoulders, “Great Grammy died.”
Died? I thought back to her 100th birthday party we attended a few years earlier at her big mysterious white house. Its large early nineteenth century structure always spurred overactive imaginations in my sister, cousins, and me. There were just so many nooks and crannies and staircases and rooms. While the adults mingled, we would always be wandering off, investigating. My great-grandpa — who I’d never met — used to be a doctor, and his old office remained in one large room on the first floor. It was still set up like it was in the 1950s with old glass bottles of tinctures and medical supplies nestled neatly next to each other on shelves. A leather doctor’s bag and even a stethoscope rested on the old davenport desk. It was all pretty Norman Rockwell-esque, but after dark, the scene took on a more eerie aesthetic.
The attic had two closet-sized nooks where we were told slaves lived long ago. We’d knock on the walls and listen to see if any spots sounded hollow. Then we’d crawl down under staircases, certain that we would find some kind of hidden room or secret passageway somewhere in the huge house. It had been Jamie’s idea; my big sister loved her Nancy Drew books.
Later that the night, we all sang to my great grandmother, the beautiful pink frosted cake sitting before her on the long dining room table. There weren’t a hundred candles on the cake though; I was told they just simply wouldn’t all fit. My great grandma had been so present, so warm and loving and lively despite her wrinkles and tiny, slouching frame. Her smiles were always genuine and lovely. She didn’t speak much anymore, but she could still communicate, especially with those smiles. She was one hundred! I guess I just assumed she’d live forever.
At eight years old, I had a rudimentary understanding of death. I knew it happened to other people — characters in movies and TV. And in real life too, I supposed. How else would ghosts exist? But I had never considered the fact that death was capable of intruding into my own life.
Would there be a funeral with everyone dressed in black? The only dresses I owned were sprinkled with bright, floral patterns.
I did end up going to the funeral, and my mom bought me a black dress just for the occasion. After I put it on, I found myself squirming in it, and my stomach hurt like I had eaten too much candy. I quickly made sure that Jamie would stick by my side throughout the whole ordeal. Though only a few years my senior, at 12 she was a grown-up in my eyes.
My mother explained to us that the night before the funeral, there would be a wake. And she warned us that it might be open casket. I knew she wouldn’t have black Xs over her eyes like in cartoons, but what would she look like?, I wondered. Grey and skeletal, or beautiful like Snow White in her glass coffin?
From the outside, it just looked like an attractive white house. But upon entering, it became all too apparent that it was a funeral home. We hugged my grammy and grandpa, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, and some relatives I didn’t even know. And then I peered into the large room behind them.
Chairs were arranged in a way that reminded me of church pews. There was even a priest. But it wasn’t Father McKenzie; it was an unknown stranger holding a bible, and he was standing beside a casket. And the top lid was open, exposing my great grandmother.
For a moment, my eyes refused to look away. From this distance it seemed that she was only sleeping. Why wasn’t anyone waking her up? Because she’s dead. Suddenly, I was able to turn away.
Jamie and I didn’t have to sit in that room with the dead body while the relatives mingled, expressing their feelings of loss to each other. We were told it was okay for us to stay around the common rooms in the front of the funeral home, where collages of photos were set up. Still, the atmosphere from the back parlor seemed to keep creeping in, and it made me dizzy.
It wasn’t long before our confinement to stuffy rooms and their velvet couches wore on us. So we began to wander. And it was down a hallway past the bathroom where we came upon a door with a sign on it.
“Game Room,” my sister read aloud. It seemed like that would be the perfect place for us. Kids should be with games, not death.
“We're not allowed in there,” I said.
“I think it’s okay,” she said, her voice sounding eager, though slightly uncertain.
No one was in sight as we stood staring at the door, so finally, after some contemplation, Jamie cracked it open. It revealed a staircase leading down into the basement. Was there really a game room down there? Despite any doubts we had, she flicked on the light switch next to the door, illuminating the descending trail. And down we went.
At first it seemed to make sense. It was a game room — there was a pool table. But then we noticed a silver pole on the other side of the room. It reached from a platform on the ground all the way up to the ceiling. A disco ball hung in the center of the room, casting glints of light onto a dancing cage. There was an orange shag rug beneath our feet, and it looked dirty. And the room carried a lingering odor that made my nose tingle, like beer and smoke that would drift in from the bar section to the dining area at a local restaurant we frequented. My eyes continued to scan the room that was making me feel increasingly uneasy. I noticed the posters on the wall, each featuring an almost-naked woman and some brand of alcohol. One was a close up of a tan blonde woman with sly-looking eyes holding a pitcher of beer. Her tongue was licking white froth from her lips.
Something was not right. This was not a place for kids.
Suddenly it didn’t feel like we were in a funeral home anymore. But somehow, this place was scarier. The room was silent as my sister and I said nothing. I felt wholly unnerved, and I could tell by the look on her face that Jamie did too. But our curiosity continued to grow.
When we noticed a door on the far wall, we had to investigate. We opened it to reveal a darkness that made it impossible to see anything inside. Jamie felt around for a light switch inside by the door, but found none. So she entered the room.
She searched the air for a string to pull from the ceiling. That’s how our closets at home were—exposed light bulbs activated by the yank of a string.
My attention must have been elsewhere when that room first lit up. I imagine I was looking around behind me, feeling anxious, like someone could come down the stairs at any moment and find us in this weird basement where we did not belong.
From the corner of my eyes, I saw the light coming from the closet, but before I could even look inside, Jamie rushed out and slammed the door behind her.
Her face looked white and clammy, and her eyes began to water.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “What’s in there?”
She didn’t answer my question. “We should go upstairs,” she said. I followed behind her towards the stairs, and from the sounds of our feet hitting the steps, I realized that we were running.
Jamie threw open the door at the top of the stairs, I switched the light off, and as soon as I was out, we made sure that that door marked “Game Room” was shut tightly.
When we made it back to the main front room, we took a seat on an isolated couch in a corner.
“What was in there?” I asked again.
This time, with enough distance now between us and that basement, she told me. The room was a large storage closet. She’d walked in deeply enough so that she could find the dangling light string with her hands in the dark. But when she pulled it, she found herself standing alone in an oversized closet, surrounded by coffins.
For a moment I wondered if they were filled. Is that how funeral homes stored bodies for upcoming funerals? My stomach burned.
While being shielded from getting too close to the first dead person we’d ever known, my big sister and I had discovered an “adult” playroom. No flowers, no prayers to be heard, just a pool table and a gleaming stripper pole sitting atop a musty shag rug. And amidst any debauchery that could happen down there, there would always be that closet of caskets tucked away in the corner.
I realized that even undertakers have to find some way to unwind. Maybe it’s necessary to preserve their own sanity. But I did not think games and coffins could exist so closely to one another, so closely that they occupy the very same basement. I had never considered that coffins were stacked up somewhere, waiting for people to die so they could be filled. As the night wore on, I imagined myself being surrounded by caskets almost every time I blinked. And somehow that made me feel incredibly small.
Breanna Locke is a contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Medford. You can find her tumblr here.
