In Which We Try To Find A Way To Unwind

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.

In Which We Change Our Attitude Towards Meat

Don't You Miss It?

by BREANNA LOCKE

It was a celebration. My friends and loved ones were scattered around me at a park, and the balmy weather confirmed that spring was inching closer and closer to summer. It felt like the family cookouts of my childhood — everyone in bright colors, cotton ball clouds dotting the sky and picnic tables with checkered cloths showcasing rows and rows of food. I laughed, not at anything in particular, just thoroughly enjoying this unnamed celebration. I picked up a veggie burger mid-chuckle and took a big bite. Then the sky darkened. My face contorted, and I regurgitated when I realized that the burger was actually beef.

That’s a typical “vegan nightmare” as I’ve come to call them. When I got my first tattoo, I had nightmares in which I’d accidentally wash the image off, or that it simply fall off like an old Band-Aid. Those dreams stopped after I’d gotten used to the tattoo though. My vegan nightmares however, began seven years ago (they started out as vegetarian nightmares), and I still get them periodically. I laugh when I wake up; I’d much rather have a food-related nightmare than one involving serial killers who are inexplicably out to get me. But its invasion into my dreams just goes to show how much veganism has become a part of my self.
 
When I was younger, and thought waking up to the sound of bacon sizzling was the best way to start the day, I was not a fan of vegetarians. Whenever someone mentioned the “v” word, I’d scoff internally. My cynical high school self didn’t think that abstaining from meat would make any sort of difference for animals. I was depressed, and saw the world as broken beyond repair, meat industry included. But I loved animals, so I had to admit that I felt a little insulted too. Other people called themselves vegetarians, so did my lack of this title imply that I didn’t care for animals as much as they did?

Then came the inevitable experience: I saw undercover footage of a slaughterhouse online. It’s become something of a rite of passage for emerging vegetarians to watch factory farm footage, and to see documentaries like Earthlings (which I tried to watch but couldn’t stomach for more than 20 minutes). I was horrified and heartbroken over what I saw. Even if I wasn’t yet convinced that my puny self could make a difference in lives of farm animals, I couldn’t justify financially supporting that industry any longer. Though I wanted to, the thought of going vegan overwhelmed me. But I had to do something. So at 16, I went vegetarian.

My hometown was tiny and full of family farms. Medway didn’t even have a grocery store until I was in seventh grade, and let me tell you, when they made the plans to build the Star Market over a cow pasture, it was controversial. I didn’t know any other vegetarians there, so I was nervous about telling my friends and family about my decision. After all, just days before, I would have been judgmental too. I was afraid of being associated with the ridiculous stereotypes; you know, the malnourished extremist sporting a sack of raw vegetables and a superiority complex.

Because of this, I started out as a very humble herbivore, never preaching, never advertising. In fact, I went so far as trying to keep that entire part of my identity hidden in public. With a mean case of social anxiety, I hated the idea of ever drawing attention to myself. I was afraid of the myriad of questions people might ask — Why?, Don’t you miss bacon?, But where do you get your protein? — or worse, not even asking questions, but automatically criticizing or ridiculing. I didn’t like being different — as an introvert who preferred bookstores to any kind of social gatherings, I already felt isolated from the majority of my peers — but I could not and would not eat animals.

Things changed three years later when I enrolled in a small, liberal college in downtown Boston. I majored in Writing, Literature and Publishing, which I was always proud to state since I thought the title sounded more impressive than the standard “English.” I wore flannel shirts, short skirts with black tights, and combat boots. I started drinking my coffee black alongside other young, creative hipsters who always seemed to be trying to out-counterculture one another (in all the same ways, of course). I even started dating, which I had never experienced before given my painfully shy disposition in high school. There was no one special for a while, but I was putting myself out there in a way I’d feared I never would be able to.

I’d been depressed for a decade, but happiness creeped in as I’d take strolls around the Boston Common, visit small concert venues, and attend classes that I actually wanted to be in. The dining hall had an entire vegetarian station, and I joined the environmental club for a semester where nearly everyone abstained from eating meat. There wasn’t a cow pasture in sight. I was no longer the lone vegetarian, and it felt great.

The following summer, I made my first attempt at going vegan. Being a vegetarian was easy, so transitioning to veganism would be a cinch, right? Well, as it turned out, not so much. In fact, I only lasted a week before I went back to egg sandwiches, ice cream, and provolone cheese. Though they didn’t say so, I knew my friends and family were relieved. They thought the diet was unhealthy and unnecessary, and besides, scrutinizing every nutrition label at the busy grocery store was tedious for everyone.

When I had first told people I was trying to go vegan, I was met with candid responses like, “UGH.”, “No!”, and “That’s too far!” One friend lamented, almost as if she was personally offended by my decision, “So you’re not going to have pizza nights with me anymore?” I hated to admit that their reactions contributed to my giving up so soon.

Just a couple months later, at the start of my junior year, I met a guy. PJ was a longboarding stoner with a goofy, loveable smile. We connected immediately. After we went out to dinner on our first date, we ended up wandering around Boston for three hours (despite the fact that it was raining), just because we didn’t want the night to end. If I had been an outsider looking at our relationship, I probably would’ve gagged. We'd just sit there with our foreheads touching, staring into each other’s eyes as the city moved around us. He’d often drop his head and sigh, saying, “You're so great. I can't even handle it.” He wasn’t a vegetarian, but I didn’t care; he was the first boyfriend I’d ever cared about, and he respected that I was a vegetarian.

That semester, I was taking a required Speech Communications course, which I had tried my damnedest to get out of. Just the thought of class presentations made me nauseous, so I could only imagine that an entire course on presentations would send me to the hospital. My anxiety and depression had been acting up lately, despite the fact that PJ and I were honeymoon phasing to the max. While this class was a big source of anxiety—and it did prove to be, predictably, my least favorite class of my college career—it got me to voice my vegetarianism in a way I never had before. I used it as a topic for a persuasive speech project: “Why You Should Consider Going Veg.” I felt conviction as I wrote my four-minute speech and organized my PowerPoint with photos of cute little farm animals mixed in. In high school I wouldn’t have dreamed of revealing that part of myself to an entire room of people, but now, it seemed only natural that I’d use this opportunity to spread awareness. But not long after this presentation, my personal life went sour.

I had a feeling something was wrong when I met up with PJ one afternoon at the Public Garden. His eyes didn't light up like they normally did when he saw me, and though he hugged me hello, he didn't pair it with a kiss. He broke up with me, offering no real explanation, and it came out of nowhere. I was in no way emotionally prepared, and while I was devastated, the next day proved to be even worse. I saw that his best friend’s girlfriend had messaged me on facebook, and I assumed it was a message of condolence. It felt like a Twilight Zone moment when I read her words, “You deserve to know the truth, and the truth is that he cheated on you.” Apparently he was drunk and/or high at a party the previous Friday night, and things got out of hand with someone’s visiting cousin. That was all I found out, and it was more than I wanted to know.

My depression had been peeking up at me from under the surface for a while, but this ordeal launched it straight to the forefront. On top of being heartbroken, I found myself at terrible odds with my own identity. A self-proclaimed feminist, I felt betrayed by my emotions; why was I giving a misogynistic asshole the power to destroy my emotional state? I tried so hard not to care, to be rational about the situation.

My pre-existing regimen of antidepressants and mood stabilizers was constantly changing — adjusting dosages, adding pills, removing pills — desperately trying to find that magical pharmaceutical combination that would solve all my problems. I stopped reading and writing (as much as my major could possibly allow), slept between classes, and blew through bottles of klonopin at an alarming rate. There was a whole lot of self-loathing during that period, and when I thought about what I was supporting when I consumed dairy and egg products, I’d get particularly disgusted with myself. I said I cared about animals, but I still supported the animal agriculture industry.

I felt useless, like I was wasting space. So I finally stopped making excuses, and made the commitment to completely separate myself from animal-derived ingredients and products. My food choices were something that I was in control of, and at that point, I was clinging to any sense of control I had. Anyone who’s suffered from depression knows that it is vicious and all-consuming. But oddly enough, it weighed me down in such a way that pushed me into veganism.

My health started improving (both physical and mental), I started meeting new people, and I found myself becoming a part of a positive and accepting community. I fell in love with someone; we had found each other through our shared veganism. I don’t go out distributing “Go Vegan” leaflets (panic attack waiting to happen), but I volunteer with a publisher that produces books that help spread awareness.  I may have the occasional nightmare about inadvertently “breaking veg,” but there’s no actual fear attached to that part of life. And I’m lucky enough that at actual family picnics, everyone respects my lifestyle and makes sure I have something to eat.

Breanna Locke is a contributor to This Recording. This is her first appearance in these pages. She is a writer living in Medford. You can find her tumblr here.

"I Killed Myself But Didn't Die" - Ezra Furman & The Harpoons (mp3)

"New York City Hotel Blues" - Margot & the Nuclear So and So's (mp3)