Under Loose Floorboards

It’s an odd thing being alone; odder still when you feel alone in a crowded room. People mingle about the room, talking and laughing and looking straight through you. It’s not so much that you are alone as invisible.

         I am invisible.

         I’ve heard rumors that the worst punishment for our social species, aside from death, is solitary confinement. A person is forced into a bathroom-sized room and expected to stay there alone for weeks at a time with scarce hours outside. However, their isolation from the outside world arises from something they have done wrong. Those souls have earned their right to suffer at least. They committed an act, a cause and effect in which one thing led to the other. My effect had no cause. Then again, my isolation is of a different sort. I don’t live in a bathroom-sized room.

My name is Helen Jones, and I live in a small apartment in downtown Seattle. I have long brown hair that someone once told me was beautiful. It lies lank now and oily. My eyes used to glimmer with the gray of the ocean. Now they only sink with the uneven hue of concrete. I’m twenty-six going on a thousand and I work at a post-office where I sort mail every day.

It is Monday morning, and I awake reluctantly at six to the sound of my alarm. Quietly, yet for the benefit of no one, I complete my morning rituals. I shower in my simple bathroom, ignoring the mysterious stain on the ceiling that had been there since I moved in a few weeks passed. Wiping steam from the small, cracked mirror over the small sink, I run my toothbrush across my yellowing pearly whites and a brush through my wet hair before rolling it into a bun. I dress but with little interest in my outfit.

In a brave attempt at deviating from the norm, I eat a bagel instead of toast. Grabbing my black purse, I head out to leave. Almost silently I close my apartment door and twist the key. With a click louder than anything I’d made so far this morning, the lock engages. I sidle down the hall, tip-toe down two flights of stairs in order to avoid making conversation with anyone in the elevator, and slither past the gardener who’s tending to the plants outside our building.

I would like to make conversation with the people who share living in my shoddy apartment building, don’t get me wrong, I just never know what to say. If I must speak to them, I will but, truth be told, I’d rather avoid the whole awkward encounter. By the time I reach work, I’ve only uttered two ‘thanks you’s’. One came with a sigh as I settled on the bus; the other with a smile as I accepted my coffee from the barista. I’ve ordered the same black coffee with cream for nearly a year, and they no longer ask for my order. The only sort of exchange we make is fiscal.

A gratuitous ‘hi’ escapes my lips when I see a few of my fellow mail sorters upon entering the building. They nod or smile but say nothing else. My embarrassing ineptness at social niceties has discouraged them from further attempts at friendliness. I have been given up as a lost cause, even though I so desperately want to be found.

Please, I beg myself. Someone try again. At least here, opposed to my apartment dwellers, I share a job with these people. We have hours of our life spent in close vicinity and there are things I know I could say to them. Maybe this time someone can see past my lost luster to the person I once was: class valedictorian, president of our National Honors Society, and homecoming queen! What happened to me?

But I knew what happened to me. Everyone who knew my history did. My parents had died in a car crash. They’d been on the way to pick me up from homecoming senior year when my date turned out to be intolerably annoying. Investigators said it was an accident. The mechanic that examined their car concurred. The brakes had simply failed as they rounded a corner and, let’s be honest, trees don’t make way for anything. They died on impact because of their speed and despite their seatbelts.

Dwelling on these thoughts, as I so often do, I sort mail. Names flash before my eyes: A Gordon from Seattle receiving something from the government, a Dolores from Pike Street is the recipient of a once in a lifetime offer, a Gary, a Julia…

Often, I find myself wondering about them, because these faceless people are more interesting to me than I am. I invent stories about them, wondering, if I ever saw them on the street, would they care I had been the reason they received their mail? But, like my existence with my coworkers, I’m equally invisible to the people I serve. There is no prestigious award for sorting mail and no recognition for a job well done.

At lunch, I drift over to a deli where I purchase a plain turkey sandwich. I do this every day, Monday through Friday. The man working behind the counter has adjusted to my habits. My sandwich is visible on the counter upon my arrival. I pay the man with exact change and he nods slowly as I take my meal. I believe that my sandwich’s punctuality is due to that man’s desire to have me in his deli the least time possible. By communicating with me, it’s probable he believes that he may be drawn into my shadow of a life. I eat alone on a bench and then return to work.

By five, I clock out and return home. I permeate my apartment in the same manner I left it: silently. In a vague stupor, I float about the apartment tidying things up: shifting a book from one table to another, hanging up my jacket still damp with rain, placing my purse on the coffee table, and then stepping back to take in the overall affect of my dwelling. The walls, all of them, crack with faded white and are desperately in need of a fresh coat of paint. My light beige couch rests directly in the middle of my small living room. In front of it sits a small, square television on a sagging wood stand. I spend a lot of time watching that silver box.

My kitchen intersects my living room, outlining its presence with faded yellow laminate and matching tile along its counters. The yellow looks almost sickly now, washed-out. A bit like me really, but I quickly forgo that depressing introspection.

I enter the kitchen where I heat up a TV dinner. At nine, I breach the silence of my room and ready myself for bed. This room is small and hardly large enough to fit my rickety bed. Oddly enough, the floor here is wood rather than carpet and groans with an audible creak under my slight weight. It is one of the few things that makes vocal recognition to my presence throughout the day. I circumvent my bed to get to my shoddy dresser, slip into my night gown and shimmy into bed. I reach for my alarm and set it.

Alone in bed, I’m finally forced to analyze the day I’ve so quietly drifted through. I realize I’ve only spoken a grand total of five words all day. This silence feels like a wormhole. I can’t escape but just get pulled deeper and deeper inside. It’s like my voice is being stifled by an invisible gag. I’m beginning to forget how to speak, which makes it less surprising that when I do, I barely know what to say anymore.

This day was not atypical. This is like all my days and the weekends are only worse. Remember that isolation I mentioned? Well, mine is social.  I’m socially isolated but not by choice. I don’t know what brought it about, but the further I fall, the more I spiral into this pattern of solitary confinement. But mine is worse, I tell you, much worse than that of someone imprisoned. They’ve done something; they have someone to fight against and blame for being trapped alone. I have no one to blame but, perhaps, myself. Self-blame does little to help my situation.

Daily I watch as people laugh, talk, and make plans for their eventful weekends. It’s like I’m in a box that allows me to see the normal bearings of human society, but somewhere along my years I lost the knowledge of how to function in a similar manner. My box is inescapable and unmercifully transparent.

A tear wavers in my eye but I blink it into submission. I just want to be remembered. I don’t want to fade out of existence. I want someone to care if I died. I want someone to notice if I suddenly and mysteriously vanished.

That night, I spent hours staring at my cracked ceiling. My stomach feels unpleasantly hollow and my eyes prickle from threatening salty, tears. Eventually, I fall into a troubled sleep. Once again, nothing atypical about that day.

Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday-Sunday.

All the same. Mix and repeat and the day just described can belong to any date.

Then something changed. A slight disturbance started by uneven flooring broke me out of my glass box with the bang of an awful idea.

The following day I went about my usual morning rituals. In fact, the only thing that made that day any different were the events that preceded it the night before. I got ready Tuesday morning just as silently as any day but emptied the contents of my purse. Instead, I placed inside two cruel, metal objects.  I tested the weight and found it odd that so many meaningless things, like lipstick, change, library cards, could in total weigh about the same as these weapons.

My lock engaged loudly as I left my apartment for work.

I defiantly smashed the elevator button but found it empty upon arrival. I stepped inside, for once disappointed to find the elevator vacant. Wishing all the more that I wasn’t alone and that there was someone here who could talk me out of what I was about to do.

I got on the bus and sat alone where a male passenger waved through me to another female passenger. He tripped over my feet as he went to speak with her.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t see you there.”

The bus lurched to a stop a few minutes later. I slid from my seat, down the steps and out the door. I walked to my usual coffee stand. I wanted someone, anyone, to ask me if something was wrong. I think I finally would have told them. I would have at last said that I was so terribly lonely.

“Here’s your change,” the cashier said as she placed a few dimes and nickels into my hand. Ask me, I thought, why I hadn’t pulled out my wallet today with the flowers on it. Why didn’t I return the change to my purse instead of my pocket?

“Next!” The barista called. When I received my cup, I threw it into the trash because my hands were already badly shaking. I didn’t think caffeine was going to help.

Slowly, I dragged my feet against the sidewalk. Puddles peppered it from this morning’s rain. Gray clouds, threatening further precipitation, reflected in the still water. A pigeon hopped through the water to get past me and after a small French fry someone had dropped. The red of the ketchup against the fast food item seemed vibrant against this city’s monotone.

My feet, despite my mind’s distraction, had taken me obediently to work as they’d done five days a week for the last five years. My hand turned, almost what felt like of its own accord, and opened the door of the Post Office. A few people looked up but, when they saw me, immediately refocused their attention elsewhere. No one said hi. No one inquired as to why my complexion looked so white.

I was going to be remembered and, if this was the only way, so be it.

I reached into my purse and no one moved to stop me. I pulled out the two cool, slick deliverers of death and grasped one in each hand as my purse fell to the floor with a muffled thud. I disengaged the safety and still no one looked at me. I raised both guns to the ceiling and my purse fell with a dull thump to the ground. A glint shone off the unusually dull steel of the two semi-automatic, Smith & Wessen Chief’s Special, and I saw, just as I was about to pull the trigger, one of my fellow employees look up from her work. Almost in slow motion, her jaw fell and her eyes transformed into saucers against the paling skin of her face. Her pupils locked with mine and, for the first time in a long time, someone registered my presence.

I fired.

*          *          *

Later, they told me I cried; that as I fired madly about the room, tears streamed down my face. It was part of the defense my lawyer used in an attempt to lighten my sentence but I’d killed three people. There’s nothing light about that and neither the judge nor the jury tried hard in finding anything. However, in lieu of prison, I was sent to a mental institution after seeing multiple psychologists. They agreed: I was legally insane which is apparently much different than just being insane which is a term that no therapist uses. Instead they said things like clinically depressed, maniac depressant, bipolar, and anxiety disorder. I’ll never understand. Now I see Dr. Kriger three times a week and we talk about things like The Seattle Times article about me. It was called, “Postal Worker Gone Postal.” There was even a picture of myself there. Suddenly, people everywhere, likening themselves experts on that Helen Jones, commented to reporters,

“She’d seemed a bit off, truth be told.”

“She never talked to anyone.”

“Yeah, that Helen girl, she lived in the apartment building next to mine, and I swear I heard her performing satanic rituals in there.”

“Always got the same sandwich. Gave me the creeps a little bit.”

I was no longer invisible now and by no means forgotten. People would tell their families about the crazy girl who came to work with two guns. I’d found them under two loose floorboards in my bedroom the Monday evening before that fateful day. They weren’t mine but must have belonged to someone who’d lived there before me. Maybe they’d caused that stain in my bathroom. If I hadn’t tripped and dislodged the plank on the uneven wooden flooring, things might be very different now.

Now I waited in line in the cafeteria for my lunch dressed in a white gown with all plastic utensils. Others, dressed and equipped similarly, already sat around tables eating.  A girl rudely pushed in front of me.

“Excuse me,” I began, “but I was already waiting here.”

She turned towards me with a haughty look on her face.

“Oh sorry, guess I didn’t see you there,” she sneered and turned back around. Before I knew it, I was trying to hit every inch of her as male nurses ran over to try and pull me from her. After a struggle, the strongest of them pulled me off. I stopped squirming but continued breathing heavily. The attendant doctor, a man named Gordon, hurried over to us.

“I think,” he said in a somber voice to the man holding me, “we should put her in solitary confinement for a day or so. This is the second time this week she’s done something like this.” Then, catching sight of me, he asked, “Miss Jones, are you all right?”

I was laughing. Every eye fixed on me with what seemed sick fascination. Tears rolled down my cheeks through my roars of laughter though the sound of it emerged hollow and void of any form of humor. Finally, between continual giggles, I spoke,

“That’s it?” Laughing, my body rocking from the motion, the male guard holding me escorted my hysterical self from the cafeteria.

Finally, a cause to my effect. Justice served at last.