Grandpa's tent

GRANDPA’S TENT

My sister knows she has done something wrong. She can feel our granddad’s anger through the tight clasp of his hands around her arm; she can breathe its intensity, grasp its enormity: it’s bigger than the biggest of mountains, stronger than the strongest of trees. And it is disturbingly unpredictable. Samantha is stumbling through the impenetrability of our granddad’s foggy landscape: she can’t see and that scares her to death. He makes her kneel on the glittery snow, eases his grip on her arm and swiftly moves his powerful hands on the back of her head. He presses down and brutally rubs Samantha’s face on the rough snow for what feels like an eternity. Her cheeks are burning with fear and humiliation. The coldness of the snow mingles with the warmth of her hopeless tears and she is on fire. The bewilderment and shock engraved on her eyes make it impossible for her to scream. Her mute helplessness pierces my ears, rips my body apart. For seconds, minutes or hours we just stand there, looking incredulously into each other’s eyes.

Something in my sister’s gaze catches my attention and I vaguely become aware of a sudden change in Samantha’s expression: an indecipherable light is passing through her eyes and before I can make sense of it, she reaches out and promptly grabs grandpa’s glasses. Having somehow shrunken in an amorphous mass, his powerful facade progressively dissolves into a pitiful, powerless presence. His arms protrude pathetically in front of him while he staggers in an incomprehensible world from which all colours and shapes have been abruptly erased; my sister drops the glasses on the ground and wildly jumps on them, until they are reduced to a useless pulp of wrecked glass, mud and snow. She then grabs my hand and we start running while we devilishly laugh, out of control, leaving the blind, screaming bastard behind us.

We run and run and run until we are deep in the woods that surround our house. As we catch our breath, I timidly ask: “What are we going to do now?” After a long pause that fills me with dread, my sister dreamily whispers: “I don’t know”. Pure freedom made up by endless possibilities spreads undisturbed in front of us, yet our mind is disturbingly blank. Samantha, bursting with an uncontrollable sense of triumph, smiles reassuringly.

“We are going to knit a tent for Grandpa. A prison!” she finally announces. “Yes! Let’s do it! Half of it is going to be white... we will keep him there in winter and he will be so cold! The other half has to be black, it will make the summer even hotter for him!” I aggressively respond, with renewed confidence. My sister prompts me towards the little wooden hut behind us. “That’s the witch’s house. She must have what we need to build it!” As she baldly says this, I try to summon all of my courage and strength, but my legs still fail to carry me forward. “What’s wrong?” Samantha asks tenderly. “What if the witch gets us?” I whine, shaken. “Don’t worry! She won’t even be at home! We just need to steal what we need and run away... everything is going to be OK!” She offers me her hand and I voraciously grab it, clinging to it with desperate urgency. We cautiously peek into the house and, as my sister had predicted, it seems empty. As we slowly enter, dump darkness sticks to our clothes and skin. Terrified, I listen to the wind blowing from outside, relentlessly whispering ghastly, menacing, intelligible words. I’m so scared I wet myself. I start crying. Samantha hugs me and assures me, yet again, that everything is going to be just fine. “Come on, help me look!” We kneel down on the earthy ground, rummaging through rotten leaves and sticks. My eyes are gradually adjusting to the darkness and as I get accustomed to the environment and to our mission, my fear subsides and soon enough I realize I’m actually having fun.

“I can’t find anything!” my sister shouts, obviously disappointed. She brings her hands to her face, covering it completely. After a long silence, she hesitantly asks: “Do you think we should go back? You know... to see if grandpa is OK?” She looks confused, anguished. Threads of guilt, fear, worry, rebelliousness, vindictiveness and god knows what else are irremediably tangled up in her heart and each one of this unwanted, invisible strings is painfully, unsuccessfully pulling to overshadow the others. Samantha sits still, paralyzed, while she dumbly contemplates a conflict she has no power over.

“It’s getting dark. I am cold and I am hungry” I point out, worryingly glancing outside. My sister unexpectedly snaps out of her daze: “We will be in so much trouble if we get back... besides... I’m not sure I know how to get home.” “Are you saying we are lost??” I shriek in a panic. As we debate this, my panic is intensified by an ominous rustling noise at the hut’s door. “Sam, the witch is back!” I stammer alarmed. I’m grabbing her arm, uncontrollably pinching it.

The witch looks very old. She has long, white, rough hair and if I’m not mistaken she is wearing the very same glasses my granddad used to wear, the ones my sister had smashed earlier in the day. She is leaning on a thin, wooden stick; her face is dry and wrinkled and scary. Her creepy features vaguely resemble mum’s chilling look. She is smiling soothingly, deceivingly. “Where are your parents?” the witch asks softly. “If she finds out our mummy and daddy are not here, if she finds out we are lost she is going to get us!” I mutter to myself, my heart engaged in a wild, hectic dance. Samantha must be thinking on similar lines because she is not answering the witch either. The witch is now uttering sweet words that I’m not hearing. She then takes our hands and although we both put up a fight, her grip is just too strong for us.

She walks us towards the village. As we reluctantly reach the first houses just outside the woods I manage to make out, through the blur of my weakened eyes, the outlines of our home. My sister and I violently push forward and succeed in freeing ourselves from the witch’s clutch. We dash towards the familiar building. We ring the bell...the witch is following us...she is almost here, oh no! she in catching up with us... “Come on! Come on!” I furiously shout to the door, until it finally opens. We rush inside past our mum’s bewildered, enraged look. My dad comes to the door too and both my parents briefly confer with the witch – I can hear them thanking her!! The witch finally leaves. Grandpa is sitting by the fire, looking outraged. I detect in dad the kind of anger that springs out of worry. Mum is fuming. Tomorrow, my sister and I are going to be punished. I wish Sam and I could have lived forever in the witch’s house. Just the two of us.