inside
In that house on the hill, someone shouts so loud the windows rattle, brittle and tinkling, like chains. In horror films, that sound–always the glass clattering like shivering teeth–makes me want to hide my face. My steps slow as I pass by, a rumbling street and a sidewalk between. “I told YOU,” I hear a disembodied voice scream, but the humps spread out too far and the other words melt right into the windows, deepening the tones of warning, gulped down. I wonder who stands on the other side of that yelling. Who’s the YOU?
On the outside, the house looks beautiful. Someone painted the front door the warm, sweet color of nectarines when they’re ripe; someone carefully rubbed on a vinyl hello. Somehow that word, all lower-case with a period even, for breath, conjures a wide-thrown gate, a welcoming wave. I always turn my head that way when I walk by to admire the perfect-for-the-season wreath. It’s got good curb appeal, that house, like something you’d find on the slick pages of HGTV magazine; like something you’d gently tear loose to get the look. An urn beside the door spills over with blooms, the velvety petals of violets; a rocking chair gently rocks in the breeze. It’s the kind of place that makes even the weeds look good, as though the smiley, bright dandelion heads have been placed with deliberate randomness, cascading down the hill like a billowy scarf tossed on the edge of a chair. It’s funny how we’re still surprised that pain lives in perfectly manicured places.
For a moment, I’m completely unsure about what to do. My friends and I have laughed, a little nervously maybe at times, about how sound travels–how it surely must—in our grittiest, most lopsided moments as mothers, when we have to stand and count breaths just to remember how to love well. The windows reverberate a sentence, maybe two, and then everything falls still. That hello. on the door has gone to mocking, like it caught me staring, like its tone is suddenly more like, May I help you? I feel intrusive and apologetic, the way we do at a dinner party when another couple starts fighting at the table. I’m not supposed to hear you coming undone; I’m not to supposed to see the ripped seams in your careful smile; I’m not supposed to know you’re as real as I am, but now, suddenly, I do.
Outside, the windows shine, nothing broken or cracked or even needing washing like my windows at home. The brass numbers on the door glint with sun; they would be hot to the touch. I look for movement in the windows, for fingers pulling back a curtain, but see nothing but the peaceful idyllic scene I always see walking along this way. I hear birds skittering from some high, hidden branches, but nothing more.
The truth is I know nothing about these people; I’ve never even seen them outside. The house is far enough away as to exist in my mind merely as a glimpse, a decoration, a sweet moment on a highlight reel; it’s a Facebook timeline post as my thumb scrolls by, a happy Instagram shot with a pretty filter. I hit like and move along. Usually. I don’t know if the faceless pain inside is young or old, married or single, mama or daughter or wife, but I’ve heard enough—just the three words that couldn’t be contained by those sprawling, trembling windows, to know someone’s hurting, and probably more than one. But the truth is, if for a moment I refuse to be fooled by what I see, I realize I knew that before. It doesn’t take shouting to know that life is hard; that we’re all walking around with carefully protected cracks; that pain lives somewhere inside every slick, polished one of us. Sometimes the things that make us hurt just get belligerent and refuse to behave; sometimes it all starts to seep at the edges. We would all do well to remember this about each other: that there’s always so much more to the story than what we can see from the outside; that polish is always an illusion. The gospel is the good news of God’s grace. And so, in the fullness of the afternoon, I stop on the sidewalk across from the house on the hill, and watching the shivering petals of those elegant flowers in the front porch urn, I start to pray.
