The Orange Leaf

I was paralyzed by fear. He was a big man, three times my size, and he wasn't happy. As soon as he walked through the door, I knew something was very wrong. Because this big powerful man was the person in control, the voice of authority, and because I thought I was in danger, I sat motionless and stared at the orange leaf at the end of my nose. I felt I had no choice but to stay stone silent until he'd spewed out all of his anger and left.

Behind the orange sofa, patterned with leaves, was where I spent a lot of my time. It was a perfect hiding place from what would oftentimes be a scary and strange world. Like, for example, the day a stranger knocked on the front door of Aunt Gracie and Uncle Jimmy's duplex. When I opened the door he immediately spotted my mother ironing in the dining room and pushed past me. I ran for safety.

The man was mad but at whom and why? After a few angry minutes with my mother, my aunt came into the room and pushed the man aside. Standing between my mother and him, she pointed her finger in his face and spared him no mercy. He had some nerve, she said, coming into her home, the home that had rescued his wife and two babies from his abandonment, and making demands on her sister. The man's anger was no match for Aunt Grace. She shoved him back toward the door, pushed him out on the porch, and then kicked the door shut.

The room was eerily quiet. I crawled out from behind the sofa. A low indistinct murmur was coming from the dining room. It grew louder. I could hear my aunt talking softly, almost in a whisper. At the same moment that I saw feet sticking out from under the ironing board, the house exploded with screams. I raced back to my safe haven, curled up in a ball, and covered my ears, but I couldn't escape the terror that had clamped down on me and wouldn't let go.

After what felt like hours, but was only minutes, my aunt was tugging on me and asking that I please come out. With her arms tight around me, she held on until the vibration in my body subsided. Everything would be okay, she said. There would be no explanation for what had just happened--why a stranger angrily confronted my mother, why my aunt was so furious she threw him out of the house and kicked the door shut, why mother fell on the floor and began to scream hysterically. Later that night, when Uncle Jimmy came home from work, there was no mention of the scary and strange events that had unfolded earlier in the day. It was as if nothing happened; just another nightmare I had only imagined.