The Window

Her favorite place to sit was in the window seat on the landing. Mama had upholstered a cushion for the seat that had all different colors of stripes in all sorts of colors. The stripes rose up a bit off the main fabric and were slightly fuzzy. She loved to run the palm of her hand lightly over the fabric. The window seat had a smell. Three Boston Ferns hung from the ceiling, and the leaves would fall onto the fabric and also get caught up in the gauzy white curtains. Adults said it smelled “musty,” but Tamara loved that smell. Whatever musty was, she knew she loved it. From the window, she would peer out the window that looked down on the side yard of the farmhouse.

There was an entire world down there that only she could see, but she could see it vividly. There were streets and buildings, houses and stores. Sometimes when her oldest brother “lawned the mow,” as she called it, he would cut in paths for her and then go mow the rest of the yard before finally cutting her kingdom down properly. She loved those days and constantly asked her parents if Abel could lawn the mow, much to his horror. But secretly, she thought he liked it that it made her that happy.

Today it was raining in her kingdom, so she could only look down on it. All the villagers were scurrying about with umbrellas when they came outside at all. She wished her brothers would come home soon from school. Tamara enjoyed the quiet days with her mother, playing Yatzee and helping to cook dinner, but she also yearned for the day when she, too, could get on the bus that stopped at the end of the driveway. Next year, Mama had said. “Next year” seemed impossibly far away some days.

Then she saw it, out of the very corner of her vision, the tiny yellow dot as it slowly grew larger, racing down the highway. She jumped up and ran downstairs, determined to make it to the end of the driveway first. “Tamara, get a coat on!” Frustrated and almost in a panic, she went back to the hallway closet, grabbing whatever her hand landed on first – it was Jacob’s brown corduroy jacket– it was not a rain jacket, but it would do. She pulled it on as she ran down the gravel driveway to the road.

“That’s my jacket, Tae!” Jacob pouted.

“Oh, don’t be a baby, Jacob. You’re not wearing it today.”

Jacob scowled. Tamara loved both of her brothers dearly, but they rarely seemed to love each other. Everything was an argument between them, an unspoken struggle for power. Of course, Abel had the power because he was the eldest, and it infuriated him that Jacob did not respect that fact. What it meant to Tamara was that usually she only played with one brother at a time. She hated it when they fought – it scared her, actually.

“Let’s finish our fort in the barn!” Tamara suggested to Jacob. He seemed the natural choice this time, since it would make him less irritated with her about the jacket, and she could tell Abel’s comments had lit that quick spark in his eyes followed shortly after by a dark brooding. She was happy to see that look melt away almost instantly at her suggestion. They had been working on the fort for two weeks now, and it was almost done. She had talked Abel into stacking the hay bails into a high wall one day when Jacob had to go into town with Mama because he had his tutoring. All that was left was somehow forming a ceiling over the fort and dividing it up into rooms. Maybe they could build a sub fort in the back pen and bury it under some loose hay. Then they would have two houses.

“Let me go change!”

“Come inside!” Mama was yelling from the porch. “You’ll catch your death of a cold out there in that rain!” They all three giggled and started heading for the house. Tamara wondered why adults cared so much about things like rain and cold. It was rather silly. She envisioned that witch in that movie they had watched at church disappearing under water. The movie had frightened terribly her at the time (and she wondered why they had watched it at church, of all places), but now it made her giggle even more as she raced to the house, her skinny legs kicking out behind her. “I’m melting!!!!!” she screamed as she went, throwing her arms up in the air and spinning in circles.