There are multiple points of entry into a memory: sound, sight, taste, touch, smell. I will tell you one thing: I walked in and it smelled like a vitamin shake. There were circles everywhere. We grew them, walked them, ate them, used them as chairs. The imperfect circle is the dominant shape of this memory. In the bathroom, I counted thirty two tiles on the floor, and between them countless clusters of mold reproducing in the grout. You’d think there would have been some stench but in reality the bathroom, like the rest of the house, smelled like a vitamin shake.
My presence here felt fungible; that is, it could have been me or any other woman. Outside I stood trembling like a leaf in search of a pile. There was green mold on the side of the house. There were senescent leaves in the gutter. I found an herb garden deep in the yard and kept near it awhile. It was the one place that didn’t reek of vitamin shake. Now I’ve entered the memory, but just barely. Reminiscence requires patience. When I rush, I misremember.
It was the unplugged Vitamix blender sitting proudly on the kitchen counter that first caught my eye. The blender was full of overlapping circles of seeds and fruits of various colors and sizes. As I moved closer, I could see dozens of pale white newborn maggots feeding on the pulpy mass. The whole picture struck me as odd. The blender was enclosed, the lid tightly sealed. How did the fruit flies find their way in?
The house kept me on my intuitive toes. When I stopped looking for mold, I found more of it. No one else seemed to notice it or, if they did, they skillfully looked the other way.
The memory itself is now decomposing, which would be fine if only I wasn’t trying to write about it.