Hostess

In my mind, I own a house with different rooms where guests come and go.

It does not take a day to build a house. I’m no engineer but I know it takes months, years even. Mine took 24 years, and it still undergoes renovations… and repairs. Yet, to have a house with four rooms with nothing but open windows and a high ceiling as company, the air blurs the line between solitude and loneliness. It is then that I invite people to come.

My front door was made with red oak and chiseled with hieroglyphs. No one gets the language and I guess that’s why it does not appear welcoming. Most days, it is I who open the door and lean on the frame, waiting for someone to come, to at least see why the light was on inside. On rare days, my invitation letters don’t get lost in the mail and the house will be filled with family and friends in the living room. In the rarest case, someone will purposely learn the hieroglyphs on the door and knock. It is on the latter that I’ll unlock and show them around.

When I have guests, I let them sit in the living room. There would be paintings of sunsets, moon phases, and everything celestial on the walls. The long couch would be fronting a television set, where movies of greatest wars in history and futuristic theories would be shown. I’d be in the kitchen preparing pies and making fruit juices. Anything to be the best hostess, anything to make them come again. It won’t help as some would leave too early and I would blame the movies or the foods for being lame or bland. They would walk out of the house with my pies wrapped up in tissue papers and I would wave goodbye. With their dents on the couch and used plates on the sink, the whole house was poignant. The house won’t feel the same right after.

However, a few came back and stayed for the night. Among the four rooms, I can only let them inside the two. The first one was the master bedroom with walls of transparent glass and vibrant colors of summer. It was spacious and open, the type which I would agree for a room tour any second. I know I have nothing to fix nor hide in that room and that the floor was made with candy tiles so I welcomed everyone. It was a room made for the public, like a museum exhibit.

There were three people from there who asked for a different space and I led them to the second room. Here, the colors dulled a little and the candy tiles turned sour. On a shelf were unfinished books and faded pictures of strangers. My guests noticed there was a window and they walked towards it. They looked out only to see a starless sky. I closed the curtains and wished them good night.

As I closed the door, I tiptoed to the second floor where I kept a separate room only for myself. Inside was a small bed, a square window overlooking the endless sea and a gigantic closet of dresses I slipped on according to my mood. It was there that I played music with my own poetries and watched my own memories in a slideshow. It was a place I’ve known myself the realest, a place where I got to meet myself over and over again. In different phases.

Come morning and I would be walking the guests out of the house and lock the rooms temporarily. I would be tending the place with their memories staining my clothes. Living room first, then each room, mine would be the last. I would be exhausted and that’s when I pass the fourth room at the end of the hall.

What’s in the fourth room, they have asked and I would say the first thing in my head: a library, a storeroom for cleaning materials, an old bathroom. None of those responses were true as even I, the hostess, didn’t have a definite name for it. I just knew the fourth room as the one I wish to avoid. That’s why it was in the farthest corner of my mental compartments. If only I had a choice, I wouldn't be stepping inside its door… but my feet would always lead me there involuntarily.

I stepped in and I entered a vacuum. I wonder if black holes can be as dark as the inside of the room. There was no bed nor windows. No light switch nor tables. There, I sat on the floor and hugged my knees. With the four walls as my companion, I felt like a prisoner in my own house. The small ray of light coming from the gap between the door and the floor withered, and I closed my eyes with the fear of being consumed.

I fell asleep and realized I stayed there longer than I should. My eyes couldn’t adjust with the darkness that I found the door in all fours, obtaining bruises. As I held the door knob, it twisted. My heartbeat raced. Someone was on the other side of the door and I heard the jiggling of keys. It was a person. A person.

“I was looking for you everywhere. Let’s get you out of here.”

“You have a key? I don’t remember me giving you a key.”

“You didn’t. But I know you. I know what kind of house you’re going to build.”

With that, I got out of the fourth room. The last guest stood there, waving the keys to the fictional house I built with real-life issues. A stranger, if I may add. But then, the visits became frequent. Too frequent to the point that the house changed its form to accommodate the permanent guest. Now the fourth room remains locked, and I threw the key away.

Did I mention it has a fifth room now? Well, it does.