“Clean faster or to the dungeon with you!” I yelled.
“I know, I know there are a thousand and one pieces of dust on my floor,” she replied.
I was appalled by her response and threatened to tie her up, slaves don’t talk back.
We are in the living room, three walls painted eggshell white, a painting of the halloween parade with Marisa front and center in her purple, princess costume on the right wall and windows adorning the left, the opening led to the dining room and kitchen and those led out into the backyard with the tree, perfect for climbing and bigger than the house itself.
Today we are playing Slave and Princess and I get to be the princess. I prance around in my purple flower skirt and white t-shirt with the black sparkly poodle on the chest while she sits on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor. The dizzying, but familiar smell of lemon scented floor cleaner not nearly diluted enough fills my lungs as I continue our charade. I grab the imaginary rope, rough in my hands and splintering from over-use, push Marisa on a chair and start to tie her up for disobedience.
These are the games we like to play: Slave and Princess, Monster Railroad, who can clean the floor or the bathroom tiles or any number of other places the best. These games, are our favorites to play and after a long day of endless play we sit in the red, rope, hammock that hangs between the tree larger than the house and its smaller counterpart. The hammock is rough between my toes as they get caught between the woven diamonds. We swing endlessly while we talk and watch the waves of the ocean crash against the shore. Some days we venture down to the bottom of the long, vertical driveway, distinguishable by the way nature is constantly trying to take it back, it’s the one with the cracks running up, blazing a trail for us to follow back up to the house on the hill. We sit at the bottom of that driveway with a little table and a sign “lemonade for sale to support affordable housing in Provincetown”, selling lemonade and granola bars for a dollar each. When we got older we sit my little sister out in front and call her the bait, our logic: people always buy from cute little kids.
This house is a beautiful work of love, built in the late 80’s early 90’s by her parents. Two floors sit on top of a hill, overlooking the ocean. The outside of the house is paneled with light brown shingles, surrounding the windows and the doors. On the left of the house their large red chimney erupts from the green grass surrounding three quarters of the house while their tenderly loved vegetable garden and sunflowers surround the last quarter. I love standing next to those sunflowers waiting for the day I’ll grow taller than them. Two more inches and I’ll outgrow the puny one. They are always the first thing I see as we walk back up the long driveway from our day’s adventures.
We walk up to her bedroom, walls decorated with theatre memorabilia - she’s going to grow up to be a famous actress, I almost hate her for it. We prepare for bed and I climb to the top bunk. I lay there in my fuzzy Tinkerbell pants and a t-shirt from the previous year’s Portuguese Festival that’s two sizes too big and stare at her illustrated, mouse, alphabet poster hanging behind my pillows, a is for apple, b for boy, c for cat all the way through the alphabet.
We wake up to Roger cooking us breakfast as he always does when I stay over. Roger is eighteen years older than Heidi and in their house it’s okay for both Marisa and I to call them by there first names. I feel weird calling them that. Mom would kill me if I called her Melissa. I don’t dare test this theory. When it is time for me to leave Marisa and I hide under her bed while her mother calls for us. She always says the same thing as we lay under the bed not wanting to part, “if you don’t come downstairs right this instance Angela can never sleep over again!” We hold out for a few minutes longer, if we stay here for five more minutes I won’t have to leave. The threat, nevertheless scares us into submission a minute later and we reluctantly gather my things and sludge down the narrow stairs with the salmon walls to the front door where her mom is always waiting for us.
We sit in the back of their maroon Subaru and as we drive down that long, vertical driveway I always stare back and watch the house on the hill disappear into the distance until the next time I walk its halls and clean its floors.
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