I peek my head out just beyond the ferns; I have to be sure no one seems me as I step outside my little sanctuary. I don’t understand how I came to know this place, but it has become the only place I feel safe and at home. I come here most days to collect my thoughts and paint the colors I see forming and reshaping before my eyes. On my short walk home I walk a little slower to marvel at the stark difference this true world holds when compared to my haven.
It really is a spectacular place. The first day I stumbled upon it I had no idea what I had found. There, nestled between the O’Shays and the McDowell’s was a vast shrubbery with overhanging branches, willows and pine, a smorgasbord of trees and vegetation I had never seen before. I was truly bewitched by the sight and found myself being tugged toward the slight opening between trunks, covered in vines, a light was being omitted like the rays of the sun being shot through a window on a calm Sunday morning. But there was a slight drizzle dampening my skin, and the sun was nowhere in sight, and even so it was midday and the direction of the amber glistening through the petals and leaves was, directionally, a midmorning shine. As I approached a spot of red hair stepped through the opening. I recognized her as Meganne Keegan from my tenth grade history class. I quickly shot into the O’Shay’s yard and ducked behind their eyesore of a fountain, the thing was big enough to hide twenty of me.
Meganne was looking around in all directions, like she had just committed an evil act and getting caught would mean her death. I did not know what was going on, but I was sure something mysterious and possibly dangerous was going on here. I decided crouching behind the fountain was exactly what I should be doing until she was clearly out of sight. She took another look around and jumped completely out from behind the trees and shot off in the direction of her house like a squirrel crossing before a car.
As soon as I knew she was a few blocks down I felt safe enough to go and explore the scene. I hadn’t taken my eyes off the place since I caught my first glimpse. Thinking back I probably should have been more wary, but I came right up to the spot between the trees where Meganne’s red head had dipped out and I pushed right through the fronds.
***
I used to walk every day to school and home to the pub with Patrick Ryan, my across the street neighbor, since we were born. He is a grade ahead of me at school, but we still have always been very close. I have been making excuses every day now I feel like we’ve been growing apart, but I can’t let anyone see me steal away into my sanctuary, because I see now that is the key, and I cannot afford to lose my ability to find this place. If it weren’t for my precious place of purity I would be condemned to the stale smoke filled filth of the pub. My ma and pa own The Crown Pub where all the rowdy, but well meaning, men from around town gather for their nightly buzz, booze, and brawl.
They call me “dirty girl” at the pub. It isn’t meant to be an insult, or worse, innuendo, it is just the way they poke fun at me. You see, there’s a running joke that I’m “the milkman’s daughter”. This is not because I’m actually the spawn of an illicit affair, or that my mom is a floozy, it’s because my skin is a shade or two darker than the average native around these parts, and my hair is more of a burgundy as compared to the brilliant reds and oranges that crown the heads of my siblings and many cousins. I give my hair leave to be burgundy on a sunny day when the light hits it in just the right way. But to be honest, there aren’t many of those days, so I am often cursed with a much more chocolate cap.
I come to this place every day after school, and at times I will wake up early just to come here and lay beneath the warmth of the shine. I call it “the shine” because there is no sun to speak of, but there is always a warm light that somehow reaches the ground though the ceiling of my little world is a vast greenery that even a rainforest, I’m sure, could not match in thickness or beauty.
As I mentioned before I enjoy doing my painting here. I made the mistake once of bringing one of my pieces home with me.
“Lily Marie Doyle” This statement is what followed a shrill screech that all of us Doyle children know to expect one of our names to come after. “What is this mess? “ She was standing behind my painting holding it up in front of her with an incredulous look on her face. Even with my massive canvas in front of her I could tell she had her usual stance, one hip jutting out to one side, the opposite leg locked out to the other, like she was trying to encompass as much open space as possible should her prey try to bolt.
“It’s a painting ma, what did you think it was?” I knew this sarcastic tone was bound to get me into more trouble, but I had had a close call with The Glen (this is what I had started calling my little hiding place ever since it had developed into a beautiful valley with a small brook cutting through the lush emerald grass and fading into the trees. Once I tried to follow it, but lets get back to ma) today and I was anxious, fearing the worst, knowing I had to get back there, I couldn’t lose The Glen, not now. This close call is why I had the painting with me at all.
“How can you be wasting what little money we have on canvas and paints when all you’re going to create is…is…this rubbish?!” her eyebrows were threatening to unify right there in the middle of her face from the amount of concern she was holding them together with.
“I’m sorry ma, I was just trying something new. I’ll be more conventional from now on,” little did she know there were ten more like that sitting against the trunk of a weeping willow, inside a hidden rainforest cove, nestled between two ordinary homes, only a couple blocks from here. And I had no intention of painting anything conventional, not when the landscape that sat for me was in a constant ebb and flow, moving like a lifetime was passing in mere seconds, like time and space was flowing through this realm on Baker St. that no one but I could see.
***
***
“I know it’s you!” Meganne Keegan was a fiery mess making a B-line for me, head ablaze, with eyes that threatened to burn through my not-so-convincing innocent look. You have to understand, Meganne is quite a skanger, right down to her massive hoop earrings that rival her head for which is the biggest, and which has the most air inside it.
“Um, hey Meganne.”
“Don’t you fecking act dumb,” she’s right on top of me screaming in my face at this point, if we weren’t in the back alley behind the pub where the rowdy men make enough noise to drown out a freight train we would have had a crowd expecting a fight within seconds, “Come here! I know you found the place, and I want you to take me there right now!”
“Meganne I honestly don’t know what the feck you’re talking about. Have you gone off your rocker?” She had actually caught me on my way to The Glen so I had to think quick and I decided to head to the market instead.
She followed me all the way to the market and if she had followed me in I would have had to do some major bluffing considering I hadn’t brought any money. But as the auto-doors opened she stopped short and with a quick “I’ll be watching you,” she ran off down the street.
“How cliché,” I muttered under my breath as I walked into the market. Today was Sunday so I was at least sure to grab a couple of samples while I waited to be sure Meganne had cleared off.
“Lilly?”
I jumped right out of my skin and knocked over a few cans of stewed carrots turning to face my assailant.
“Jeanie Mac Patrick! Why’d you sneak up on me like that? I almost peed myself,” I was still trying to peak around the aisle at where Meganne was smoking just down the street outside the barbershop. I had to figure out how I was going to get out of here without her seeing me and following me back to the Glen.
“What’s the craic Lil?” Patrick and I had been friends for years, but since he started working at the market I rarely saw him.
“Pat, look, I’m just trying to avoid Meganne, she’s on some crazy rampage and I have somewhere to be. Can you get me out of here without her seeing me?”
“Sure Lil,” he grabbed my arm and pulled me in close wrapping his other arm around my head burying it in his chest, and started slinking off down the aisle, throwing glances left and right, taking huge elaborate steps on tip toe.
“Oh sod off!” I pushed him off of me, right into the remaining canned veggies.
“Oh, come on Lil, we’ll go through the back,” he took my hand and led me through the cold room, and out the back of the storage behind the store. “One day you’ll tell me what’s with all the cloak and dagger? Won’t you?”
“Sure Pat, but not today, take care!”
“Take care Lil,” he kissed me on the forehead and let his hand linger on my shoulder so I couldn’t run off right away. He looked straight in my eyes, brushed my hair behind my ear, and hopped up onto the loading deck and disappeared back into the market before I figured out what had just happened.
I tried to shake off the strange departure on my way back to the Glen, but I just was not sure when Patrick Ryan had become more than the typical “boy next door” best friend, and had turned into the attractive older boy sending chills down my spine. I guessed I had been missing a few things since I started spending all my time in the Glen. But today I had my painting to finish.
When I was leaving the Glen, painting in hand, I knew Meganne would probably be somewhere lurking. Remembering how I found the place I decided I needed to be extra careful. I had painted today with the intention of showing my work to Patrick, he always loved my art, and I knew he would find my new stuff particularly exciting. I also found myself wondering if the Glen would let me bring Patrick to it.
Sure enough Meganne was standing just on the corner past the McDowell’s taking a drag looking off in the opposite direction, her first mistake. I shot out of the Glen and ran across the street before she was able to flick her cigarette to the ground and give it a quick stomp with her high heel, wearing those was her second mistake. Thinking she could follow me into the damp grass field in them was her final mistake. Once her first heel sank into the soggy ground I knew I was home free.
***
Sometimes I look back and I cannot be sure if it was ever even real. One day it was there and then the next day I was standing outside of the McDowell’s snogging with my future husband. There was nothing between the houses, no wonderful sanctuary where magic happens, but now it was between us.
