going home

When I can’t sleep, I sometimes go back to the places I used to live. I walk up the steps to the red house on Cypress Street, stand on the porch, push open the door. In the foyer, I trace the lions’ heads on the umbrella stand. To my right is the study, all bookshelves and pipe smoke. To my left is the living room, orange couches in an L in one corner, the piano anchoring the other.

Past dark stairs leading down is the door to the kitchen. There, I look for the patterns in the pale-flecked linoleum, squint at the shape of – a duck? a fish? -- coppery-bright on a peg board by the stove. Sometimes Florence is there, smelling like soap in one of her crinkly dresses, a spoon in her hand, telling me about the way the palm trees grow in Trinidad, along the beach, along the roads, fronds like feathers, birds like flowers.

I ask her if she’ll make my hair into those little braids again and she says she will, if my brother takes a nap, if I eat my whole lunch. My mother is at school. My father is at work. My brother, face turning pink, starts to scream from his highchair. I’m wearing my school shoes, the red ones with buckles. And everything, all of it, is exactly the way it's supposed to be.