By Kathryn Beskrowni.
Wentworth, New Hampshire, is a fairly rural area, about the size of three blocks of my Boston hometown. The locale made the two-hour drive there seem even less tangible, and we made that trek at least three times each summer. My grandmother and grandfather, Baba and Didu, lived off the highway just past the town center that consisted of all the essentials: a square of grass, a church, and a post office. Once you pass the square, if you drive too fast, you’re bound to miss the turn into their drive way.
Having been demoted to the backseat for the car ride meant I had less of a view, but the seclusion meant far more time to catch up on the homework I had long been neglecting since leaving school. A comparative literature course on children’s stories had seemed far less daunting on paper, yet somehow I had novels full of magic and young heroes weighing on my already overwhelmed mind. I tried to keep up with C. S. Lewis as he wove together World War II and the White Witch, but the idea of a magic wardrobe was less than original.
My father slowed and pulled into the driveway, not a spoken notion from any of us of the end of our voyage. The untreated wooden exterior of their three-story house camouflaged their home within the trees and greenery that protected it from highway traffic.
Within those walls were enough beds and bedding supplies to accommodate a small army. While everyone else seemed to bounce around between beds and visits, my bed was somehow a constant. The small brass day bed in the room at the very top of the stairs was my bed, covered in stuffed animals and dolls from the old country, under the watchful eye of a particularly gruesome portrait of Jesus. And it was all in my room, despite the second, larger bed, the closets of storage, and innumerable knickknacks to be found within. That meant that every single inch of that room was free range, of which my older sister, Sasha, and I took advantage.
One day, while hunting for gems and riches to add to our competing treasure boxes, Sasha and I made the most exciting discovery: the huge armoire in my room, the one big enough to fit our family and then some, the one that was decorated with gold flowers, locked with a big key, and was filled with God-knows-what, had an end… and that end meant that there was a behind, and behind that closet there was magic.
As we peered behind the massive wooden panels, we were greeted with a darkness neither of us expected. Bags and bags filled the crevice, probably filled with even more unused and forgotten bedding. This was the dumping ground for dismissed pillows, hand-me-down throw blankets, and unfinished quilts. The grey and white plastic reached from the ground to nearly the ceiling, from the back of the armoire to the smallest corners of the floor and the wall. Sasha carefully put her treasures away and locked her box, putting the key in her dress pocket, asking me very matter-of-factly if I knew what this meant. This was a passage, and if we could make it all the way through to the other side, she informed me, we would be in a different universe. I knew she was right. And I was horrified. Not only did I not want to get stuck in another universe, but climbing over would be so high up! I put my treasure chest down, not wanting Sasha to leave me alone, and decided that if we were going to kill ourselves, it was better to do it together.
Our first steps were matched with the aggressive squeal of stretched plastic. The cushion inside the bags made it nearly impossible to find real footing or grip, while still giving a strange sense of security in the case of a fall. A thousand foot drop wouldn’t be so bad if you tumbled on blankets the whole way down…
We traversed the mountains of clutter, making closer contact with the wood body of the house. The initial smell of hot plastic was overwhelmed with the usually familiar aroma the wooden beams, now heightened with the strain of keeping everything confined between these two wooden barriers. The further we climbed into the dark we became that much closer to each eye of the knots in the wood. I worked for footing and things to grab, trying to avoid a direct gaze into one of the eyes of the house.
We were halfway through the climb when we met a barrier, the lowest beam that would make passing through that much harder. The only ray of light that could make it through to where we were shined on tiny fairies of dust, urging us to continue on our quest. I sucked in my stomach as much as I could and tried to be small, thinking only of the Polar Caves and that horrible time I got stuck at the exit of a cavern, and pushed my way past the plastic covered pillows.
Our descent was more of a roll than a climb and could have used some grace, but we had made it, and just like Sasha had said, we were in a totally different world! Except, everything seemed the same. We were still in my room, my bed with still unmade, our treasures were still on the floor. I was confused. Maybe Sasha realized my disappointment, or maybe she was convincing herself, but she quickly had reasoning—and advice—for me. It would be exactly the same as our world, she told me, except it isn’t. Things would look and feel the same, but some things would just be off, and it would be different. And we could not let anyone know that we didn’t belong, or else everything would go wrong. It seemed so simple; it was all just so obvious. We needed to test it out, to figure out what was different. We started to brainstorm how to make this difference obvious when we heard footsteps on the stairs. In this world, it could be anyone—or anything! We couldn’t stay, we ran. We scrambled back up those pillows and blankets, pushing plastic out of the way as fast as we could to get back to our own universe. As we tumbled back out from behind the armoire, safely in our own true realm, we were greeted with an angry demand as to what we had been up to. If Baba didn’t want us back there, the passage definitely had power. Sasha and I both knew it, and we would have to go back through.
I imagined that the worst day would be when Sasha and I could no longer fit through the small space behind the closet, or when she would decide she no longer wanted to explain the inner workings of her world to me. Unlike the children in Lewis’ realm, I knew the closet would lose power and merely hoped my sister would still want to play with me once it did. I never anticipated seeing the armoire against a wall in an assisted living apartment when my grandparents moved, or in pieces in our garage back home when they ultimately no longer needed it.