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Working on a scrapbook for my sister Sarah's birthday, my mother asked, “Will someone write about the roach motel?”
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It wasn’t a bad house so much as a house in a bad time. They were painful, uncertain months for Mom and Dad, recently rejected by the Southern Baptist missionary board. Their faith and hope were deeply shaken by the betrayal they experienced from the denomination and our local church, in particular. Meanwhile, we were barely living off of Mom’s modest coat-factory wages and Dad’s earnings from a Christian bookstore in the Bible belt that was, ironically, less successful than the one we had left behind in Iowa. So the final decision: we were moving, returning at long last to Mom’s family in Arizona, and God graciously enabled us to sell our house right away, but the downside was having to quickly find a place to live to finish out the school year. Finishing the year was done at my request and for my benefit, so I’m not complaining. But I’m not sure whether Sarah remembers that rental home at all.
It was a boxy house, and it felt old in a way that was quirky, not exactly classic. There were four small, square rooms interconnected by doors, without any hallways. The rarely-used attic came complete with stale dust, mold, and spiderwebs, smelled of old wood, and gave me a funky spiritual vibe (though not as funky as the upstairs to Dad’s bookstore, which had served as a Confederate hospital during the War—yes, that one). Like other old houses in the South, it had a small front porch, and the grassy backyard came with a clothesline that Mom never used. I wonder now, how did we even do our laundry there?
Dad had driven a U-Haul west to Tucson in the early spring with our worldly possessions inside it, everything but our warm-weather clothes; a few toys, books, and kitchen utensils; a tiny black and white TV and the portable cassette player. I missed my bike. I missed the big stereo speakers, the turntable and the reel to reel. Most of all, I longed for the piano. I still took lessons but could only practice in hit-and-miss fashion on any piano I could get access to, usually the one at church.
We borrowed old mattresses from acquaintances, laid them directly on the wood floor. The showerless bathroom held the house’s only treasure: a huge clawfoot tub that I’d greatly appreciate now, but didn’t care for as a twelve-year-old with long oily hair and a new-found interest in daily showering hygiene. (Washing long hair in a tub isn’t easy.) I had even less appreciation for the colony of red ants that marched in through cracks in the kitchen wall, boldly trailing across the floor on their food-finding quest. It was impossible to convince them that they didn’t own the house. Other insects enjoyed our temporary home, too: one night I woke up to a frightful banging sound in the kitchen. Dad, not having bothered to put his glasses on, was flailing around with a broom in a furtive attempt to blindly hunt down an enormous coachroach. A humongous, frightful roach it was. Hence, the house’s nickname.
Still, I have a strange nostalgia for that place. I loved being in town, near Dad’s bookstore, near Riverside Elementary School. I loved the independence of being able to walk to interesting--i.e., not my house--places. My school bus days were over then, never to return, and I wouldn’t miss them at all, gaining peaceful beginnings and endings to my school days and adding half an hour of sleep each night. Diane also added a male friend in the new neighborhood, a certain Mike West who shyly invited her over to hang out in his treehouse. I was impressed and jealous that she had a male admirer when I hadn’t been able to pull that off yet. It didn’t occur to me until years later that Todd Brown, who sat near me in our homeroom, had been sending signals of interest every time he pulled my ponytail.
I doubt that Sarah saw the “roach motel” weeks as a fun time for her, since it separated her from her main playmate, Sue. But Sarah, in those days, was much more adaptable than I ever was. I don’t remember her complaining. I’m sure she didn’t mind the clawfoot tub or sharing a mattress on the floor with Diane. Ah, the roach motel days of our youth… |
