When I was young, the Angel of Death was always hanging out in my house, like it was his. I could see the draping folds of his long black cloak pass me by like a dark whisper . . . swoosh . . . around the corner of one room, off to hide behind the door of another. I didn’t know what he was waiting for, or when he would finally come out into full view and grab me by the throat to drag me down to the Underworld. The Underworld wasn’t Hell, you know. There were no flames, I surmised, since he didn’t have horns and a red jumpsuit . No . . . he wasn’t the Devil, just an ugly relative who had his own dark playground down below.
Whatever the case, he wasn’t there to get anyone but me, I was sure, not my sisters, or my brothers, and surely not my poor father, who was working three jobs just to feed us kids, and not have the landlord throw us out on the street. Funny, now that I think of it . . . out on the street would have felt safer than in our old apartment.
There were times when fear just overtook me, and I’d try to hide from that
Demon, thinking I could squeeze into our overstuffed closet and cover myself completely with my Mother’s left-behind wardrobe. Left behind that night when she stole out of the house with just one small suitcase and ran away into the dark.
I would try to shrink and become one with those clothes, praying to be invisible, with my thumping heart pounding loud in my chest, beads of sweat dripping down on my lips, and my shaking fifteen year old body ready to collapse. I would close my eyes so tight and cover my ears, waiting for the closet door to creak open, his long bony hands to reach in and yank me out by the hair. Down, down, down to that place I deserved for yelling that night my Mother left . . . “Don’t you EVER COME BACK!!
I HATE YOU!!!” . . . and she never did.
