Box Girl
Below the arms of the willow trees is a cream colored house flanked by yellow-brick walls and scraggly vines. Ivy snakes across the wooden mailbox with the fading address scratched into the side. Beside a sloping, gray driveway are patches of soil, reserved for the lilies that disappear without a warning, only to return after months. A faint scent of freshly mowed grass floats along the sprinkler-dipped lawn, where a time-worn birdbath patiently waits for the screeching crows and parched sparrows.
Beside it is another house, the same size with windows tinted a shade of crimson, when the sun hits the glass at just the right angle. There is an elderly couple with muddied hands from planting a fresh set of petunias outside their garage; every flowering blossom grows at the same glacial pace until each petal is the exact same shade of salmon pink.
If people from the sky were to look at my neighborhood from up above, they would see an array of box houses, like toys a young child would align in the confines of her playroom. They would point at the tiny box children with Jansport backpacks walking to school, and the same box parents holding their hands along the way. Perhaps they would notice the bouncing of a basketball in the distance, where neighboring children dunked a ball in an ancient hoop until the racket blended into the suburban air.
Maybe if I look in a catalogue or a textbook for a picture of a neighborhood, I would imagine it to be a little like my own. While it seems strange to mention, I have always found my street to be so perfectly in order that it feels a bit eerie. No one blasts music on a set of speakers in a midst of a party; no one slams screen doors or yells through the window during a fight; nobody tosses a can or two across the picket fence in a flurry to rid the backyard of trash. But in the end, no one really knows one another. Perhaps the perfection, the uninterrupted peace would be lost if someone reached out and saw people beyond their freshly mowed lawns and picket fences.
A brief smile or a “hello” along the pavement is a sign of recognition. However, the bus driver and a passenger may never meet again greet each other in a similar way. During the walk to my car I see the same people learning and living, but I barely even know anything more than their names. After all these years of creating imaginary walls between one another, perhaps neighbors are fearful of attempting friendship now. Taking apart invisible barriers, brick by brick, would require someone who isn’t a “box person”. It would take someone who doesn’t seem so perfect that it’s eerie.
Along a gray sidewalk with cracks scrawled on the surface is a young girl with her roller backpack, watching a world of box families in their box houses. She watches how each and everyone does the same things, like wind-up toys being pushed in a certain direction. Oddly, she notices how their paths cross for maybe a minute or two, and then everyone returns to their homes to wind themselves up again for another set of tasks. But she knows that it doesn’t have to be this way, because storybooks and glamourous arrays of movies convince this girl that there is change and adventure. Adventures that await and exhilarate an eager box girl.