This all happened almost fifteen years ago, but will need a touch of backstory going back further than that.
Growing up, it was just Mama and me, Daddy died when I was six, he had no family. Mama was completely cut off from what was left of her family, and she didn’t have a lot of friends outside the diner where she worked. We were poor, but we made do. Mama loved me so much and I loved her. We left our house when Daddy died and moved into a one bedroom apartment, we shared a bed together and every night before we went to sleep she’d tell me I was her good girl and that she loved me.
When I was thirteen, we were driving home after she picked me up from school and we got T-boned in an intersection. I don’t remember the accident at all or the weeks after, but apparently my head hit the window hard enough to break it. Mama wasn’t hurt, but I have never been the same since.
I get confused easily, I have a ton of issues with short term memory. I can also become borderline catatonic; completely losing track of what’s happening around me.
Mama took care of me for years. I ended up dropping out of school because even after I got switched to Special Ed courses, it was still a confusing mess to me and I’d go home crying almost every day. Gradually, I got a bit better and Mama and I were working on getting me my GED.
When I was nineteen, I found Mama on the kitchen floor, dead. I didn’t think to call 911, the neighbors across the hall did after hearing me screaming. It took a police officer and two paramedics to get me off of her. Just like that, my whole world was gone.
My condition backslid after Mama left me. I fell into a deep depression and felt nothing but a foggy confusion and sorrow. I couldn’t think or focus on anything. I would go for long walks, wandering the neighborhood, trying to avoid the apartment. I kept having a nagging sensation that I was forgetting something.
Three months after Mama died, I came home from a walk and found all of our stuff out on the curb, a yellow eviction notice taped to the door. It hit me that what I had been forgetting was to pay rent. I knew I had some disability money, but Mama always took care of it for me.
I grabbed my backpack out of the pile and filled it with mostly sentimental items; my stuffed lamb, a blanket, a funny magnet with a cartoon old lady on it that reminded me of Mama, and a few other things I grabbed in a daze.
I admit, this was a low point in my life. There was no safety net for me. I was homeless now and had nobody. I sat on a swing in the park. I sat there until long after the street lights kicked on, lighting the park with an orange glow. I was thinking about my childhood a lot. As foggy as everything else felt to me the past six years, I still remembered my childhood very well.
Eating ice cream on the front porch with Mama, playing catch with Daddy in the backyard, helping bring up Christmas decorations from the basement… the basement! I suddenly felt a bolt of excitement as an old memory popped up. At our old house, there was a breezeway between the garage and the house that had a crawl space underneath it. It had two entrance panels, one in the backyard and one leading into the basement.
Our old house was just around the corner from the diner where Mama worked, she always pointed it out to me when we drove by, so I knew right where it was. I figured I could get into the crawlspace and stay there until I got things situated. I knew it wasn’t right to break into someone’s home, but I was truly desperate and it was the best option I could come up with.
I heard thunder rumbling in the distance as I made my way to the house, the air smelled like it was going to rain soon. I snuck over the gate and walked into the backyard. It was very dark out, but I found the access panel, a wooden board with peeling paint, and was thankful they had not secured it shut. It was a very low entrance and I could see why they would not consider it an access point to the house. A full grown man would struggle to enter, but I was a scrawny nineteen year old girl that had hardly eaten the past three months. I easily slid inside and closed the panel behind me just as the storm hit.
It had a dirt floor and there were some spiderwebs and dead bugs hanging out, but it was surprisingly clean and very dry and cozy in there. I used my stuffed lamb as a pillow and got out my blanket and slept, pretending Mama was hugging me and telling me I was her good girl.
I woke up the next morning when I heard a door open and footsteps walking over me in the breezeway, the garage door opened and shut, a car engine started then faded away. Then silence. I waited a long time and heard nothing else except for the rumbling in my stomach. After probably an hour of hearing no one else, I made my way to the basement entrance.
The basement entrance was up near the ceiling and hinged open at the top. I pushed it open and peaked out and saw I was lucky. A workbench filled with random junk was right under the opening. I scooted the stuff out of the way and carefully climbed out. I started giggling a little bit. Something about this felt so adventurous and fun.
I emerged in a dark basement, a little bit of daylight coming in through tiny and dirty windows. I jumped down from the workbench and I walked around. It looked like normal basement stuff, an old plaid couch, old paint cans, boxes, a furnace and water heater. The stairs were carpeted with ancient shag carpeting. I was very nervous the first time I walked up the stairs, I stood next to the closed door for several minutes, listening very carefully.
Slowly, I opened the door a crack, I looked into the kitchen and saw nobody. I walked in. I very quietly checked the laundry room off the kitchen, nobody. I made my way into the living room. Nobody. I walked down the hallway. The first bedroom was set up as an office. The other bedroom was empty and had obviously only been slept in by one person. Men’s clothing was on the floor, so I guessed a single guy lived here. I relaxed then. I went into the kitchen to find food. He had a whole loaf of bread and I figured he wouldn’t notice if a few slices were missing.
I ate a PBJ and looked around the kitchen. It was a different color from when we lived here, but it was the same dark wood cabinets and tile countertops. It felt very nostalgic. Waves of memories washed over me. Mama cooked dinner in this room. Daddy took off his work boots in the laundry room when he got home at the end of the day. He’d scoop me up and call me Pumpkin.
I washed, dried, and put away my dishes, just like Mama always taught me to do. I used the bathroom and took a shower. I put the towel in the dryer and put it back where I found it when it was dry. I opened up his medicine cabinet and he only had one toothbrush. I figured it would dry before he got home and he wouldn’t notice if I used it, so I brushed my teeth. Mama always made sure I brushed my teeth and I’d forgotten since she left.
I’d been up in the house for a few hours and I wasn’t sure what time he would be home, so I crept back to the basement, shut the door, and slithered back into the crawlspace.
I didn’t mean to stay there for long, but I was very comfortable. I felt snug and safe in the crawl space and I began to feel much more secure in the house during the day as I learned his routine. He left for work every day at 7:30 am, he got home a bit after 4 pm. He sometimes left for the weekend. Sometimes he had a lady over to spend the night, but she always left with him in the morning.
Months passed and then seasons passed. I always tried my best to leave no trace, but with my memory, I know there were times I must have messed up. Whenever I watched TV, it was almost always on ESPN when I turned it on, but I know I occasionally forgot to switch it back when I was done. Little things, like accidentally washing a plate he had left in the sink or forgetting to clean out his hairbrush after brushing my hair. I never ate much, but I would nibble on his leftovers or make myself PBJs, I could never tell at what point it would be noticeable to him.
There was one time I must have lost track of the days of the week and I went into the basement when he was home without knowing. I rarely heard him enter the basement, but that day I had to leap behind the water heater when the door swung open and he came trotting down the stairs. I put my hand over my mouth to stop a giggle. It felt like playing hide and seek when I was little. I poked my head around and watched him as he grabbed something off the workbench, and took the stairs, two at a time, back up. I wriggled my way back into the crawlspace and waited for him to go to bed before I ate that night.
I sometimes got bored and liked looking through his stuff. He didn’t even know I was there, but I learned so much about him. He liked Chinese food. That lady that came over was his girlfriend, he wrote her very nice letters he left in the office and I would read them before he gave them to her. He played with his company’s bowling team. I sometimes played with his bowling ball down the hallway, but stopped when I got peanut butter in the finger holes I couldn’t clean out.
Over a year had passed and I was recovering from the grief of Mama. I was beginning to have more good days than bad, but for a few days I was having a nasty spell. I felt especially foggy and missed Mama and I slept for several days, I finally woke up and felt out of sorts. I’ll be honest that I just went to the bathroom in the backyard, it was nighttime and the full moon was out. I was absolutely starving.
I had very rarely gone upstairs when he was home, but I was desperate to eat. I decided to go up at night. I crept up the stairs, thankful for the quieting effect of the worn shag carpet. I slid up to the fridge and cracked it open. He had a Ziploc bag with a brick of cheese in it. I grabbed it and got a big knife out of the drawer. I was cutting some slices of cheese for myself when I heard faint laughter coming from the hallway.
Curiosity got the best of me and I snuck through the living room and saw the flashing blue light of a TV in the dark coming from his bedroom. I found myself heading down the hallway, seemingly against my own will. I entered his bedroom. He had a little TV on his dresser playing a late night show and he was asleep. It wasn’t a large room and he slept on the side of the bed closest to the door. I walked up closer to him, my dress almost touching the edge of the bed, so I could watch the TV better and I shifted into one of my foggy states.
I’m not sure how long I stood there, but something got through to me, one of the jokes they said made me giggle. I snapped out of my fog at the same moment he snapped out of his slumber. I became aware of two things at that moment; one, he had just won hide and seek, and, two, I was still holding the knife I had been cutting cheese with.
His eyes opened wide as he saw me and he screamed in a way I didn’t even know a man could scream, like a tea kettle coming to a boil. I was almost impressed at how quick his reflexes were as he ripped his alarm clock off the nightstand and whipped it at me. It caught me in the chin. I dropped the knife, I said, “oh, shit,” and fell back into the hall.
The world got a little gray and dreamy for a few minutes. I heard him yelling on the phone, asking frantically for police. Some of his panic subsided when he saw I was a frail and skeletal woman. In his defense, waking up with anyone standing over you with a knife must be very scary, even to grown men.
The police came shortly after and I told them everything. About my brain injury, about Mama dying, about getting evicted, and admitting I’d stayed here for a year. He was definitely shaken, learning he’d been sharing his home without knowing it, but he admitted it made sense since he had noticed little things moved around and food going missing. Police had a hard time believing I was hiding my tracks so well while being impaired.
I spent about six months in jail, but a very kind judge took my circumstances to heart and let me off on parole under the stipulation I was to live in a group home with professional supervision. So, for the past fourteen years, I have lived in a group home shared with other folks like me who struggle with cognitive impairments and difficulties.
It’s very nice and I’ve made some friends. One of the staff members here told me about this site and asked me to share my story and he’s been kind enough to help me write it down and post it for me. He told me, “yours is one of the creepiest stories I’ve ever heard.” I was just trying to survive, but to everyone else, I was a home invader, which makes me sad sometimes.
I never meant it like that. I just wanted to go home.