The house is brand new and we move in without our mother, who is in the hospital getting our new baby. There are three floors of living space, but I am most interested in the room in the basement – the one that no one else knows exists (except my dad, of course, ’cause he built the house.) You have to go through the rec room, past the door to the bar, into the laundry room, and then squeeze past the furnace. There’s a long narrow hallway that leads to a secret room behind the bookcase. The walls here are concrete, but there is a rug on the floor, and some of those fold-up chairs. There are boxes too, and it smells kind of bad, but the best part is a hole in the wall, just large enough to peek through, and if I come down here before anyone else, I can spy on them. Mostly, it’s my oldest sister and her icky boyfriends – boy are there things I could tell Mom and Dad, except I’m not supposed to be here, and if Dad knew, he’d kill me, so I have to keep it quiet. Why do we need a secret room anyway?
Frosty panes glisten,
while innocence bears witness –
mysteries rampant.
(Lillian at dVerse invites us to delve into the traditional with a halibun examining a room from our early childhood. )
One Woman's Quest 