BY MARIAN SHELLEY
Ohio was plummy grey darkness at 5pm. It was a microwave whirring under low styrofoam ceilings and a fluorescent overhead light. Ohio was steam burning the back of my hand as I peeled away the plastic on a chicken pot pie. Ohio was a cold, brown sofa. Ohio was waiting for my mother to get home from work at night, what felt like an eternity of television static and ominous stories: thin-lipped police sketches of murderous drifters at large on Unsolved Mysteries; the muffled recording of a babysitter’s frantic call as she discovers the baby won’t wake up on Rescue 911. Ohio was my chafed elbows after lying belly-down on the beige carpet, my chin propped in my hands as I watched a Saved By The Bell rerun, thinking that we’d been duped, that America looked nothing like that at all. Full House instead of cousins. The sting of a hot blow dryer on my neck instead of my grandma gossiping on the phone as she detangled my wet hair on her red patio, my ears perked for names I could ask my mom about later. Ohio was too cold for wet hair— I’d catch a fever.
Some Saturdays— when she was too tired from work to clean the house or run errands— my mom and I watched movies in our pajamas. These were my favorite days. She made arepas for breakfast, and I piled them high with the precious white cheese we bought at the Salvadorean market across town, licking my lips and fingers covered in melted butter and crumbs.
These were the days when the crisp winter light filtering through the sliding glass door made everything feel fine and fresh. Nestled into the sofa under cheap fleece blankets, we watched a lot of things, but Lifetime movies about rich, glamorous women were my favorites. They wore chunky cable-knit sweaters and had hushed conversations on white cordless phones in houses overlooking the ocean. Sometimes we came across movies my mom had already seen, images that brought her back to another time. “Oof, 'The Shining'!” she exclaimed once, as we browsed. “I went to see that with your uncle when it came out— it was good, but so scary!” And then, looking at me matter-of-factly before flipping the channel— “Too scary for you.” We settled on a movie about a teenaged girl who sees her face on a milk carton and discovers she was kidnapped by a cult member at a shoe store as a toddler.
And so, I’d felt a thrill when I discovered 'The Shining' playing on TV again a few weeks later, on one of those unchaperoned, low-lit after-school nights— challenged myself to watch, to see if I could be grown-up and brave. I wanted to feel what my mom had felt in that movie theater sitting next to her brother.
The car winding through green mountains at the beginning looked like home and my stomach flipped with knowing excitement. But then the snow came and that looked more like Ohio again. Everyone wore turtlenecks— that was Ohio too.
It was the scene where Jack Nicholson walks into a bathroom: the pale green tub framed in perfect symmetry, a young woman revealed behind a half-drawn shower curtain as he approaches. Her wet head and skinny, naked body rising from the water, his arms wrapped around it as he kisses her. I watched as her body aged in rapid motion, saw her grow corpse-like as her spindly hands reached out to him, patches of grey skin missing from her body as he flailed in retreat. I jumped up from the couch and ran into the kitchen.
When my mother came home, I’d wanted to tell her as she took off her puffy blue jacket and hung it inside the closet. I’d wanted to tell her about the woman, but I knew if I did I’d have to tell her about William Shatner and lonely killers in wire-rimmed glasses and Area 51 too.
From then on, every time I walked into the bathroom, I lunged for the shower curtain to ensure no one lurked behind it. I tried keeping it open to placate my fear, but it was no use. A faceless predator could still be hiding behind the skinniest sliver of accordioned vinyl, their body flush against the tiled wall. The hum of heat billowing through a vent on the linoleum floor could disguise their breath as they waited to pounce on me, sitting on the toilet at my most vulnerable, pilled tights bunched around my ankles and no one around to help. The bare skin of my winter shins ashen and forgotten. Ohio was plummy grey darkness at 5pm.
Marian is a Creative Director who spends most of her free time wandering the sidewalks of Los Angeles, where she lives with two dogs who hate walking. She is currently working on a collection of short fiction.