Invisible

At the age of four you know that if no one hears you enter a room, if you stay close to a wall and if at least your head is covered you are invisible. So waking up, for some reason, on an early winter Saturday morning with everyone sleeping, I felt more magically invisible than I had ever felt before. I smelt coffee and sensed silence and heavy sleep from my five brothers and sisters. Three of them were teen agers and had entered a new phase of heavy morning sleep. Not sure why I was awake and they were not I crept downstairs to try to round up a little attention. Snuk up to the kitchen doorway and put my love blanket over myself for a better effect. Slunk down close to the ground, popped into the kitchen and hollered surprise to my parents. My father turned and threw his coffee cup over my head to shatter on the wall behind me and splatter around me. Tiger fast I dove under the table that they were sitting at and pinned myself up against the wall. Searching for a different type of invisibility this time, non existance. My mother cleaned the mug and spill up before coming down to the floor to tell me it wasn't my fault and to persuade me to come out from hiding, it was safe. I did not find her argument convincing but was longing for comfort from my the tears. She hugged me a little and tried to tell me that I did not understand and that I did not do anything wrong. Even at four my inner rationale was asking me, "than why isn't he apologizing ?" " Why isn't he telling me that it is not my fault." "Why isn't he holding me and comforting me?" He was not holding me and telling me that he didn't mean to scare the jesus out of me. It was a big mistake. My father did not look at me or apologize.

But I still loved the smell of coffee. I used to come home to an empty house at lunch time. I used this lone opportunity to lift the lid of the Maxwell House container to get a full strong smell. Than I got my next door neighbor in on this lunchtime ritual. We would linger and sniff and talk about what it must be like to drink this stuff and that it was so weird the way you made it. Poured into an metal coffee maker over grounds with a filter made from toilet paper. It smelt so wonderful and foreign and adult to us. Than I accidentally spilt the entire container onto the heavily trafficked kitchen floor one noontime. Momentarily paniced than quickly swept it up and put it back in the can. Shook it a few times for some unknown reason and returned it to the shelf. I have always thought that this somehow evened the playing field in our kitchen. Again, no one had seen it, nothing had happened. Invisible. A day later I confessed to my sister who did not react but promptly told my parents when I was not home. That evening my dad sat me down and explained rather nicely and with understanding that it was it was unhealthy for my parents to be drinking something that had been scraped off of the floor. He was talking to me. Eye to eye and with regard for my fear of the circumstances. Somehow I was not invisible anymore.