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By Pia Wood

PROMPT — Who am I today?

Enclosure.

Three Bedrooms.

Four walls in each room.

Apartment on the fifth floor.

Mother and child: me and mommy there.

Windows are closed during the winter months.

Opened windows during the summer months allow for a cool breeze.

Toys are plentiful. Clothes fill the closets. And food packs the refrigerator.

Music enjoins us to prepare for the day as played on the radio.

Night rhythms played on the stereo softened the day.

Beds are made each morning so I can be tucked into it to dream at night.

Voices approve of the little girl dressed in crinoline skirts not lacking anything.

In cool cotton pajamas I kneel with mommy and pray, “God Bless Mommy and the whole world!”

I wake up in the middle of the night to find myself alone.

Mommy is not in any room.

I hug a plastic doll but it doesn’t hug me.

Walls can not offer comfort.

A blaring voice from a neighbor's radio waifs through the window and adds to my confusion.

Frightened by my solitude in the dark, I experience a nightmare and scream for Mommy.

She doesn’t come to my bed.

I search every room.

I run to the front door but my little arms can’t reach high enough to unlock it.

I peek out an open window to see if Mommy realizes that without me she is also alone.

I lay on the linoleum floor of the living room and shriek, “Mommy, Mommy where are you?"

Neighbors hear my cry and try to comfort me as I bang against the door for eternity

Mommy arrives surprised to see neighbors outside her front door consoling me.

As she unlocks the door, someone remarks, “It is a miracle that child didn’t lean out the window and fall."

When the door opens, I run to Mommy and the hallway light creates a halo effect around her.

I mercifully grab her and hold her tight and she scoops me up to her hip.

At this moment, I am assured she will not leave me again.

However, this nightmare of reality will reoccur at other points in my life as I grow.

I wake up in the middle of the night surrounded by the comforts of a home but without Mommy.

I grow up to be a woman who becomes a wife. I create the home that I desire: A safe haven from the stress of the world. A place where I will never be lonely. We live in a house with rooms that have four walls. And I try to be my best when he is home. In the heat of our passion, I beg him to promise to never leave me. He takes my hand and lifts it to his lips to kiss it. His words assure me he will honor my one request. But then some years later, I find myself living within a circumstance that has circumvented the promise of til death do us part. Disappointment of an unfulfilled promise to love me sets in. I am left alone to cry in the middle of the night while sitting on a cold tiled floor bathroom as the cast iron tub supports my back. I meet my childhood fear again. The feeling of abandonment re-surges and is just as painful as it was when I laid across the floor. I am paralyzed with the thought that I'm not worthy of love from a mother or a husband in our home.

Abandonment in the home makes it become less of a safe haven and more of a trap that I can’t escape until I can.

And when I deliver myself from the nightmare, I seek a home where desertion by others is not an option.

I choose to live alone.

Desertion by the usual suspects who were supposed to love me and be present for me produces this woman who lacks trust in attachment.

Beauty, intellect, a sense of humor, and grace are not immune from abandonment.

So, the woman with the little girl still inside her decides that a home can only be a home where she can exist alone. I go to sleep not worrying that the one I fell asleep with will leave me in the middle of the night. There is safety in knowing .

I want to be home alone so that when I leave it, I can be in the safety of the world.

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Pia Wood is a retired attorney with a B.A. and M.A. in English Literature. She is a proud mother and grandmother. Pia is of Gullah-Abenaki descent. Currently, she resides in Nevada.