The fingers I rub over the smooth nub
of the newel post weren’t always like this.
When they were rubbed red and raw,
they picked up splinters more easily.
The wood I touched was not as smooth and
silky as the wood the other maids touched;
I was taller then. But now, I find where I
touched; clearly I left a mark.
I follow the trail I made so long ago,
touching it some, but mostly, I know
where it is.
The floorboards, wide and swaybacked,
creak exactly where they used to—hop,
sidestep, the laundry cart is not where it once was.
The bustle in the hallways has calmed; I can no longer
feel the bounce, bounce of the other girls as they
jog past where I could just reach out and touch
their brawny arms, smell their sweaty hands and foreheads
and hear their jangling laughs.
The sun still pours through the windows of the upper
hall, between the offices and the outside, touching the wood and
lighting the incense of pine.
It’s gentle and feels like the touch of the kitchen woman
Mary, who always guided me through the
difficult corridors.
But the kitchen no longer holds its warmth, not
that it had since I tripped over Mary’s body, where she
lay in a slurry of goulash after falling on the stove, and I
had to pull myself upright using
the tangible smell of cold, scorched flesh and tomatoes and onions and
I don’t eat pork anymore.
Avoiding the area where she fell so long ago, I navigate
the low, old room, feeling along the cluttered
remains of a renovation long since abandoned,
and I found the narrow maids’ stair.
Steep and skinny, it folded back on itself at every
floor as it hugged the walls up to the attic
where our beds were shoved together so tight,
where I could run my fingers over the girls’ heads
touching their soft, oily hair, their curls, their braids, and find my way.
I knew that I could not make it up the steps now,
I could barely make it then, but
I could still touch them. The treads worn so deep that
they were like wet clay marred by a huge thumb,
the chaotic scuffling, constantly chugging over the worn
boards. Sometimes the girls slipped on the rounded, clumsy,
silken steps.
Sometimes the sooty, acrid oil lamps on the walls leaked.
The wood felt so familiar under my dried fingers,
each neat grain lying in plane with its sisters,
every step, a family.
Except for the lower three steps, where the lines of wood
remained untouched, save for me, because I could never make
the respectful leap over them.
I kneel now, and stretch my fingers
towards the scratchy corner of the riser and tread
and find the crudely carved letters that say:
Katie died here.
I wasn’t here then, but the girls, the older girls, said
that the man, the fat man, had come with the soot-hauling boys
and taken her to the basement, and they were quiet.
The girls weren’t, but they were just the girls, and
it was a long time ago, when splinters were fresh
in young, sensitive fingertips.
Sobering and straightening, as much as I could, I left.
They would level this station soon, and
I just wanted to touch it again.