The stray

I remember when the basement was my rainy day playground and the outside was outside. The sun and the street was not missed when I was downstairs in the must sorting buttons; all the wandering buttons saved through multiple generations with good intention for no sensible purpose at all. To my recollection, no one in my family thought to replace a button with a button from our treasure trove collection, but if they found a stray, they knew where to put it; with the others, thrown into a useless mix, another and another. The dust on top of the tins they were held in was the proof. As I lifted each lid, I would watch the dust float under the fluorescent light wondering where it would land next, unperplexed by my lack of regard for the sanctity of dead cells as they settled into a new order of accumulation, until the next rainy day.

The buttons were sorted by category, small, medium, large, white, green, black, gold, silver, round, square and unique, for hours until the sun streaming in the hopper window told me to stop, or my mother said, “Time for dinner.” On those days meatballs, and mixed vegetables would be treated the same, lined up in size and shade order before they were eaten. My brother paid attention, losing his dimples and would say to me out loud, “You’re weird.”

It is the same basement and not the same basement. When I come down here now I don’t think about the buttons even when I can see them strewn here and there unsorted in complete disarray. I don’t think of them when I step on them in the dark, cracking some of them in two, often slipping on them or kicking some of them under the rug clear across the room. They are the same buttons and not the same buttons.

I come down here now for the sensible purpose that did not rule me back when I was sorting. I come down here now to get away from them; all of them; the man with a gun, the monster with one eye, the bony lady offering me poison tarts, and the voices, especially when I hear them whispering and I can feel their breath on my neck but I cannot understand what they are trying to tell me.

“What do you want?” I say. “Go away!” I tell them that at the top of the basement stairs when I shut the door on them, unashamedly leaving my family at their mercy.

For a minute it is quiet down here and just when I begin to relax I hear my mother say, “Time for dinner.”

It is then that I reach for a button.