somebody asked me yesterday: if you could go back and re-do one memory from your past, but do it right this time, which would you pick? i have lots. but i guess this is one:

when i was about 10 years old i had a friend named angela who lived up the hill. a lot of people say “up the hill” when they mean just up this little bump in the road that passes for a hill. but angela lived up the hill. her house was this big sprawling number at the very top of an enormous hill on the end of our block. it looked like something that had just leapt right off the pages of a stephen king book. three stories of peeling paint and rickety staircases that horrified me even in the daytime. her lawn was always unkempt with dandelions and weeds bullying the grass around all summer long. the reason for the state of her house and lawn wasn’t because her dad was lazy. angela didn’t have a dad. or a mom. she lived with her gramma. her gramma wasn’t able to do much of the upkeep and angela was only 10 like me.

i don’t think i ever knew what happened to her parents. maybe i asked one time. kids are always stupid and insensitive like that. i was probably sitting around the lunch table at school one day and said, “hey ange, how come you don’t got a mom and dad like me, huh??” just like that. but if i asked, and if she told me, i can’t remember.

she was a good friend, though. one of my best. we used to ride bikes down that huge scary hill and scrape our knees up pretty good. when i thought i was madly in love with chadwhatshis face and we held hands for the first time, angela was the only one who didn’t tease us about it. we made paper dolls and did each other’s hair. usually at my house.

it wasn’t that i was afraid of her house. at least not in the daytime. we spent time over there. i hated it when her gramma would try to make us a snack though and i felt bad for angela for having to live with her all the time. she was like a hundred and twenty years old and her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches tasted like dust sandwiches with a hint of jelly. but at least i knew why angela was so skinny.

her gramma was always trying to give me stuff. like necklaces or a broach from her room. i hated going into her room. it was dark and smelled like death. i would walk up to the doorway when she would say, “i have something for you! follow me!” but i would never go in. i’d just stand there in the doorway like an idiot, telling her she didn’t have to give me anything, waiting for her to retrieve it and bring it back to me. she thought i was being polite or something, but really i was just mortified and sure that if i stepped foot in that room i would immediately turn to dust on the floor. and she wouldn’t even sweep me up. she’d just leave me there. i was pretty sure all the other dust on that floor was the remains of a half a million other girls she had lured into her room by offering them pretty trinkets from her jewelry box. maybe angela was even in on it. maybe angela was ageless, a child-like siren meant to befriend little girls, only to entice them to this ancient hag’s room with the promise of shiny, sparkling pretties where they would then crumble and fall to dust, never to be seen again. perhaps this is where all the lost children who are never found ended up. this is how my mind worked. i read too much. all the wrong things. what a little ingrate i was.

worse than angela’s grammy offering me trinkets was when it was my turn to sleep over. angela gladly slept over at my house. she loved my mom and dad and when i apologized about having to share the bathroom with 2 sisters and a brother she made me feel bad by saying at least i had sisters and brothers. she was one of my first teachers in life. she taught me to be grateful for what you have even if it seems really shitty at the time. cause there’s always people out there who have it worse. so she loved the noise and commotion in the house. the arguments i’d get into with my brother. the boardgames we could play cause we had more players. the big dinners my mom would set out on the table. she loved coming over. but when it was my turn to spend the night at her house i would make excuses. i faked a cold three times. one time my cat died. then she remembered i didn’t have a cat. i felt bad. i finally had to go.

i was scared to sleep in that house. i was mature for a ten year old. or so i wanted to believe. it wasn’t really the house so much that scared me as her gramma. i couldn’t fathom sleeping in the same house, in the dark, with that woman. but i loved angela dearly and i knew our friendship would suffer if i didn’t do it. so i did it. sort of. all went well at first. we played a few games, listened to records, went to bed hungry. but then angela told me her gramma sleeps with her eyes open! ah, god. what kind of person who isn’t the evil dead who feeds on innocent human flesh, namely mine, sleeps with their eyes open? you tell me that! angela said she was only telling me cause, you know, in case i had to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and i saw it. her gramma’s door was just before the bathroom door and her gramma sleeps with her door open. uh huh. i see. okay, i said. well, thanks for warning me, i said. goodnight, i said.

and naturally, you all know what happened next. i didn’t fall asleep. i lay there unable to sleep and with a sudden, inexplicable urge to pee. i mean, i had to go like nobody’s business. i had to go to the bathroom so bad it was if i had just downed 3 gallons of water, watched Waterworld, and then jumped up and down on a trampoline. i really had to go. but i knew what was out there. so i couldn’t. i wouldn’t.

after about 20 minutes or so angela started snoring. my last refuge. it was agonizing. i thought any minute now it’s going to start running down my leg. that’s a great houseguest for you! my mom taught me a lot of things, but wetting the bed at someone else’s house wasn’t one of them. i bit my lip and thought it over. i decided to stop being such a baby. i summoned all my courage and padded out into the hall. i stood outside angela’s door until my eyes adjusted to the light there. then i started walking. when i got to her gramma’s door i saw it. this shriveled up old lady with a shock of white hair laying in bed with her eyes all big and puffy and open just as big as you please staring right at me. only she looked dead! dead as dead can get. and she was muttering something. her mouth was moving a mile an hour. this dead woman was laying there in her cotton nightgown talking to me from beyond the grave. happy sleepover!

i finally found my feet again and started moving. past the bathroom and straight out the front door. down the hill. i ran the entire way home. in the dark. in my nightie. in my barefeet. i suddenly didn’t have to go anymore. when my mom let me in i told her i had a bad dream and i didn’t want to be friends with angela anymore. i was a judas. benedict arnold. a liar and an awful friend. a horrible, horrible person. i left out the part about the dead old lady talking to me in the bed.

the next morning angela found me missing and called. my mom told her about the bad dream, but i’m pretty sure angela knew the truth. things were strained. our friendship was never really the same. but how do you tell someone you think they’re great and all, it’s just that their walking dead old granny gives you the hibbidy jibbidies and you’re only ten years old after all?

she may creep me out, but to angela, she was everything. she was angela’s whole world. i had a mom and dad, two sisters, a brother and a dog. not to mention so many aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and other extended family –south carolina could scarcely contain them all. angela knew that. my tiny little house was a constant flow of activity. family coming and going. barbecues and birthday parties. filled to the rafters with relatives. but her enormous 3 story, god only knows how many bedroomed, dilapidated old manse just sat empty. angela and her gramma only used two of the rooms, the bathroom and the kitchen. they had no other family and no one came to visit. i knew it. and i knew how angela loved her gramma. i knew it in the way, when she would spend the night at my house she would be having a particularly good time and she would laugh and laugh at something we were doing, she would say, “i wish grammy were here!” though i couldn’t understand it then. i thought she should be glad to be getting a break from her. she didn’t see it that way. she wanted her to share in the happiness she was feeling. and thinking back on it years later, i think that’s the reason her gramma was always trying to give me gifts. it wasn’t about me at all. she knew her loneliness and she was trying to buy friends for angela. like i said, what a little ingrate i was.

i still feel bad about it. i hope where ever angela is, she’s doing well, surrounded by lots of people who love her and she doesn’t totally hate me for being such a chickenshit coward.

so, that’s mine. what’s yours?