Doors and Ceilings

JAYDA PITTER 

It’s an odd feeling to wake up and find yourself able to walk on the ceiling, only the ceiling. Abraham told me on the day he turned thirteen, he woke up naked by the river. To find his door, he had to walk across water. Miss Erle said back in her day, they never had to do such trivial things like search for doors. Doors just came to them, and the right one called to be opened. It was this new generation of vipers that had to wander around in search of destiny, she said. So, I must have been the last snake left on two legs to be in this predicament. 

I looked across at the empty apartment hanging below my head. There was not a door in sight. No walls separating the rooms anymore, no furniture, there was only the abundance of wilting plants my mother brought home every day to be saved. Only today they were flourishing like recently baptised, born-again Christians. The pothos plant grew thick like ivy along my shower walls, reaching out to hug all the others. They were out in the open now, no longer tucked behind furniture or crowded on our little veranda; it made me realise how many plants we were really responsible for. Our very own congregation of earth-raised worshippers, their leaves and vines stretched up to me like sunlight. Finally, they could all stand upright on their own, no longer in need of weeding or water, which was not a moment too soon because today was meant for bigger things. The matter of destiny was finally at hand. Watering plants from a ceiling was no way to confirm that I was going to be a pilot. 

I slowly trailed my feet along the ceiling. One foot after the other, never really lifting either, it was something like a Michael Jackson music video across what should’ve been my kitchen ceiling. With that moonwalk, I knew my door was aimed towards the skies. It had to be. I had spent the last few weeks dreaming about the tranquillity of open air, the sunlight through the glass screen, the wind up against it and a feeling of freedom so fulfilling I could almost taste it. Abraham always said I was a man who flourished in the open air. So, what did it mean now that I was facing the ground? Of course, something like destiny had to be complicated. 

Abraham would know what to do. Sometimes at night I could hear him through my bedroom wall, tinkering away at boat parts, always fixing something. I just had to make it to that wall. I continued my screechy barefoot slide across the apartment, soles squeaking until I got to my bedroom. 

In the corner that would have been the adjoining bathroom, there was now only the tiled shower wall, and a floor covered with plants. I grabbed hold of the showerhead. The vines from the pothos wrapped themselves around my arms and slid their way up to my stomach. I grabbed on to the shower head and tried to pull myself from the ceiling, but the vines made their way down to my legs. The shower head broke off in my hand, and the vines anchored my feet to the ceiling. 

I hung there, locs swinging and interweaving with the vines. I closed my eyes and tried to think. I could hear the soft crank of tools on the other side of the wall. Abraham. I opened my eyes, and the tiled shower wall was replaced with one of our regular white apartment doors. The shower head was now the handle. The vines retreated as I pushed the door open and stepped through. I could walk just as easily on the ceiling as I usually did on the floor. So, I found myself manoeuvring around the wall-high shelves, peering down into Abraham’s “office.” His apartment still had all his walls. 

His office was an extra bedroom he lined with stray electronics and trashed ship parts he would bring home to study. Most of the room may have well belonged to a junkyard, but along one wall he had his sacred area, a desk under rows of shelves that held miniature boats and posters of swimmers. He was hunched over that very desk, tinkering with some scrap electronic part, when he turned and saw me through his safety glasses. He paused, tilting his head up at me in confusion before he broke out into a laugh.

“But a wah the baxide…” he said slack jawed as he stared up at me.

He took off his safety glasses and walked over to me. 

“Well, look at that. Happy birthday likkle yute,” he said and then tried to hail me up. 

Our hands just barely clasped as he jumped to reach my fist. “Then a how you reach up deh so?” 

It was rare to see Abraham puzzled by anything I did. 

“And how you ago get down?” he continued.

“Well if me did know, mi wouldn’t up here,” I huffed.

He stood with his arms akimbo, craning his neck to take a good look at me before he spoke again.  

“I guess a nuh really bout the getting down, is wah you supposed to a learn up there is the question…and wah this mean fi the rest a your life”

“Me ago upside down fi the rest a mi life?” I panicked. 

“A never that me say. But who knows, maybe you go be one astronaut. This could be your anti-gravity training.” He laughed. 

“But mi supposed to be a pilot,” I whined. 

“A the first me a see one upside down pilot. Mi tell you already say we don’t always get fi choose wah we waa be.” 

“So how come you did get fi choose fi be a marine technician.”

“Me never choose fi be that, bredda. Wah me say is that mi did always love the sea…think me did ago be a swimmer. So imagine my shock when mi wake up beside the river and couldn’t even swim inna it. When mi start walk, mi think life did a try tell me say me a the next Jesus or somet’ing.”

“So how you realise it did mean fi be a marine technician?” I asked. 

“Me did affi learn fi be a boat, man.”

I blinked. 

Abraham shrugged, “True ting.”

I turned and started pacing around the limited free space in his office.

“So I have to learn to be a ceiling?” I asked, trying to put it together. 

“Maybe you need fi learn fi look down. Take your head out of the clouds and this bag a sky business.”

“But then how will I be a pilot?” 

He shrugged again, “Things never as straightforward as them seem…or upside down in your case…How long now you up there?” 

“From mi wake.”

“So you eat already?” 

“Mi wake up and everything missing outta the house.” 

“All right, hold on.” 

Abraham walked out of the room and into the kitchen. I heard him digging through the cupboards. 

From out there, he called, “You think you can look if you see the plant you gimme on top a the storage. Mi nuh know how mi get it up there and mi waa know if it dead.” 

I shook my head and looked around the room. I stepped towards the empty pot above Abraham’s junk. Out of nowhere, a weed sprang out, crawled up to my face and wrapped itself around my neck and mouth. I tried to scream, but I could only let out a muffled grunt. The door reappeared and opened itself.

“So, if the cupboards and everything gone outta the house then wah lef?” Abraham called from the kitchen.

The weed snaked around my torso and pulled me through the door. It spat me back into my apartment. The plants had grown wilder. What did any of this have to do with being a pilot? 

Look down.

I looked down. The plants pointed up to me. I stepped forward. They followed. The plants tilted towards me like the sun, like I was the sky. Was I the sky that the planes were meant to fly in? 

The plants began to whip at me. Venus fly traps appeared and snapped at me like crocodiles. The vines whipped me like angry mothers. I covered my face with my hands. On the other side of the room, a door appeared. 

I ran to it, dodging the increasingly aggressive attacks from the plants. I pushed the door open, stepped through it and slammed it shut on them in one fluid movement.

I looked around at the pink walls of this apartment. The smell of aged perfume and powder gave the old lady away. Miss Erle was folded up in her brown lounge chair, reading. The sound of the door made her pause mid-page, turn and look up at me.

“Now what in the devil kinda thing is this now? Ee?” 

She rose from her chair and took off her glasses in disbelief. 

“Then Jonathon?”

“Yes, Miss Earle,” I responded to her the way I had my entire life. 

“Today is your birthday?” she asked, raising her glasses back to her eyes to take a good look at me. 

“Yes, Miss Erle.” 

“Then is why them do this to you? And why them have your dutty foot dem a walk cross mi ceiling. Listen- don’t you take another step from where you stand up.” 

I pulled my feet together and folded my arms together in obedience. 

“Me nuh know a wah kinda thing this. Wah the world a come to, Father God?” She took her glasses off again and sat back down. “What you want to be Jonathon?” 

“A pilot, miss,” I said quietly. 

“Then…you nuh see that nah go happen?” she asked with a dumbfounded tone to her voice.

She was right, I realised. In no world could this mean I was going to be a pilot. My throat started to burn, and my eyes pricked from all the plants that had snapped at me. I closed my eyes so she wouldn’t see the perfectly natural response of tears coming to soothe them.

“Mi say everyday pickney get further and further away from rational purpose,” she continued. “Mi tired fi tell unnu say doors chase people and not the other way around. What kind of–”

Tears streamed down my forehead and dripped onto the floor. 

“Then what is this?” Miss Erle asked in the more delicate voice she reserved for her soft-spoken students.

I opened my eyes, and she stood below me with her palm out, catching the tears. 

I was too choked up to answer. 

“Oh mi never mean it, putus. You know me can be a miserable old woman sometimes. Come man, stop the bawling.” 

She tried to reach up and rub my head, but I couldn’t calm down. 

“At least water the flowers while you up there.” 

I almost smiled at that one. 

“I still have the plant you gimme for Teachers’ Day enuh. See it over there on the table.”

She pointed at the orchid I had given her last year. It had taken me a while to figure out how to keep it alive past its first bloom. That was the first one I had brought to a second bloom, and I was heartbroken when my mother suggested I give it to Miss Erle for Teachers’ Day. I thought she would kill it in a week, but there it was. 

“That’s the first orchid me ever keep alive this long and somet’ing tell me it nuh have nothing to do with me,” she said softly. “Don’t listen to me about what doors can or cyaa mean. I couldn’t even pick a door. That’s why mi keep a tell people doors should chase you. I was probably the only girl in town that had multiple doors to choose from.” 

“What–”, I cleared my throat at the raspiness of my voice. “Wah you mean?”  

“Oh, it sounds nice now, that’s why mi walk a tell people.” She pushed her chair over to me and crawled up on it to look me in the face. “But back when Jesus was a boy and I was your age I woke up on my birthday at school and the classroom doors run me dung the whole day.”

“You should be a teacher,” she parroted.

“You should be a nurse” 

“You should be an au pair”  

“The only pear me did know bout at the time did eat wid bun,” her voice went back to normal. “And me never like pickney at the time. Mi never have no patience. Hell, mi still nuh have no patience now. So after mi finally mash up and stop run, mi just si’ dung in front of the doors.” 

She looked me up and down and smiled. 

“I thought I was going to be a singer,” she said. “So just imagine my shock. Teacher? The only t’ing me did know fi teach pickney is how not fi get pan mi last nerve. So, for the longest time mi wonder if all the doors were really for me or for some other girls named Sarah Erle turning thirteen, wondering weh them door gone.” She laughed. 

“But sometimes you get sweet likkle boys who bring you home grown flowers on Teachers’ Day and you think maybe you did somet’ing right.”   

We stood looking at each other before I saw a glass door appear behind her, with a soft click sound. She turned to look at it as well. 

“Ouu, you get fancy door Jonathon,” she teased. 

“But I don’t know what it means.” 

She shrugged. “You don’t need to. You just need to know is yours.” 

She stepped down from the chair and out of the way. 

“Tek time and walk cross mi ceiling now,” she said. 

I was still sceptical as I dragged my feet over to the door. I hesitated at the handle. 

“Just think about all the things you love that point to the sky. Think about the things you love from the ground.” 

I pushed the door open and saw the flowers that waited for me on the other side. 

“And Happy Birthday Jonathon!”

I stepped through the door and entered an empty greenhouse. The sun was so bright it hurt to look up between my feet. Greenhouses reminded me of aeroplanes. You could see the sky from here, stand in the rain, soak in the sun. Staring up through greenhouses always made me feel like I was standing among the clouds, but now it was unbearable to even glance up.

Look down, Abraham had said. 

I looked to the ground to see the room was filled with plants, crops and flowers.

To the things you love that point to the sky, Miss Erle had said.  

There was Miss Erle’s orchid. It slowly sprouted from the ground and rose all the way up to tickle my cheeks. Abraham’s snake plant, at least what it looked like before it had died, had sprung up beside it. All the plants I had ever grown and gifted began to emerge from the ground: begonias, birds of paradise, money plants.

I began to recognize the greenhouse. This was where my mother had gotten all the plants. I remembered being pressed up against the glass for the first time, peeking in and taking home my first succulent. I closed my eyes and pictured how it rained that day. That was the first time I stood in the rain and watched it all through glass. The wind whipped at the ceiling the way it did in my dreams, the way I imagined it did at plane windows.

When I opened my eyes, I was on the ground, among the trees, pointed towards the sky.