\nWhen I was young, my neighbors buried their house. I had been in the house before it was buried, because Tim Fisher and I had the same bus stop and we were kind of friends. We never had the same teachers, but we sat in seats on the bus across the aisle from each other and walked home together most days. Sometimes, he shared cookies his mom made, decadent saltine crackers soaked in butter and salt with chocolate on top and toffee bits sprinkled in. My mom never allowed treats like that in our house. I\u2019m salivating thinking of them now.\n<\/p>\n
\nSome days before the burial we\u2019d stop in at the house, where he had video games I wasn\u2019t normally allowed to play and other snacks like sodas I couldn\u2019t always drink. We didn\u2019t go crazy. I never even stayed for long, maybe an hour, because that was all I could spare before my mom would be home too. Sometimes Tim would ask me if I couldn\u2019t stay longer, or if I could come over on the weekend instead so we could have more time for games. Once, he wanted to go outside with me and play catch with his dog. I told him I was afraid of the dog running away.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cHe won\u2019t run away even though we don\u2019t have a fence,\u201d Tim had said. \u201cHe\u2019s good like that.\u201d But that wasn\u2019t the real problem, and Tim knew it, and I knew he knew it, and I didn\u2019t even have the guts to tell him that. The real thing was my dad\u2019s office window faced their backyard, and he would see what I\u2019d been doing before Mom got home. The real thing was my parents didn\u2019t want me over there, even though nobody had ever actually said so. I just knew I couldn\u2019t ask them. In any case, we stayed in his house in the living room, played a video game for a little bit and then I went home like I usually did. We never did play with the dog outside. I can\u2019t even remember the dog\u2019s name.\n<\/p>\n
\n
\nI don\u2019t know what set the Fisher family apart when they first moved in. They arrived later than many in the neighborhood, sometime the previous winter, so Tim was the new boy in school halfway through the year. That\u2019s never easy. Tim\u2019s father didn\u2019t have a strange job. It was something suit-and-tie as far as I could tell, similar to many of the breadwinners of the neighborhood. His mother worked too; she was a hairdresser. Yet my father didn\u2019t invite Mr. Fisher to golf with his business friends when he could help it; my mother didn\u2019t include Mrs. Fisher in her and our other neighbor friend Ren\u00e9e\u2019s Friday wine nights. If I asked to have Tim over, the answer was almost always no, even when Ren\u00e9e\u2019s daughters were allowed. There were small differences I know bothered everyone, though as a child I couldn\u2019t see why they mattered, and I hope I don\u2019t think they matter now. So it just must have been something that set them apart at first that I couldn\u2019t see which made everything afterward so harsh.\n<\/p>\n
\n
\nThe school year ended, summer passed, and the Fishers\u2019 house abruptly disappeared one day from their lot. Renee was the one who noticed; my mother got a call while I was eating a piece of toast.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat do you mean, look out from the garage?\u201d my mother was saying into the phone. \u201cHold on, I\u2019m on the old landline.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nShe put down the wired phone and I heard the garage opening a moment later. When she returned, she accidentally knocked the phone off the counter in her haste to get back. She hauled it up by the wire. \u201cRen\u00e9e, I\u2019ll be right over.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nMy mother hurried my breakfast and slipped my jacket and backpack on. It was the first day of a new school year, but the mornings were already beginning to cool. My mother marched me through dewy grass toward the Fishers\u2019 yard, where of course the house was gone. I thought it looked the way a recently unsaddled horse might \u2013 relieved, unburdened.\n<\/p>\n
\nRen\u00e9e was there with her twin daughters, freckled girls who picked on one another when Ren\u00e9e wasn\u2019t looking. \u201cRob left for work already, otherwise I\u2019d send him in to investigate,\u201d Ren\u00e9e said to my mother.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat do you mean, in?\u201d asked my mother. \u201cShouldn\u2019t we just call the police?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cOh, that<\/em> I already did,\u201d said Renee. \u201cI meant into that jungle they call a garden.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nMy mother visibly relaxed at the news that the police were on their way. \u201cLet me give my husband a ring. He can be here in five.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nBut before she could even raise her phone to dial, I heard the creak of metal from between a clump of rosebushes, and from there flipped up a large metal hatch. There was a \u201cBye, Mom,\u201d and a shouted \u201cwatch the hatch!\u201d and then Tim was scrambling up and out, his backpack on, his mouth thin.\n<\/p>\n \nHe approached us five. \u201cHi, Sean. Hi, Mrs. Thorne.\u201d He was always so polite. He greeted Ren\u00e9e and her daughters the same way. \u201cWhy are you on our lawn?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nAnd then the police cars rounded the corner, lights flashing but not making a sound.\n<\/p>\n \n \nBefore they moved underground, my mother often tried to avoid the Fishers but didn\u2019t always succeed. Her feeling of social obligation sometimes got her in the end, especially when the Fishers were being what anyone else might see as kind. Once, Mrs. Fisher offered to my mother to cut my hair for free, the same day she was doing Tim\u2019s.\n<\/p>\n \nI remember my mother was hesitant to accept. \u201cWe have a regular place, I wouldn\u2019t want to disappoint them,\u201d she had said, a weak attempt at graciousness that Tim\u2019s mother all too easily overturned. Tim\u2019s mom sat me and him next to each other in high chairs in her kitchen. The elegant sweep of the cape over me, and the snick of her scissors in my ear. When it was done, she held mirrors in front of both of us. I expected our haircuts to be exactly the same, but they weren\u2019t.\n<\/p>\n \nMy mother watched it done, and she chatted with Mrs. Fisher as she worked–about the weather, the neighborhood, their husbands, the challenges of raising kids. Tim and I were quiet. He didn\u2019t fidget at all.\n<\/p>\n \nAs we were leaving, my mom tried to pay Mrs. Fisher for the haircut anyway, which embarrassed me deeply. Mrs. Fisher waved it away. \u201cIt\u2019s what neighbors do,\u201d she said. My mother laughed and returned the cash to her purse, but she gripped my hand very tightly the whole way across our yard.\n<\/p>\n \nWe had left their front door open, and when I looked back, I could see through into the kitchen. Mrs. Fisher was sweeping up all the hair, mine indistinguishable from Tim\u2019s.\n<\/p>\n \n \nAboveground, Mr. Fisher had a beautiful garden, the one Renee always said was a jungle. I saw him tending to it early in the mornings before school and every evening after he got home from work, even if it was dark out. There were large and fragrant roses, ranging from jewel tones to soft pastels. Forget-me-nots bloomed in a riotous layer beneath the rosebushes in the summer. They were choking some of the other plants and covering ground he was hoping to use for bulbs eventually, daffodils and hyacinths and tulips. I only know the names because Mr. Fisher once patiently explained them all to me. You have to plant daffodils in the fall if you want to see them in spring, he told me. They have to suffer the cold below to emerge when it\u2019s time.\n<\/p>\n \nThere was a vegetable garden, too, mostly roots. Carrots, beets, rutabagas, everything for a stew. Onions, garlic, shallots, alliums that made my eyes water. Watermelons that would swell into existence and just as soon disappear, turning up chopped up bloody on the Fishers\u2019 kitchen counter in the weeks after. It wasn\u2019t as contained as my parents and the other neighbors would\u2019ve liked it to be; my mother once complained that gardening encouraged groundhogs and other burrowing vermin to wreck their own yards as well as theirs. The other neighbors mowed their lawns aggressively, and more than once I saw Ren\u00e9e call out to Mr. Fisher from atop her tractor mower, asking if he needed her to just carry on over the border between their properties and get it done for him. He used to laugh and wave her off.\n<\/p>\n \nOur own landscaping was lifeless compared to theirs. Pruned shrubs which reminded me of poodles trembling in the wake of a shave. No riotous flowers. Nothing I could eat, either, not even dandelions, since my mother had a gardener come by to pluck those away at the root. I didn\u2019t know I could eat dandelions until Tim told me. But our landscaping looked a lot like Ren\u00e9e\u2019s and everybody else\u2019s, and that was the way my parents liked it.\n<\/p>\n \n<\/p>\n \nAfter the house disappeared from above, I thought maybe the neighborhood would leave the Fishers alone for good, but the gossip only worsened. There were hushed conversations between my parents after they thought I had gone to bed. My mother and Ren\u00e9e sat with glasses of wine on the back patio and spoke, again, in hushed tones but this time punctuated by snorts of laughter. Though I hadn\u2019t really been allowed to hang out at Tim\u2019s house before, it had never been explicitly prohibited. Not until about two weeks after the house disappeared below the ground. In those couple of weeks, Tim had emerged every weekday and come to school on the bus with us as usual, but I hadn\u2019t seen his parents even once. My mother told me she didn\u2019t know if the house was structurally sound like this, so I wasn\u2019t allowed over Tim\u2019s house until she spoke to his mother about it. I just nodded.\n<\/p>\n \nSome weeks after the house had gone below Tim invited me to visit and play video games once again. I knew my mom was home that day, so I said no, but later. He didn\u2019t smile like he used to, but he also said that would be okay. \u201cThe dog misses you,\u201d he said. We didn\u2019t have a pet of our own. I said I missed him too. I wish I could remember that sweet dog\u2019s name.\n<\/p>\n \nA week after that, my mom left on a girls\u2019 trip with Ren\u00e9e to the city, so when Tim asked again if I could visit the house, I agreed.\n<\/p>\n \n \nThe first time I entered the buried house, all those years ago, I asked Tim if the hatch was heavy. He said no, there was a trick to it, and he showed me. It still made me feel strong to be able to open that door.\n<\/p>\n \nA ladder led down from the hatch into what was once the attic. Tim and I had played in there a couple of times one summer, but left because it got too hot, and most of the childhood debris and artifacts of his parents\u2019 adulthood without him were still where they had always been. Instead of the fold-down ladder previously used to get to and from the attic, there was a set of stairs, built of hardware-store unfinished wood, but very sturdy. Tim said his mom had put them together mostly by herself, but he had helped.\n<\/p>\n \nWe went down the normal stairs and into the foyer, which, though not grand, was once at least full of sunlight. It certainly wasn\u2019t now. There were new blue-and-white striped curtains over the windows, so I couldn\u2019t see what might lay beyond. Tim led us into the family room where his video games were. His dog was waiting for us on the couch there. We played like normal, and ate snacks in the kitchen like normal, and if it weren\u2019t for the curtains, and the oppressive quiet, I would hardly have known how far away we were from normal. I asked Tim if we could go outside, by which I meant out what had once been the front or back doors, and he said we weren\u2019t allowed to do that.\n<\/p>\n \nTim\u2019s parents weren\u2019t home; I had asked and they were both still at work. When I asked if I could use the bathroom, he told me to use the upstairs one this time, since they hadn\u2019t entirely reworked the plumbing of the downstairs one I usually used. So I went up.\n<\/p>\n \nThe curtains over the window in that upstairs bathroom were of a fine and sheer lace, unfashionable according to my mom but still nice to me. I hesitated before them for only a second before pushing them aside.\n<\/p>\n \nI had expected reddish dirt to be pressed against the windows, packed the way it would have been if I were making mud pies in my own yard. But there wasn\u2019t any dirt against the windows, aside from a few flecks \u2013 instead, I looked out onto the blackness of night. It was so obsidian-absolute I could see myself and the small bathroom reflected in the window. I checked the latch, which was too high for me to reach, and it seemed locked.\n<\/p>\n \nI put the toilet seat down so I could climb onto it and reach the latch, which turned with ease. I clambered back down and from there, pushed the window open.\n<\/p>\n \nAn unexpected light breeze hit me from out of the void, smelling like a garden after rain. From atop the toilet again, I looked out the window, extending myself from it as far as I could go without falling. Below, faint light streamed from around kitchen curtains. Out there was only the darkness. I couldn\u2019t tell if it was at all bounded by dirt walls or anything else. Around the base of the house was the beginnings of a garden of a different kind, blobby mushrooms and molds dotting the landscape, some glowing in faint blues and greens the further I squinted from the kitchen light. When I looked up, the darkness was complete enough that I couldn\u2019t even see a dirt ceiling, though I knew it must be there somewhere.\n<\/p>\n \nWhen I went back downstairs, Tim had finished off all the chips and was laying on the carpet facing his dog. The dog was napping with abandon, his back legs one way and his paws the other. Tim was mimicking its ragdoll pose, holding himself still. I laid down on the carpet as well, and tried to arrange myself the same way.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTim,\u201d I said. I was staring at the ceiling, where there was a light brown stain I\u2019d never noticed before.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYeah?\u201d he said. I couldn\u2019t really see him from our poses on the carpet.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDo you think you guys will come back up? Like when it\u2019s warm again maybe?\u201d It wasn\u2019t the question I meant to ask, but it was what I ended up saying.\n<\/p>\n \nTim\u2019s dog snuffled in his sleep. When he shifted, his tail brushed my face. I was always surprised at how soft he was. Sometimes when I was over with Tim, I\u2019d hug his dog and think about sinking into its fur until I was completely enveloped in it, and think more about how Tim could do that whenever he wanted. Sometimes, I very privately thought that Tim\u2019s hair looked just as soft as the dog\u2019s fur, and then I put that thought away. Sometimes, I held the dog a little too long and maybe Tim thought it was weird, but he never said anything about it, so I can\u2019t be sure. Just sometimes, you know, you have trouble letting go.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMaybe,\u201d Tim said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t really think so.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWe sat back up and played the game for a little while longer, and then I went home. If there was something else I could\u2019ve or should\u2019ve done then, I don\u2019t want to know. What I had actually wanted to ask anyway was how, and why.\n<\/p>\n \n \nThe clandestine trips to the buried house continued whenever I could get away. In fact, they were even more frequent than when the house had been aboveground. It felt safer to be with Tim in this other world, away from the sun and the prying eyes of neighbors, even if once there we couldn\u2019t leave it.\n<\/p>\n \nI did miss helping his father out in the garden above, though. Once they made the move belowground, Tim\u2019s father and mother completely abandoned their upkeep of their yard aside from making sure the hatch was accessible via a path to the street. Some of Tim\u2019s father\u2019s plants had grown wild and enormous in his absence, more of a jungle than ever; others had gone to seed and died. Ren\u00e9e grumbled about it to my mother more and more often over larger and larger glasses of wine. Sometimes, the twins and I made a game of counting their glasses. In the fall, we made piles of leaves for each glass, then fell into them. As fall turned to winter, we demanded cups of hot chocolate in the same volume, which were passed off to us as quickly as they could be made so my mother and Ren\u00e9e could get back to scheming.\n<\/p>\n \nBecause I was sure it was scheming. They were trying to decide what could be done. The Fishers\u2019 yard was now not just unruly, but a public eyesore. Surely, zoning laws were in place to prevent what they\u2019d done with the house; it would only be a matter of reporting them. Our neighborhood didn\u2019t have an HOA, a fact I heard them bemoaning, but there were workarounds.\n<\/p>\n \nMy father was frustrated by what the Fishers had done, too, but mostly because it meant my mom was spending so much more time around Ren\u00e9e. That, and he now no longer saw Mr. or Mrs. Fisher coming and going from their house at all. He worked so hard, he said sometimes at dinner; and what was it the Fishers were doing these days?\n<\/p>\n \nI never did tell them that I saw the Fishers coming and going. Not above the ground, at any time of day, but in the house below. Out the front door and into the darkness. Into the garage shaking off red dirt. Mrs. Fisher was as kind as ever; Mr. Fisher was less talkative, and didn\u2019t seem to have time for me and Tim. If I asked Tim where they\u2019d been he always said he didn\u2019t really know. He asked me if I knew where my own father went during the day, and I could honestly say I didn\u2019t really know either. It was just his job. To which Tim would say, alright, then it\u2019s the same.\n<\/p>\n \n \nOne day, well into winter, Tim emerged from the hatch with his mother. She held his hand as they walked to the bus stop, where she met with myself and my own mother.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cClare,\u201d said Tim\u2019s mom. \u201cIt\u2019s been a while.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHow have you been?\u201d my mom asked. \u201cHow\u2019s the house?\u201d Her breath made clouds in the cold.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s coming along,\u201d Tim\u2019s mom said. \u201cTim\u2019s hair is getting a bit shaggy and I\u2019m thinking about doing another haircut day. Would Sean like one as well?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nMy mother stiffened. \u201cOh, I don\u2019t want to impose again,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s not an imposition,\u201d Tim\u2019s mom said. \u201cYou could come over and see what we\u2019ve done with the place, if you\u2019d like.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nI could see my mother processing, trying to figure out once again how to say no without saying no. I saw then that what she was feeling wasn\u2019t just revulsion but fear, and how could either such base emotion not be exposed in this cold?\n<\/p>\n \nBefore my mother could answer, Ren\u00e9e ran up with the twins, the bus arrived, and we all bundled onto it. I don\u2019t know what the parents said once we were gone.\n<\/p>\n \n \nThe winter went on and my hair grew longer and I never did get that haircut at Tim\u2019s house, even though I was over there more often than my mother ever knew. I spent cold afternoon hours in the warmth of that cave-like living room, the stain in the ceiling growing larger, the dog growing softer and shaggier with us.\n<\/p>\n \nThen there was a week where Tim couldn\u2019t have me over at all, and then one night there was a knock very late on the front door. I wasn\u2019t supposed to be awake, but I watched from upstairs as my mother answered the door in her bathrobe to find Tim on the front steps. He asked if he could see me, and she said I was asleep and it could wait until tomorrow.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt actually can\u2019t wait until tomorrow,\u201d Tim said. \u201cI\u2019ve just got something to tell him.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTim,\u201d my mother snapped. \u201cDon\u2019t you know when enough is enough?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe told him to go home and closed that door and went back upstairs. I heard her murmuring to my father, and I was frozen there on the landing, wondering what I could possibly do. I thought about my mother\u2019s revulsion and fear and realized despite everything that it was in me too, and as much as I might want to, as easy as it would be to go down the steps and fling open my door I wasn\u2019t going to do that. Not tonight. Maybe in the morning it would be easier.\n<\/p>\n \nExcept in the morning, Tim didn\u2019t show up at the bus stop, and I spent all day chewing a pencil through class thinking about what I could\u2019ve done. When I got home, instead of heading for my own house, I pushed through the tall dead grass of Tim\u2019s yard and made it to the hatch. I tried to open it the way he showed me, but it wouldn\u2019t move no matter how hard I pulled. It was locked. And I never saw Tim again.\n<\/p>\n \n \nYears on, my parents still live in the house in which I grew up. It looks just about the same as it did then. The roof needs retiling; the shutters have been repainted a darker green; the maple trees unbroken by storms and time are now taller. The lot next door, the one that used to belong to the Fishers, now has a different house above the ground. They too have a garden, though much tamer than Mr. Fisher\u2019s private jungle. Its tallest plants are gathered around a particular patch of lawn. From the street you can\u2019t see a thing, but from my parents\u2019 bedroom window it\u2019s easy to spot a small raised hill in an otherwise very flat neighborhood — the tumulus over the old hatch.\n<\/p>\n \n \nI told my husband about all this for the first time not too long ago. We were staying the night in my childhood bedroom, and I couldn\u2019t sleep. With moonlight over his face, he said only that I might have been in love with Tim. And he was sorry. He touched my cheek where the moonlight sliced me too, then turned over and went still.\n<\/p>\n \nThat same night, I dreamed I had been able to open the hatch all those years ago. In the dream, not a single light was on in the house, and it felt utterly empty of life. I checked Tim\u2019s room, his parents\u2019 bedroom, the living room and the garage, but there was no one and nothing around. In the kitchen there were a few hair clippings on the floor that Tim\u2019s mother must have missed, and I picked them up and put them in my pocket.\n<\/p>\n \nIn a fit of desperation, I fled out the front door after turning on the light in the foyer, making it into the darkness only as far as the light would go. I trampled his father\u2019s mushroom garden and wished they\u2019d form a glowing path to follow, but they were brown, inert, dim. I called Tim\u2019s name into the dark, and that was all. There was nothing else to do.\n<\/p>\n \nI don\u2019t know if the hatch was locked because they had retreated below for good or if they had moved away from our neighborhood entirely, with the door sealed behind them, and now roam the surface once again like the rest of us. If they stayed below, which I think they did, I picture them driving off into that dark unknown and finding other families who buried their homes to protect themselves from people like my parents and Ren\u00e9e. Every time I visit my parents, I resist the urge to exhume their home. I can\u2019t do it yet, but I want to. I will. I\u2019m still trying to excavate my own memories, to uncover Tim\u2019s dog\u2019s name, to find some clue, dusted by time, to how I could ever have let myself get left behind.\n<\/p>\n Annie Nazzaro is a writer from New Jersey now based in Chicago. She has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. When she’s not writing, she can be found at home playing video games or out at pub trivia with friends.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was young, my neighbors buried their house. I had been in the house before it was buried, because Tim Fisher and I had the same bus stop and we were kind of friends. We never had the same teachers, but we sat in seats on the bus across the aisle from each other …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107989,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,20142],"tags":[20143],"class_list":["post-140842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-tcl-54-winter-2025","tag-the-colored-lens-54-winter-2025","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/107989"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140843,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140842\/revisions\/140843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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