On Sunday, after our tour of the murder site, etc., my sister and I went on our own little tour before setting out for home. We drove to Pico Rivera by way of the old bus route on Whittier Blvd, and went by the old house, the old school.... I call it ground zero. Then we went on to Whittier and La Mirada, and did the same there--a real trip down Memory Lane, as my sister calls it.
Periodically, I have to do it--visit the scenes of the crimes, as it were. Everything looks so ordinary now, the houses and streets so small and nondescript. We stopped in front of the old house in Pico so my sister could have a cigarette. I wonder how anyone could live there. But they have, continuously, for all these 46 years we've been gone. It's hard to believe that our unhappiness there didn't leave some sort of indelible print of misery on the house. I wrote a poem once about being a prisoner there, and I remember this line: "Our fingers write dark messages on the walls". They should be there, those messages, the suffering of five souls should seep from the walls in a thick miasma.
On the way home, after we finally got on the freeway, my sister and I talked about whether we thought we had behaved acceptably in front of the writer and her friend. We decided we had. We both thought we had handled seeing our grandmother's death house well, at least in the short term. We hadn't freaked-out, at least.
Somewhere along the way we got silly, which was bound to happen, and I really don't know in what context, but I began to imitate the child in the film version of Steven King's, The Shining, as something made him try to warn the others of impending doom. It's somewhat of a running joke between my sister and I. Anytime we're bored, or idle somewhere, say in the car or at home, for entertainments sake either of us might suddenly burst forth with: "R-e-druuum!". Like the kid in the book, I tried to sound spooky but only managed to sound like someone with seriously sick vocal chords, "Re-e-edruuum!", and then with more excitement, "Redruum! Redruum! Redruum! Re-e-e-e-ed-Ruuuuuuuum!" My sister giggled. So did I. We always do.
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