We Have Always Lived in the Airport

 

My name is Maddy and I live with my sister Laura in the airport. We have always lived in the airport.

 We own a big store on concourse A. There are lots of nice things in our store. People come from all over the world to shop here. We have to work hard in the store; it was easier when there were more of us.

 When I am hungry I take money from the till and go to one of the airport restaurants. My favorite is the Afghan restaurant in concourse D. The people there are refugees and they are very nice and sometimes give me leftovers for free. But I have to take the slidewalks to get there because it’s a long walk, and I don’t like the slidewalks. They keep you from seeing the carpet properly.

 Concourse D has a different pattern carpet than concourse A. It’s like a different country.

 Laura doesn’t go to restaurants, so I have to bring her food. I always ask what she wants first. When I’m on my way to a restaurant, the Afghan restaurant or a different one, I’m careful not to hurry. I don’t act like a passenger on the way to a flight, or on the way to baggage claim. I try to look like exactly what I am: someone who works in the airport and has important business here.

 It’s important to look just right, especially in the store. Our customers need to be comfortable with us.

 Yesterday a lady asked my sister about me. “Isn’t she a little young to be working?” she said.

 “Maddy’s perfectly capable,” said Laura. I was proud of her. I didn’t stare at the carpet even though I wanted to.

 After the store closed, we washed up in the bathroom like always. Late at night, there are very few flights. and the security people mostly go home. We went home to our store and made up our beds in the storeroom in the back. I was happy because Laura had stood up for me to the lady, but then she said: “Maddy, would you like to go to school instead of working here?”

 “Don’t be silly,” I said. “Who would help you with the store?”

 “I could manage something.”

 “You couldn’t. You don’t even go out to get food.”

 “I could hire someone else.”

 “There isn’t enough money.” Laura knows this is true. Every day we close up and count out the money in the till. Some days there’s a little more than when we opened, and some days a little less. It depends on how much I had to spend for food and other things we need.

 I can’t really believe she suggested that. Someone else, to move in to our store and live here?

 I was still upset about that this morning when I went out to get food. I didn’t go to the Afghan place because I didn’t feel like going to a different country. I went to the deli, but there was a Closed sign and the people weren’t there.

 “They sold the place,” someone said. It was one of the cleaning people. They all have name tags but I never read them. Laura says we shouldn’t get too friendly with them, in case they talk to the security people.

 “Will some other restaurant be moving in?” I asked, but the cleaning person didn’t know. That made me even more upset. I was so upset and worried that I took a wrong turn on the way back to the store. Me, a wrong turn, in this place where I’ve lived all my life. Before I knew it I was in a service area and there was no carpet at all, just bare concrete floors and people I’d never seen before. I was a little frightened, but I reminded myself that I live in the airport and I have a perfect right to be there, even if there are parts of it I’m not familiar with.

 So I asked a cleaning person how to get back to concourse A, and she told me, and I was almost home when I remembered I hadn’t gotten any food, and I had to turn around and go back to a different restaurant.

 When I got back to the store I saw right away that there was trouble. At first I thought Laura was worried because I was gone so long, but she said, “That lady was here again. The one who asked about you.”

 “I thought she was a passenger. Why would she be here again? Was her flight cancelled or something?”

 “I don’t know. Maybe she works here, like us.” Laura took a deep breath. “Maddy, she asked a lot of questions. I don’t think she believes what I told her. She said she wants to talk to you.”

 “Why would she work here?” I was getting cross. “She doesn’t look like she works here. She doesn’t have a name tag or a uniform.”

 “Neither do we.”

“Yes, but we live here.” Then I looked around to make sure there was no-one else in the store. It was very bad of me to say that out loud during the day; I know that.

 “I meant, maybe she works in one of the other stores. I know she doesn’t work for the airport, or for an airline, because you’re right, she’d have a uniform.” And then I saw that Laura was frightened.

 “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.”

 “What do you mean?” Laura asked. But I could see she didn’t really want to know, so I just said, “I’ll take care of it. She won’t bother us any more.” And I went back into the storeroom where we make our beds.

 After the fire, the whole airport was redecorated and that’s when the concourses each got a different pattern carpet. The carpet in the front of the store is the usual concourse A carpet, but the storeroom carpet is different, and older. It’s been the same since there were more of us in the store.

 Next time the lady comes, I’ll tell her that I’ll talk to her if she’ll come back into the storeroom with me. I’ll say I don’t want to talk in front of anyone else. That might make Laura sad for a while, but it’s for the best. I can’t do what I have to do without the special carpet that only we in the whole airport have.

 Sometimes I think the storeroom carpet is special because it reminds me of some other carpet that I once lived with. But I don’t think that’s right. We have always lived in the airport. We have always lived in this store.

 ********************************

 ...a few notes...

Ursula Vernon tweeted something along the lines of "I'm in the airport... I've always been in the airport..."

I laughed and said she should write a book titled "We Have Always Lived in the Airport," as a riff on Shirley Jackson's insidiously and intensely creepy novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Todd said, "Why don't you write it?" I said "Nah."

Five minutes later, the first two paragraphs above popped into my head and let me know I would have no peace until I wrote the rest of the story.

I did not know why the carpet was so important until the very end. I guess I miss the famous turquoise carpet at PDX.

Very little of my poetry qualifies as horror. Most of my prose does. Make of it what you will.

Final note: Authors from John Collier to Roger Zelazny have written stories about people living in department stores, museums, and other not completely appropriate, yet easily accessible, places. They can be stories of resilience, marginalized people exploiting loopholes in a hostile system. Or... not.

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