When The Wind Chimes

Sometimes the chimes from the neighbor’s front porch are so loud that it enters the dreams of everyone around to hear it. On Sundays, when the Moore’s take their three children to church, I like to care more about the wind chimes on their porch than the bells that chime in the steeple. The purpose of this is nothing short of making them seem alright. Mr. Moore puts out his cigarette on the dark wooden pews, to block out the deafening stench of holy water and his regret for the family of which he has miserably taken a large part in. Mrs. Moore cries a lot and their three children try the best that they can.  Mary Moore, short of innocence and full of angst, receives the stale and hard bread from the priest and she sips the red wine that strikes a resemblance to the color of her lipstick when she sneaks out at night. This is when the rest of the Moore family is fast asleep in their tucked tight beds in their tucked tight bedrooms and the silent whispers of “goodnight and sleep right” still linger in the air. Mary and I used to play together down the street, when her wind chimes sang higher and her smile shined brighter. That was before the chimes were only temporary, and the Moore family was not yet entirely eradicated. Before their roots had been uprooted and their wisterias became weeds. Mary and her two kid brothers that hold the ages of 5 and 12, have an aptitude for learning about the good in people. A kind of good that was different from what the priest tells them on Sundays. Father Murphy, the kind and honest man that he is, stands in front of all the pews with holes burned into the wood every Sunday morning as a delegate for a higher power.  Father Murphy likes to preach to young innocent minds like Mary’s kid brothers that everyone is a sinner.
So when the day came that the Moore’s didn’t wake up for church, I woke up to the sound of the rain, and I realized that I could no longer hear the chimes. There was an inexplicable silence that broke the void. Mr. Moore and his family had not gone to church this Sunday nor had they gone the last. Since the chimes disappeared,  I painfully feigned sleep and I desperately ached for an answer. This is until the morning I watched Mary Moore and her two brothers board the school bus, with their dreary tired eyes faced down and their hands tucked into their pockets. To their right I noticed Mr. Moore, a man of purity and anger, standing tall and staring straight at his children from his window, not such in the expected way of pride, but in an agitated and bothered way. His pale blue eyes were still and squinting and his jet black hair was so intimidating that it was friendly, especially when he wore that black suit. His cynical and charming personality seem to hold his broken and artificial family together when he comforts the ones he loves with his fist.  When the children get home from school, they wave to Mrs. Moore who is in the garden, wearing a bright yellow hat that shades the bright purple circles under her eyes and the dark blue bruises on each of her limbs. At least her tomatoes are coming in nicely this year. They are coming in nicely,  like Mary Moore stumbles into the house at 3 am with dark mascara running down her freckled cheeks and a heart full of promises broken like her fragile, still bones when she lies awake at night and wonders what it’s like to be loved.
There are some nights I hear screams coming from the dimly lit windows of the bedrooms. The screams have replaced the chimes.
“Get me out!” screams Mr. Moore.
The screaming chimes so unpleasantly that I’ve allowed it to sing my insomnia to sleep at night. My curiosity crawls into my skin and makes a home in my veins that leaves me no choice but to remain apathetic. I, myself, wonder if there is really any love at all in the world. This was until the night that Mr. Moore finally gets out, like he screams about. The night that the Moore family lies in an eternal sleep. They lie in their tucked tight beds in their tucked tight bedrooms that are splattered in blood which strikes a resemblance to the shade of red that Mary Moore is wearing when she is lying bent and battered on the living room floor after coming home to her father waiting for her with a welcoming smile and a piercing knife. The same shade of red that matches the roses that Mrs. Moore received on Wednesday, when Mr. Moore wanted another chance. Even tattered hearts beat the same. With her eyes closed shut and her gut ripped open, it’s loud and obvious that she still loves him. Maybe love exists after all.
On Sunday morning I woke up to the sound of wind chimes from an empty porch of an empty house. The church bells are starting to sound better to me.