The Staircase to Nowhere - #2
The staircase began as a neighborhood rumor: “there’s nothing upstairs.” Yet there it stood—twelve wooden steps, handrail polished by absent hands, and at the top a wall without a door. The landlord called it decorative. He lied badly.
I climb first out of stubbornness. With each step the house stretches, a body unkinking after years in a chair. Between the fourth and fifth, the air smells of starch—shirts no one wears anymore. On the eighth, a clock jumps two minutes ahead. On the twelfth, the wall feels newly ironed.
Forehead to plaster: cool. On the other side, tiny footsteps, like someone practicing how to walk without disturbing anyone. I go back down. I leave the staircase alone; it doesn’t return the favor. That night I dream of hallways folding into themselves and notes pinned to an invisible uniform.
Tuesday: a straight pin on the second step, bright, dustless. Wednesday: a yellowed ticket tucked under the molding—date worn off, my surname misspelled, destination “Floor 2” in a one-story house. Thursday: on the sixth step a blue thread tied neatly to the rail’s peg; when I pull gently, someone pulls back.
I bring a notebook. On the fourth step, a name scrawled—mine, eleven times, each with less ink. On the ninth, a delayed breath—I cough, the staircase coughs after, with the echo of another body. At the top, scissors open near my ear. The wall remains wall, but the plaster has a seam.
I don’t sew. Still, I work a nail under the paint line. It gives like old fabric. The air from the other side smells like school: chalk, damp sweater, a courtyard swept before sunrise. No one comes out. I slide my hand in. I touch polished wood, the cool of flat metal, and a hardback notebook someone pushes toward me from above.
I pull it free. It’s my notebook. Not the current one—the one I lost as a kid, with crooked stickers and a torn page. On the first sheet, a schedule: 7:30 up / 7:40 line up / 7:50 sing. At the end, a new note, careful teacher-hand, adult patience: “You left the upper half of your name. Return it when you can.”
I laugh without humor. How do you return half a name? Forehead to wall again. Warmer. I ask what’s missing. The staircase answers late: step, step… step—the third delayed, as if tripping over an age I don’t remember having.
I descend with the notebook. On the first step there’s now a calling card that exists nowhere else: my full name split by a perfect underscore—name_lower, name_upper. I’m missing the upper.
I go back with a shirt I never wore, crisp with care. I leave it on step twelve. On the far side someone exhales relief. The wall relents half a centimeter, like a belly after letting go of air. The house clock corrects itself two minutes backward. Along the rail a letter embroiders itself in blue thread: the upper half of my initial.
I understand. The staircase leads nowhere visible. It climbs to the height where I stored the part of my name that taught me to go up without waiting. I left it here when I moved houses and bodies.
Since then I climb each morning with something ironed—a word, a patience, a promise—and lay it on the last step. The wall never opens. It doesn’t have to. With every visit the blue thread stitches another upper half, and my name completes itself along the handrail, letter by letter, in the dressmaker’s language.
When people ask why I keep a staircase that goes nowhere, I tell the truth: it goes to my eleven-year-old. And the house agrees with one straight creak, like a teacher calling roll and finally pronouncing my name without skipping the top half.
