THE HOUSE I NO LONGER LIVE IN

by Allie Hoy Design by Rita Wang

From the outside, my house looks like part of a set in a coming-of-age film about a teenager stuck in suburbia. It’s the second house from the end of a long row of identically designed townhomes, each one the exact same height and width, forming an artificial horizon. My house is a dusty brown color, one that you wouldn’t think would be an appealing color for the exterior of a house, but yet still feels inviting in its subtle warmth. It has a small yard, barely big enough for a garden, which lay empty until last year when my mom grew envious of the elaborate garden cultivated by the sweet Colombian lady three doors over and went to the Home Depot and bought three Hostas. Next to the garden, there’s just enough space for the bare mound where the tree that could hold the weight of me and both of my sisters used to be before we had to chop it down because it was leaning too close to the house.

If you gave a child a box of crayons and told them to draw a house, the structure they outline probably won’t be too different from the front of my house. It’s square-shaped, with a triangle roof on top. Arranged in a grid-like pattern are three windows and a door, evenly spaced out, creating a sturdy facade. The only thing that might be different from the child’s drawing is the color. My house is painted a soft brown that you wouldn’t expect to be an appealing color for a house, but still feels inviting in its subtle warmth.

The front door to my house is heavy and large. The sound it makes when it opens differs based on the time of day. On Saturday mornings when my dad goes out for his morning cigarette, it’s just loud and pitchy enough to wake me up, but on weekday afternoons, the consistent and comforting swing marked the beginning of a long decompressing process after 10-hour school days.

Without taking two steps in, you can already get a small glimpse of my family just by looking at the walls. The walls of the entryway are adorned with decor that is so essentially us. We have the Japanese art my sister was taught to make by a White art teacher at a predominantly White elementary school. We have the hand-embroidered sign by my Aunt Pam, reading “Mi Casa es Su Casa” to welcome my mother, the first person of color to marry into my dad’s family. And finally, we have my favorite piece of decor, my mother’s handmade “Families are Forever” sign, which is wonderfully complemented by the hole in the wall just below it, a symbol of unchecked male aggression.

On the inside of our front door we have, like most families would have on their fridge, a collage of random papers, magnets, and photos. Each of the pieces hung on the door has its own story and I couldn’t possibly try to tell them all, but some highlights from the door include a God Bless America magnet my grandma insisted we put up, a takeout menu from our favorite Peruvian-owned Chinese restaurant, and multiple copies of the same honor roll certificate, the exact same design, the only difference being the dates and which sister’s name it displays.

To the right of the front door is the coat closet, which has more tablecloths than coats, a hoard of Fabuloso and other cleaning supplies, and a fire extinguisher that my dad insists on keeping even though we’ve never used it in the 19 years I’ve been alive. To the left is a little shelf that my mom got for $6 at a yard sale, which holds my older sister’s basil project, the 20-pound bag of rice from Costco that gets replaced every three months, and a stash of single-use water bottles that we bought when the pandemic first started that we keep in case of emergencies.

You pass through the kitchen, my mom’s territory, which usually has the lingering smell of caramelizing onions. The stove is the only appliance in the kitchen that’s the same as it always was, the only one that has never broken down and caused a stressful discussion for a replacement. Beneath the four sturdy burners is the oven, full of pans, trays, and other kitchenware that my sisters once forgot to remove before preheating the oven to bake a tres leches. There’s a sink that’s usually home to either a slab of frozen meat defrosting or a mountain of dirty dishes, depending on the time of day. And the pantry, stocked with anything from Goya lentejas to matcha powder to dried oats.

As you walk further into the house, you enter the dining room, which is also the living room, which is also the study room, which is also the guest room. At the center of everything is the table. It would be wrong to call it the dining table, because we do so much more than dining there. It’s also the Scrabble at 3am table, the weekly pop-up nail salon table, and the rejection of generational mental health stigma when you witness your middle daughter having the messiest panic attack of her life.

The last night I slept in my house before moving halfway across the country, I felt empty, just like my bedroom. Instead of feeling like a teenager escaping suburbia in that coming-of-age movie, I felt like a plant being ripped out of its ecosystem. For all the things I went through in my house, and all the times I felt like I had outgrown the townhouse that wasn’t meant to accommodate five people, it still felt like the place I belonged. Every small little detail felt like another piece in the puzzle, and I was being ripped away, shipped out to Missouri never to be reunited with the imperfect image it made. I got out of bed the next morning, brought the rest of the boxes to the car, and as we drove away, I don’t remember looking back.