The house sits precariously on the edge of the cul-de-sac.
Strange the manner by which the fading rays of the sun cast the house in a different light; seemingly as if it came from out of a storybook directly into present day. Out of place and out of time, yet hanging on the fringes of one’s imagination; it was fondly known by my parents and by my uncles as the gingerbread house. To a regular architect or an engineer, it could never seem more than just a house on the hill but the memories that my family and I have had in that place have made it a gingerbread house.A cursory glance at the structure will show that it was probably the brainchild of a madman or an eccentric artist.
For one thing, none of the steps were ever even. The first step up to the porch was a foot wider than the rest and followed by a narrow step, about half a foot wide, directly above. There was many a victim who discovered this fact too late as the rolled down the steps. This was a constant source of family bloopers and entertainment as nobody could ever master the secret of those stairs.
Not only were the steps out of proportion, as the windows too were unevenly made. Looking at the windows would lead one to think that a crazy mathematician had decided to try his hand at house design. The windows were never the same shape nor of the same size. The two front windows were square and round. The window to the right was a perfect circle, like the spectacles of a wizard and the window to the left looked like a waffle that had the insides removed and hung on the wall. We called it the Gingerbread House.
Don’t be fooled by the name. It’s not the gingerbread house because of the house being good enough to eat; it’s the gingerbread house because, if one remembers correctly, the wicked witch who ate children lived there. The thing that most made the house seem like the gingerbread house from fable would be the little plates that were hung all over the walls of the house. Little plates of all colors, shapes and sizes, looking like tiny dewdrop buttons on the yellow walls. One plate looking like a cherry, another like walnuts on a pancake.And the tiny shards that were broken by an excited dog who thought that the house was edible made it seem as if there were sugar sprinkles all over the house.
This was our gingerbread house. A house that made no sense but a house that pleased the senses and brought out the inner child of everyone. This was the house that nobody wanted to ever visit or come near. Nothing about the house made sense. Everything was out of proportion, like a hag’s nose. The house was a bright yellow and legend has it that it was never painted fully till the back because the witch had eaten the painter.
The yellow color as meant to attract children to the house, the way a venus flytrap brings its victims in. Under the pale moonlight, the house did indeed look like it had the profile of a witch. The uneven steps on the front porch were like the crooked teeth of a hag’s smile. The eyes were the windows, one seemingly peering through a single spectacle as another glared angrily at you. All throughout the house, scattered, were the badges, much like how tribes would hang the heads of their enemies on poles, these plates represented every child that the witch inside the gingerbread house had devoured.
And there, the newest meal, a plate lay smashed beside the door, had the witch finally had her last or what if it wasn’t the witch but that the gingerbread house had swallowed them whole. Yet, even if it did seem as if a wicked witch resided inside that old house, there was something about it that kept people coming back. Perhaps it was the allusion to folklore and legend or perhaps it was the affinity for mystery and imagination, be that as it may, the Gingerbread House was one of the most popular houses on the block, and my personal favorite place. It defied logic yet its existence made perfect sense in the world.
