fraternal twins

fraternal twins

fiction
edward w pritchard

Dad had died and Myron, my fraternal twin was in the army and I went to college about four hundred miles away. That's when Mom must have had the bomb shelter built. It was under the house and the only entrance was through the glass garden niche. We called it the niche because Myron and me use to play and play in there when we were children. The back wall of the garden niche was brick and I was tearing it down last month and I found the hidden door leading to the bomb shelter under the house. The rest of the garden niche was glass and Mom spent a lot of time back there when we were kids working on her flowers.

I was tearing down the old garden building when I found the underground passage to the bomb shelter, a large room down under the large house we grew up in. The only entrance was through the green house which is what the glass garden niche really was.

I had called Myron my Brother to get permission to tear down the green house last month because he is half owner of the house that I have lived in since Mom died five years ago. We are selling the family home. After I graduated from college with my degree I moved back home. I never knew about the bomb shelter and Mom never once mentioned it. I lived in the house for six years with my Mother after she must have had that bomb shelter built; and she never mentioned the bomb shelter to me even once.

The green house was airy and bright when we were kids and Myron and I loved to play in it. That's why I called Myron for permission to tear it down, it was our niche, as we called it, our special place.

Myron isn't upset with Mom for not telling us. I am. Myron was her only son, me her only daughter. What would possess a woman to build an expensive brick and cement room under the house she lived in for twenty six years and not tell any one at all about it? I have asked all my relatives in the last month since I found the entrance to the bomb shelter under the house; and no one knew about it. Mom never mentioned it.

The bomb shelter is too big and elaborate for a bomb shelter and who needs a bomb shelter now a days anyway? It's a throw back to fears and secrecy of the 1950's in America when my parents were born.

I am trying to sell the old house that Myron my fraternal twin and I grew up in, so we can split the money and now I find out that it has a bomb shelter under it that my Mother had built that she never told anyone about. The only entrance to the dark bomb shelter is through the glass green house my brother and I loved to play in when we were kids. I don't under stand my Mother. I feel like she concealed something from me. Myron tells me to let it be.