The frightened child inside Emma wanted to get back on a city-bound train, back to a place warmed by the sun and unchilled. But the adult and determined Emma nodded her head and began to walk.
Walking down the roads, Emma ignored the occasional old and withered person, too deteriorated to be called a human, sitting on a rocking chair on a rickety front porch. She walked until she reached the white weatherboard house with the green tin roof, where she stopped and stared at her childhood home.
The grass had grown long; a red brick path covered in moss split the grass in two, running from where Emma stood to the porch. The weatherboards were filthy and the tin roof was rusty and faded, due to sunlight. Her memories had not.
Emma quickly walked up the pathway, stepping carefully up onto the porch. The front door had a piece of wood across it, and on that, a painted word.
‘Abandoned’. Some things could so easily be abandoned.
“I’m leaving.”’
“What do you mean, you’re leaving? Girl, you get back here or I’ll...”
“You’ll do what? Hit me? Not likely! We’re all going to leave here, someday, I’d just rather do it while I’m ahead!”’
No matter. She made her way around the porch and opened the back door, and found herself in what she remembered to be the kitchen; dirty tiled floor and bench tops, a fridge with an overblown motor, a stopped clock.
She watched from the table.
“I don’t care what you like, you’ll eat it. If you don’t like it, get your own dinner!”
“I work all fucking day, Anna! You’re supposed to get me dinner.”
“And I did.”’
“Not what I like.”’
“You know, I don’t give three shits to what you like. Go visit one of your little whores or something, maybe they’ll make you something you like if you promise to leave quickly.’”
“Screw you, woman…”
Emma closed the door behind her and walked down a hallway, past closed doors, and taking a breath, opened up the door at the end of the corridor.
The violet carpet was flat, the lemon wallpaper almost white. Paint peeling off a dresser. And in the middle of the room was a double bed with a mattress and iron frame, white lace quilt, white lace pillow. White, it would have to be white. As pretty as the bed was, Emma knew she could not touch it, could not sleep on it. White was the shade of innocence, a shade Emma wished she still had, for it was a shade she had lost many years ago, in this bed. Given a choice now, she would have this shade still.
Screams. Then Emma was thrown down on the bed. She couldn’t see her mother.
“You’ve gone completely mad! Get off her now!’”
“If you don’t bloody shut up you’ll be next, you hear?’”
The large hand clamped down on Emma’s mouth and nose, making it close to impossible for her to breath. Her mother’s voice was low.
“I swear… I’ll kill you…’”
“Do you want the neighbours to hear?’”
“Yes!’”
“Wrong answer.”’
Emma blacked out.
She left the room.
The globes in the ceiling lights were blown, the telephone was dead. The entire house was dead, having fallen apart with the family who had lived inside.
A man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small, dark-haired girl cried in a corner.
But I’m not dead. I haven’t fallen apart yet.
Back in the kitchen, Emma turned on the water tap. Finding a still intact glass in the cupboard, she watched as the water turned from dirty to running clear. Filling a glass, she took a sip, and tipped the rest out, for it tasted murky.
Everything’s murky. All things here are murky.
Emma took out a box of matches from her handbag and lit one before throwing it onto the wooden lounge room floor, which caught alight. She walked out the back door and around to the front of the house, where she stood and waited on the road.
She didn’t have to wait long.
The lounge room was soon engulfed in flames, the fire spreading rapidly to the kitchen and the hallway. The windows exploded with such force it hurt Emma’s ears; the weatherboards went up in flames with a whoosh. With the strength of the walls gone, the roof began to sag and eventually collapsed, the house crashing down and the fire taking on a violent life of its own. Emma’s face burned with sensation being so near the flames, her eyes beginning to water, a red glow reflecting back on her. The flames licked high into the darkening sky, forcing the evils of the house into the stars beyond. As the fire spread towards the grass, Emma backed away.
Then, turning on her heel, she walked back down the street the way she came. She had a city-bound train to catch, one that was going to take her home.
~ Won the Chisholm Youth Week Creative Writing award, March 2004
~ Read aloud at the Big Read #2, 31st August 2004, in Melbourne, Australia
~ Published in Pendulum 2004 (issue eight) in 2004 by Wishbone Press