My
sister and my cousins and I would hide in the hall closet
and bitch about my Grandmother.
How she snored, how she lied,
making stories about
past lovers that who could believe? An
old lady propped up
with cushions, the commode in the corner.
The faint smell of cough
lozenges, hard purple discs, the colour
of the coat she wore
when she went to church, the colour of the
veins that laced her
hands...
Guilt.
She gave me lozenges and cuddled me when I cried because
I was homesick.
(Because she was too.)
Guilt and grief, that house.
With the bags of clothes for the mission, boxes full of
buttons, delicate china
in lead-light cabinets. Furniture with
fat carved legs. Delicate
cast-offs. Dust on the shelves. And the
rooms are dim because
electricity is expensive.
Everything is.
Waste is a sin.
But there's sun in the corner, where I sit and knit and read
and wait. Till it's
time to go home again. To breathe air again. Wait.
To run through the paddocks
and lay in the
grass. Wait.
To dream of those lovers.
*
Dust clings to an old
memory.
Adam and Eve in the garden.
Inside the house we eat figs for tea from a can labelled peaches.
I wet my pants because I'm scared of the toilet, a can that a man empties
on
Mondays. It's Sunday
and it's full of shit and blood and soiled napkins, so I piss in my
pants and my Aunt's
disgusted as she mops the floor of my piss and my tears.
Hot stinging piss.
Hot stinging tears.
(Guilt, again..)
In my mouth, down my legs.
Grief emanates from my Grandmother's room, a thin white cloud, a wolf in
a red
cloak, a husband dead
thirty years.
There's nowhere to hide, the walls stand like bodies, their eyes are everywhere.
Disgust stamps my Aunt's
features. She wishes I were dead. My cousin stands to one side.
She is younger than
I.
I am given her underpants to wear.
Large, like grey houses, like elephants.
Oh Grandma..!
...At school there was
the incinerator for the pads, always smoke from the chimney or
blocked toilets, something
to find you out, nowhere to hide, the teachers wore my aunt's
eyes as they spied out
our sins...
Take thiss...shh.
But I didn't know, back then.
Take me back to that house and we'll do it again. Find the crack in the
record,
where it sticks. Listen..!
Grandma, can you hear it?
There! That hisss..! I think it's you.
Yes, Grandma. It is you.
Wishing and missing and mourning your dead. Feeding me guilt and the bible,
washing your hands in
the chamber pot, ooh la, Lady Macbeth.
--Your hair yellow with age like an old book
--Your laugh crackles at the edges
--Your hands like two claws as you stuff me into pants full of
Ashh
..shhhh..
Take thisss hide your shame.
In my dream: I see you
there in the kitchen; whetting the knife.
Initiation.
Took my hands away from myself and said I must wait.
(Yes. Wait.)
There's nowhere to hide,
you said. Nowhere. God's in the bushes, there, see! -- Where you
saw that branch move
and a white bird. --God's in the cupboard when you take out the
butter. -- God's in
the tap when you run your bath.
God's in my mouth, taste it... Ashhhh... Shhh... He'll hear you.
Quick, hide your shame, girl.
Hide it, because there's
blood on the knife. And they'll want more, you said, they always
do.
Oh, mother, Grandma..!
I've pissed in my pants and there's nowhere to hide.
I've a raw wound that bleeds and there's nowhere to hide.
I've an ache down here, sir, and there's no-one to fill it.
Listen.
There it is again! An old cracked record.
(Wait.)
Taste it, blood on your lips.
We ate figs and the syrup
ran down my cousin's chin and she licked it clean.
Feel this ache.
I want to go back!
There's no going back. Here, girl, feel this ache, here, like mine.
Yes, Grandma.
When you are older a man will touch you into life, there.
We ate figs for tea and God licked the syrup from her chin and she was
naked and
didn't know it, she
was younger than I, and she touched herself at night Grandma, there,
where you said..
Shh.. Take your hands away, and wait.
Grandma! Adam's
in the garden. Where's Eve?
Eve's waiting. Sleep now.
Grieve for Eve...
This is not for you yet. Wait.
Adam comes riding on his great white horse, plunging on his horse, down
down
into my dreams. One
day he'll come and touch me into life, there, where my hand..
Guilt in my mouth down my legs warm like heated honey when I'm in bed alone
at
night beating at the
window like a moth diving like a white bird.
Left me all alone for thirty years.
Shh.
Guilt. And grief.
Sleep. This is not, this is not for you yet.
Wait.
When you are older a man will come and touch you into life.
There?
When you are older. Take your hands away. Wait. One day...
Thirty years, Grandma?
God takes your man, so
you wait. Takes your hand away and gives you, what? A hole, an
ache. So you wait.
There it is again. A
crack in the record.
Listen.
Shhh.
Adam comes riding on
his great white horse, plunging on his horse, down... Down into my
dreams.
One day he'll come and touch me into life...
So you wait.
Wait.
But tell me.
For what this time?
Eve
in the Garden