by Joy Dettman
‘Get out of there and clean yourself, girl.’
I throw a can of cornbeans at his head. It misses him, but he backs off, backs higher as I pick up and aim a can of fruitjell. It hits the brick wall beside him, smashes, spraying him with pink fruit.
Lenny comes in answer to my scream. He carries me to the chem-tub, peels my clothing away and supports me there, then he takes me to my bed, also newly cleaned, and he hands me a mug. In it there is a little V-cola with the scum of Pa’s crushed pills floating on top. I grasp his wrist and I drink the bitter stuff and I hold his wrist and wait. And he waits. He waits, his free hand brushing the hair back from my sweating face. I hold that wrist in a vice grip until I sleep again.
*
I am imploding. Each day now I shrink a little further into the shrivelled core of self. Somewhere, in a small chamber of heart, head or bowel, there is a withered seed of self, its kernel turned to stone. Self rattles around in the empty shell of she who has been me. The seed of self is afraid. It hides, while the empty space of she who has been me takes on dark forms. Self dreams cruel dreams of fire and of loss, and of Jonjan.
Fire is all around us but he soothes me with his mouth on mine, then we entwine and I rise to meet him, rock with him. Then the flames devour him and I watch him turn to ash, and in my mouth is ash and where his mating tool has been there is ash.
I scream.
Lenny is by my side again, with his pills and V-cola mix.
I am walking in the hills with Jonjan, yet I see his face is my mother’s face. I see his hair is my mother’s hair. I can not recognise the place where we walk together, hand in hand. It is a world beyond here, where my fingers push at a woven fabric sky. I can not break free of it. I can not see the sun.
I wake. Drink the bitter V-cola and sleep.
I wake.
I sleep.
And what is wake and what is sleep?
Jonjan stands in my room, a wax-light held in his hand. ‘I have come to steal you away,’ he says. I reach out to him, but as I do, I knock the light from his hand and I see we are on the hill again and the deep ravine is between us. I watch him fall, dream fall, so slow. I watch the wax-light melt and flood the ravine. Then my dream returns to this house and he is running from me through the passages, trailing flames that seed the walls and wooden floor with small blue tongues.
Though the fire is raging, everyone sleeps. I wander through the rooms with impunity as I call his name. I follow his trail of fire to the nursery where six small piglets, who each wear the face of the grey men, sleep. He burns there, his arms spread, covering the sleeping piglets with flames and I stand under a wall of cool flame, calling his name.
And I see his charred corpse, and its hands are bound, its legs are bound. Still they reach for me. ‘I have come for you, girl of the mountains,’ his ash mouth says.
I turn away from him and leave him bound in the hall as I leap blindly into the black night. But again he is there. He is downstairs to break my fall. He wraps me in a cool blanket and douses me with cool water and we swim together in a cool deep pool.
Then I am awake and alone, and aware that I have brought back a part of the dream to my room. My hair is wet. Water is dripping onto my bed. My pillow is wet. I look above my pillow. Water is dripping from the ceiling, and the world has turned upside down, and is not of my world.
I am dead, for all around me there is a strange pounding, the hollow drumbeat of death.
I look at my window where water washes against it. For unmeasured time I stare at the window, and outside the window to my freedom tree. Its leaves do not look so grey in death. I am pleased that death is a clean place, pleased there is water here. I believe I will bathe long and wash the stench of life away, and Jonjan will be there, his arms reaching out to hold me.
Or . . . or do I live? I have need to use the chem-shed. I rise on an elbow and hear the cocky old rooster’s call. And there. There is the old male dog barking his reply.
Is this the water of the rain Granny had spoken of? In all of my life I have not known rain. I forget my pain, or it forgets me, as I drag myself to the window, where I stand watching the slim broken streams from the sky that try to find a way through glass and through the plasti-sheet Lenny has glued across the broken panes.
Once it rained for forty days and forty nights. It says so in the old Bible, for Granny told me. And all of the world was flooded, and God told Noah to build a boat and save the animals. Who will save the few animals of the new world should rain fall for forty days and forty nights?
My legs are too weak to hold me, or to carry me to the chem-shed, but there is a bucket here. I use it, then kneel and watch the dark rain give way to grey rain, watch my room grow grey.
There is a rhythm to it. A splat-splat-splat. I look at my bed, then up to the ceiling, and to the spreading patch of dampness, and I know that in time past rain has entered this room, for my ceiling is crazed with mouldy patterns painted by the great slow artist, Grim Decay, and by his assistant, Sir Rust. The flaking paint and crumbling plaster of my ceiling make for these two a very fine canvas.
How long has the water been falling? How long have I been away in that place of pain and fear and the dreams?
I do not know the answer, only that the pain has gone and I feel as a feather blown in the wind. But I feel. I breath. I move. I see.
This day shall be marked. I am not dead, and the world is not dead. This is the rain Granny and Pa had thought gone forever. This day I will name my first day, for I believe that the rain has washed the last of the cordial from me, and my mind has stepped free of its cage. It will learn to run free.
I look around me at the walls as I listen to the beat of the rain. I look at my arms, at my feet that do not wish to hold me, but I can crawl to my bed where the rain drops drip-drip-drip onto my pillow. I hold my palm beneath this dripping and watch the cup of it fill, and I see beauty in each droplet.
Lord! How strange this is! As if my eyes are newly seeing, as if my ears are newly hearing. I see my light shade, which I thought to be a faded grey, is tinged with blue. Rich once, but rotting now, only the rusting wires are strong.
I have spent my life in this room, and that shade, and the switch on the wall with its moving nipple, have always been here, though in Granny’s time they did not make light. Not until the grey men came with their batteries and their generator and their milky glass globe did my switch nipple make light.
I believe I have never looked up at the tattered threads that fringe the light shade, or at the curved wires. Have I seen behind the doors of the wardrobe?
Holding onto my bed, I stand and make my slow way to twin doors and I open them. Only an empty space and a lonely hanger wait for the garments of those who are gone.
Who slept in this room when it was young? Who placed their strange clothing in that wardrobe? I close its door, listen to the complaint of rusting hinge, and it is like a cry from back then. I play with the door, listening, listening. And to the second door. They cry to each other for all of the fine garments that are gone.
The newsprint pages I brought with me to my room lie folded on the chest of drawers beside my bed. Their day numbers are 16 and 18 and even 30, and their month names as unsystematic. There is Dec and Jan. I do not know what day it is or even the name of the season, but today is such a clean day. I will paint it, and name it my day of cleansing.
I choose a small paint board from beside my bed; it has already been covered many times with my pictures. I can not recall making these images, but I select one that has not been well done. I open my case of paints and smell anew its contents. It is a fine scent, born of that other time.
Hands, not yet quite my own, work slowly. They mix the white powdered clay with aged oil spread, they add a little blue from a silver tube, and a sprinkling of the black soot from the stove.
It is a soft grey I make, and with it I cover my board before beginning to shade it with darker greys. My brush blends in yellow streaks that a
re as the wind-whipped clouds, it blends the reds and ochres that are the hills. I sketch the fine outline of twin blue pools that twinkle beneath the sun and I paint the tombstones in the graveyard. And when it is done I am pleased with it, and know that behind this scene I have painted the spirit of Granny, for the clouds are her hair and the ochres her face, the pools are her sapphire eyes. I think she might be proud of her student today.
What a pity I have no fine name to write in the corner. The painting in the old library has a name in the right corner. D Logan is written there in heavy black paint. I would like to write my name in heavy paint, but I have no name to write so I paint a dandelion instead. Granny had loved those flowers.
It would be a fine thing to have a name. Rebecca or Jane, Kara or even Monique. I know I once had one. In the old books I have read, it is an important day, that naming day of the infant, and as today is the day of my rebirth, then I think I will find my name. In the old books the mother took her infant to the church and the pastor dripped water onto its head and said, ‘I baptise thee,’ so I position my head beneath the dripping rain, and I say, ‘I baptise thee, I baptise thee.’ I say it many times but the rain does not tell me my name.
Still, it is somewhere. I will search the archives of my memory until I find it.
My eyes close and I strain to think of a silver flying machine but can not force more than the image of Jonjan’s beetle.
‘Fly away,’ I said to him. He would not fly.
Run, baby.
They were my mother’s words. I believe I remember them, or perhaps I dreamed them, but baby is only the name for an infant.
I stare at my hand, and know with certainty that such a hand once held the brush that brushed my hair. I sing my memory song.
Oh honour her, Oh honour her,
Oh sleep and dream of day.
Oh honour her, Oh honour her,
tomorrow you may play.
‘Peta?’ I say. ‘Jemma. Honey?’ Honey is the sticky sugar feast of the bee that Pa sometimes finds. It is not my name. But I believe it was also a name, perhaps my mother’s. This morning I give her that name and I speak to her. She does not reply.
Lenny comes, and while the rain is still pouring down. I do not speak to him, but watch him and remember how I clung to him during my illness. He also remembers, for he smiles at me and hands me a can of fruitjell, four crispbites and a container of V-cola.
‘Found you sleeping calm when I come by early. The rain done it. It’s rain outside,’ he says, and Lord, I think his eyes smile. I stare at his eyes, so small, rimmed by red, but they are blue, as Granny’s eyes were blue.
‘It is rain,’ I say.
‘Reckon you beat the sickness now, girl,’ he says. ‘Reckon you’re feeling right.’ I nod, and he stands on, looking at me and at my painting, then he sees the water dripping onto my pillow. ‘Storms couldn’t blow this frekin place down but the rain will see the end of it.’
‘It makes a strange sound on the roof.’
‘Pouring through the frekin thing. It come late last night. Pa’s been reckoning for days he could smell it coming. Reckons it’s the young ’un that brung it. Like in the old ones’ book, he reckons, like the old ones’ God is making the land ready for the coming of . . . of whoever the old ones reckoned was coming.’
I nibble at the edges of a crispbite, testing my stomach, which seems eager for food. I drink the V-cola and it makes bubbles in my nose. I think I like its flavour better today without the scum of Pa’s pills floating on top.
‘Fence is out. It don’t like God’s rain.’ He moves my bed to a place where the water does not reach, and I see the bottle on its side there. It is not a conscious movement, but I reach for it. Lenny reaches it first. He holds it upside down.
There was enough in it for one small sip. I look at the red stain, and my finger attempts to dip into it, but his boot is over it, rubbing it into the wood. He does not talk more but leaves the room, taking the empty bottle and the bucket with him.
I remain on my knees, staring at the stain, thinking of the grey men who will come again with their bottles, thinking Lenny will unpack them, and smash them, but the thought dies when I hear noise from above me.
He is right. The house is falling. I run to the door, thinking to race for the cellar, then I hear his rhythmic cursing as he clambers over the roof above me. There is a hammering and dripping stops.
I look at the wet wood of the floor, at the oblong shape of boards where my bed has been. Dark wood it is, and as I rub it with my hand, it glows with life, like a patch of yesterday, unseen, unworn. Has this bed lived so long in this place? Has it saved this place? My floor is worn grey. Was it grey in Granny’s time, or has the chem-spray and the suction tool sucked the glow from it? Lord, but this hidden place is beautiful. Coils and swirls of colour are in the damp wood. I sweep it with my hand and feast my eyes on the old beauty, and I lie on it, my arms spread wide, wanting to fly back with it to that time before. Why had I not seen it? Why had I not looked for it? What else is in this house that I have never seen?
Lenny has finished with his hammering, but rain still hammers at my window. Lord! How aware of all sound I am. The generator cuts in, with its thump-a-thump-a-thumping. It sings to me.
Strange sounds the house is making today. Assuredly the ghosts are out wandering the halls. The floors creak, the roof groans, and in the burnt-out rooms I hear the beat of a slow drum against the orchestra of rain. I think it is music of celebration. The ghosts of the seventy-seven remember this rain and they sing and dance in it.
Then from within me I feel the fluttering, and I still.
‘Do you dance too, my golden foetus?’ I whisper. ‘Or do you scream with aching for the taste of the cordial? Since your beginning I have begun my every day with it, closed out my every day with it. How will we close out this day, little one?’
How will we close this day, little one? These were Granny’s words. She had called me ‘little one’ on the day of the dandelion.
It had grown and bloomed amid Pa’s pumpkins, and Granny had plucked it, woven its gold into my hair, and for once her many faceted eyes had smiled. That night she had sat long in her rocking chair on the verandah speaking of the dandelion.
‘The western field in spring was gold with them that last year. Little Moni made garlands and necklets, decked herself in them, girl. A happy day. The sun was shining, little Moni laughing with her brothers, running free.
‘They saw her from the sky. Five of the bastards. She was too busy dancing to see them. And like a pack of wild dogs they came back to hunt by night. There were no more garlands for poor little Moni. No more happy days, girl.’
(Excerpt from the New World Bible)
In the sixty-fifth year of the New Beginning the corn crops surpassed expectation, and one sowman, by need, must stand on the shoulders of another so that he might harvest the giant cobs of corn, and each cob was the length of a male’s forearm, and thick as his thigh.
And when the bread was baked of milled grain, there was much left for delicacies. And there was no waste from the splendid crop. Its refuse made fine paper and finer fabric. And many labourers were required, thus modification was made to the sowman breeding program.
But sowmen’s fingers could not be made as man’s, and thus did not perform as man’s, nor have the dexterity.
Then came the striped potato from the laboratories of the scientists, and it might be picked clean, for it grew on creeping vines beneath salt water, the stems spurting blood when the fruit was plucked. Then came from the gene laboratories the ebon-carrot which crawled on its many legs when drawn from the soil, and it caused much amusement.
In the sixty-sixth year of the New Beginning came the new preserving station in the eastern city for the surplus must not be wasted. And it was found that sowmen would not be flogged into dexterity at the preserving. And it was found that the sons of the Chosen did not care for menial work, of which now there was much to be done.
And there was argument and debate and reports made in the city, and in time it was agreed that a male underclass was desirable.
And it was done.
From the stronger and more dexterous of the males, the cells were taken. From a sow mutation came the ovum. And the embryo was Implanted into females who were beyond breeding age, and also into modified sows.
In this way there was created a class of labourer. And these infants were separated from the sons of the Chosen, and given into the care of their masters, who would train them for the tasks allocated to them.
IT IS WRITTEN
Tonight the fence is not singing. Pa is in the barn with the dogs, the dart gun in his hand. The night is dark but the rain has gone away. Lenny bade me hide in the cave, but I am not there, for from the woods I saw the copter, and I saw a third city man step down from it. He is taller than Lenny but has a similar thickness about his limbs. And he holds a gun. It is long since I have seen those city guns.
I run back towards the house for I know that they will kill Lenny tonight. And I know I do not want him dead. I creep to the water tank, and from behind it hear the threats of the two grey men, and see the thick male’s gun is aimed at Lenny. The grey men have come for me and if they do not get me, Lenny will die.
I hear movement, and turn to see Pa and his dogs have also crept near. Lenny’s voice is pleading now, and unlike his own.
‘They will slaughter him,’ I whisper.
‘If I could get a shot at the bastard with the gun,’ Pa replies. He has not learned to whisper, and quickly I walk away from him and around the tank, around the pumpkins to the end of the long verandah, which is in darkness. The dogs are behind me, and behind them is the black of night, and hiding in it is Pa, and his dart gun.