Jacaranda Blue

by Joy Dettman

  Have to cover it. Cover it up. Hide it. Mustn’t tell.

  She picked up the sheet, used it to clean herself, then she tossed the defiled thing down. His sweatshirt had fallen to the floor beside the bed. It was studded with small smiling heads. She took it, shook the small clowns free.

  The shirt smelt of him. She held it to her nose, breathed in the scent of his sweat. No more fear in that scent. Nothing. Fear was dead. She shrugged, pulled the garment over her head.

  ‘To the conqueror go the spoils of victory,’ she whispered, reaching down for his jeans, shaking them out, stepping naked into them.

  The stud, clipped. Zipped, the rapist’s fly. Cuffs rolled – as she had rolled other cuffs on another day. A fine day. Day with Bonny. Day long ago in the fitting room.

  They’re too baggy. Show us a size smaller.

  She looked in the mirror. Too big. Too loose in the waistband. ‘But you have no choice today,’ she said. ‘No choice at all.’ And she walked from the room and down the stairs, past the telephone and outside to wander amongst the damp perfumes in her dark garden.

  It was later when she unlocked the shed doors, flung them wide. Perhaps her action was a primitive celebration of freedom, as was the wearing of her rapist’s clothing; she was far beyond all conscious thought. Standing in the open doorway she looked at the Packard, then like a sleepwalker she turned, looked towards the house.

  ‘Where would you like to go today, Mother?’

  Each movement an effort, each action a reflex thing, born of the moment, she turned towards the house, seeing that which was no longer there.

  ‘Coming, Mother,’ she whispered, and she walked to the back door, took the Packard’s keys from the top of the kitchen dresser and returned to the car.

  Its odour was of aged leather and polish. A clean odour. She slid into the driver’s seat and she placed the key in the ignition. It turned over slowly, then caught, ticking quietly as she reversed out of the shed and began backing the big vehicle up the drive to the front door. Angel had always left by the front door.

  Obese Angel, barely capable of walking in her last years. Angel, the invalid on her brown leather couch, eating chocolate biscuits, stuffing herself with food. Unkempt, unwashed. Sister Brooks had come to bath her twice a week, bath her in a tub. She couldn’t walk upstairs. She slept in the small downstairs room. Upstairs was safe now. Angel was safe too. Doctor Parsons came twice each day to inject her medication and make her safe, safe enough to take beyond the hedge on the days she had her bath because she had to have a double dose or Sister Brooks wouldn’t come. They were the good days. Stella took her touring. Mad Angel in the back seat, while the driver sat up front, ice tingles down her spine.

  Watch her in the rear-vision mirror. Don’t fear the other drivers on the road, fear precious Angel. Watch her. Always watch her. Don’t take your eyes off her. Not for a second. Drive to Dorby, drive for hours. You are out of the house, so just drive – but watch her.

  ‘Too dark.’ Stella whispered. ‘Too dark to go out touring. The world is sleeping, Mother.’

  So dark, she was unaware that the car had left the gravelled drive until the Packard’s wheels sunk into a garden bed.

  ‘Lights,’ she said, and her hand searched for the lights. Somewhere.

  A seeking hand found the switch, and too suddenly, the drive was floodlit. She drove the big car forward until the twin beams illuminated the shed floor, showing the empty space where the Packard had been, and she sat staring at the permanent indentations the Packard’s wheels had made on the earthen floor. Twin hollows, worn by the tyres’ movement in the sixty years this vehicle had called this space home.

  ‘The world is sleeping, Mother, and you are blissfully dead. Blissfully, wonderfully dead. Dead. Delightfully dead. So. So, why do I need the car tonight if you are dead?’

  But she did need it. Someone needed it.

  The clown did. Delivery. It had to go away. Now that it had been made safe, she had to take it somewhere. Delivery to –

  Always doing deliveries. Always someone wanting something.

  ‘Where do I have to take him?’

  ‘To Marilyn?’

  She shook her head, aware that that was a bad thought. The key turned in the ignition and the motor stilled. The night silenced. Leaving the lights on, she climbed from the car and returned to the shed.

  ‘There is always a logical answer to a problem that appears to defy logic,’ she said, unaware she was in a place outside of logic. ‘Be logical. I am alive and he is not. The logical course of action would be to telephone Sergeant Johnson. The downstairs phone will be working, so what am I doing out here?

  ‘What do I say? Sorry to wake you, Sergeant, but there is a clown in my bedroom and I’d like it removed. Or Ron. Good evening, Ron. This is Stella. Thomas’s party has ended. Can you come around and pick him up, please?’ She shook her head, her eyes scanning the shed.

  ‘Be logical,’ she whispered.

  The big green waste container was near the back door. Put him in it and wheel him out to the nature strip for the garbage man to take away.

  Fitting, but perhaps illogical.

  ‘I have to hide it.

  ‘No more hedge to hide it behind, Father. The hedge is gone.

  ‘God help me. What have I done?

  ‘But what is done cannot be undone,’ she whispered. ‘Except for Mrs Morris’s clowns. They can be undone.’

  She walked to the mark of the wheel indentations. Squatting, walking crab-like, she scratched a rectangle in the centre with the car keys. For minutes she remained there, looking at the rectangle, too weary to do more than look. Then she stood, walked to the far corner, and selected her favourite spade and her pick. Dragging the tools behind her, she returned to the car and turned off the lights.

  The new dark of the shed was complete. She stood in the centre of the rectangle, picking at the earth until her eyes adjusted to the dark. It was just a little hole, a deeper black in the all black. Just a very silly little hole. Just something to do because she didn’t know what to do, and she couldn’t face what she had done, so she kept picking and shovelling. She was digging in the garden. She was making a hole, large enough to plant a small rose bush, or to bury a dead bird. She worked on, her mind far away.

  Hard-packed virgin earth, it would not easily give up its place in the scheme of things, but eventually her small wheelbarrow became full. Too full to accept more soil. It kept trickling off. For minutes she looked at the barrow’s rounded shape, a shadowy shape in the near black of the shed. She tried to lift the handles, but her hands burned.

  ‘Can’t,’ she said.

  Stained-glass window. Jesus on the cross. Hands required to be placed palms-together, index fingers on the point of the chin. Throbbing hands, throbbing as Jesus’s own poor hands must have throbbed.

  ‘Can’t,’ she said.

  Chin up, Mousy Two.

  She sighed, lifted her chin, then she took up the handles of the barrow. Lifted. Her hip screamed, her shoulder throbbed, so she dropped the handles, spilled earth.

  ‘I can’t.

  ‘But I will, because I have to,’ she said. Again she gripped the handles and she wheeled her load into the vegetable garden, emptying it there to a fallow plot.

  The next barrow load was emptied beside the first, but when she returned to the shed, the first pink blush of a pre-dawn sky gave light enough to see how little impression her labour had made in the centre of her rectangle. She narrowed her image of the hole, digging a small ditch to mark her new smaller triangle. Again she transferred earth to the garden.

  Daylight came slowly, and with it the deeper layer, the pre-clay. She was emptying her barrow along the eastern fence when a bald head popped over.

  ‘G’day,’ Mr Wilson said.

  She stared at the bald head of reality, of neighbour, and she recognised reality, but hid her face from it.

  ‘G’day there. What are you up to?’

  She had to
reply. Find a word or two. What word?

  ‘Gardening.’ Familiar words are always the last to desert the tongue.

  ‘Yeah. I can see that. What are you putting down there?’

  ‘Earth.’

  ‘You’re into it bloody early, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. The removal of your trees, Mr Wilson. Thank you. Father will be delighted.’ Old wars were safe wars. Far better to rekindle the old tree war than to struggle yet with too-new conflicts. Far better.

  ‘Humph.’

  The one and a half metre fence only allowed her eyes to peep over. She did not peep this morning, but remained stooped, head low. He was a bare fraction taller than she. Hands supporting him on the top of the palings, his looked down at her crouching form.

  ‘What ’ave you done to your eye then?’

  Her hand rose to touch her eye, closed tight now. ‘I took a tumble. Down the stairs. In the dark.’ Old lies were good lies, far better than today’s lies.

  ‘What in heaven’s name happened to the child, Angel?’

  ‘She took a tumble down the stairs. Clumsy. I’ve never seen a child so clumsy.’

  ‘You want to watch yourself on those bloody stairs. That’s how your mother did her back in. I wouldn’t give you tuppence for a house with stairs.’

  ‘What happened to her, Daughter?’

  ‘She took a tumble down the stairs, Father.’

  Never again had Angel made it up the stairs. Never again.

  ‘God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform,’ she said.

  He scratched at his bald scalp, attempting to digest her reply. ‘Yeah. Well, you can say what you like about your mysterious ways. Your bloody old man went on and on about our trees keeping your house in shadow. You ought to see what your bloody house does to our kitchen now that me trees are gone.’

  ‘Illogical,’ she said, concentrating on scraping leaves and mulch over the telltale clods of clay as her neighbour edged one foot onto the fence railing. He clung there, head over the fence, one finger pointing at her empty wheelbarrow.

  ‘Bloody logical nothing. Don’t you go building it up too high over there. You’ll block the natural draining of the land.’ Then his hands left the paling and he stepped away. Stella trundled her barrow back to the shed.

  She counted seven barrow-loads that did not equal one hole, so she gave up counting. The count was growing too high, and her pit was not growing low enough, fast enough. Number seven was being emptied behind the shed when she saw the bike, the red racer, purchased from Sydney before Christmas. It was leaning against her shed, accusing her of something she did not wish to think about. She had set herself a task, and it would be done, and when it was done she’d think about why she was doing it.

  The barrow tossed to its side, she wheeled the bike into the shed, pushing it into the storeroom where she covered it with an old tarpaulin.

  Hide it away.

  Cover it up.

  There were several aged tarpaulins folded neatly in the back corner of the storeroom. She chose one and dragged it close to the hole, carefully spreading it flat there. Mr Wilson would be watching now through the cracks in the fence, and he’d have his wife at his side. They mustn’t see what she was doing. Easier to keep the clay close at hand, anyway. And faster, much faster to dispense with the barrow.

  ‘Bucket,’ she said. ‘Fill a bucket and empty it into the tarpaulin.’

  By 9 a.m. she was in the hole, picking, shovelling, lifting her half-filled buckets, tossing the clay to the side. An automaton. A robot, set in motion to dig a hole. Ache and self had been placed aside. There was the picking, the loosening of the earth, and the scooping up of the earth. There was the mental measuring of a square, and the reducing of that square to clods, the transferring of the clods to bucket, to tarpaulin. There was the noise of the traffic on the highway, and the thunk, thunk, thunk, of her pick on clay.

  She came upon the root in the late morning. It was as thick as her calf, and driving down, deep into the clay near the centre of her hole. She did not question its origin, but followed it with interest, as an archaeologist might follow an ancient bone – until the pick handle slid free, leaving the business end of the tool jammed deep in the root.

  Her energy exhausted, she squatted over the pick, panting in the earthy air. Her hands could not find the strength to work the pick free. Dug into a narrow hole by her following of the root, she had left herself little room to manoeuvre. Now she kicked at the pick that refused to budge. She turned her back, hammering at it with the heel of her pedi-rest.

  ‘Wood axe,’ she said, clambering out and walking purposely to the corner where the old wood axe had been gathering dust since the minister bought his electric heater. It was still razor-sharp and it sliced cleanly through the wood and the clay at the side of the hole.

  White clay. Waxy white. Damp. It came away in sticky lumps.

  Perhaps an hour passed before the root tugged free, only then she looked at it. Thought jacaranda. Thought damaged. It was of no consequence. She had retrieved her pick head. That was of consequence, that and the fact that removal of the root had taken her deep in the centre of the pit.

  ‘Deep enough,’ she said, tossing the root to the floor of the shed, and following it up a natural set of steps created by the sticky clay and by the thick end of the root.

  Her hands were raw, sore. Pain was drawing her back to reality, to the place where she didn’t want to be . . . not yet. ‘Fix the pick. First I must fix the pick. That is next on the list. Fix the pick. Complete this chore, then I will look at the list. Today is . . . today is . . . today doesn’t matter.’

  Words forced her on, but her movements were slow. Her shoulder was stiff, her back bruised and her hips ached; her hands screamed each time she forced them to close around the pick handle. They could prove to be the weak link. She sat on the edge of her pit, resting while she studied her reddening palms. She should have worn her gloves. Blisters had formed, broken. She must stop, see to her hands, or what must be done could not be done. She must look to her hands’ needs, bring some logic to this illogical task.

  Using the pick handle as a prop, she stood, her limbs shaking with the effort. She drew in a deep breath, tossed her pick to the floor, then made her slow way to the side door, across the garden, and in through the back of the house to the kitchen.

  Kitchen suggested food. A frying pan taken from the pantry, a knob of butter added, she watched it sizzle before sliding in a small piece of steak. As she looked at it, her mind made its own leap to eggs, to refrigerator. Her hands selected two, cracked two into the pan beside the steak. Eggs demanded toast. She placed two pieces of bread in the toaster, and when it popped, she spread it thick with butter and began eating, the clay white beneath her fingernails.

  Food refilled her ewer of energy. Food was life. She was alive. She had survived. That was enough for the moment. She could give no thought to what lay upstairs. Not yet. She had walked the night garden until a direction was chosen for her. Nothing had altered since.

  ‘When the hole is done, then it will be time to think about it.’

  A cup of tea. Antiseptic cream. She sat staring at her palms, massaging them for minutes. She found bandaids, applied three, then she stood and climbed the stairs to her father’s room where she took a pair of soft cotton gloves from the top drawer of the dressing-table – gloves her mother had once worn to church.

  ‘Could you conceive of such a day as this, Angel? Maybe you could. Would you ever believe the purpose that your Sunday gloves would be put to? Maybe you could.’ Her smile was a strange thing. It was in her lips, not her eyes. She caught its edge in the dressing-table mirror, and she looked at a stranger’s eyes. One was near closed, the other was . . . lost. With a shrug, she turned her back on the mirror and walked out to the shed where she slipped a pair of gardening gloves over the soft white cotton.

  Again she began digging.

  What was time but the measurement of the clay mountain on
a tarpaulin? It grew taller.

  She drank from the garden tap when the sun went down, but she did not eat again. It was near 10 p.m. when she knew the hole was done. It was no six-foot deep grave, not so neat either; just a raw gash in the earth – but a wide enough gash, and in places deep enough. She could, would, do no more.

  The jacaranda root and her chase of the root, left her a rough set of steps to climb, and on legs as heavy as the root she had tossed to the floor, she dragged herself from the pit, for minutes sitting on the edge, feet swinging, while trying to raise the necessary incentive to move away. Outside.

  ‘Morning will come,’ she said, and her yawn was wide. ‘I will sleep, and morning will come, and by this time tomorrow, I will allow myself to think. She stood, swayed on her feet, until energy enough was raised to walk her wearily across the garden and in through the back door.

  Hands washed at the kitchen sink. An overripe pear, taken from the bowl on top of the refrigerator, she gorged it at the sink. She ate a banana, then drank long and straight from the carton of milk. Alien actions, born of need. Movement was effort. Why waste effort on glass, on knife, on plate?

  This is not Stella Templeton, she thought. This is the fictional character they created to fill the necessary position. The character having eaten must walk again, walk slowly away, laboriously climb those stairs, and lay her head down.

  Her legs resented the part they must play. They trembled now with fatigue, but like seasoned troopers, they climbed, carried her up to her door, where she stood, staring at the shape on her bed, resenting its use of the bed she needed. She recognised the shape, but refused to know the shape, or to give it a name.

  ‘The character will know her lines as they become necessary.’

  She looked at the small clown’s head, laughing beside the ear of a much larger clown. Not one of poor Stella’s best creations, she thought. Fright, fear was embroidered on the larger face. She turned away, looked at the mirror, saw the figure standing there.

  Nightmare figure. Filthy. Covered in white clay from her uncombed hair to the cuffs she had turned up on her borrowed jeans. She swayed on her feet, wanting her bed, looking at her bed, wanting what was in her wardrobe, her chest of drawers beneath the window, but the Stella character had not been allocated her own room. Her ungodly role did not call for cleanliness either. Time enough to wash the dirt away in the next scene.