Being Here

by Barry Jonsberg

  ‘Mamma?’ I said.

  ‘… just as Eve, the first and original sinner, the fountainhead of our shame, sinned against your Word. Dear Lord, forgive us now.’

  I plucked at her sleeve.

  ‘Mamma?’

  She turned her face to mine. It wore a puzzled expression, torn between two worlds. I truly believe she had wholly forgotten my presence, so complete was her communion with the Divine. It was a tribute to my bewilderment that I interrupted her so. Had I been thinking clearly I would never have dared.

  ‘Mamma?’ Her form swam before me through a curtain of tears. I blinked and focused, though my voice was small and lost to my own ears. ‘Lustful glances, Mamma? I don’t understand.’

  I had broken the spell. She gazed at me in a fog of incomprehension for a few moments and her confusion stripped away a layer. I saw, briefly, a scared and fragile woman and my heart clenched. Then her eyes hardened and she jumped to her feet. Her hand plucked at the mane of my hair and she dragged me to mine. I heard Pagan growl, but the noise was swallowed by thunder. It beat a counterpoint to the thudding of my heart.

  ‘Dear God, do you deny it?’ she screamed. ‘Do you deny it?’

  I knew the word ‘lust’, had read it in the Bible and understood it to be a foul and deadly sin. The word had associations of decay; it conjured an aura of something fetid, like entrails baking in the midday sun. But as to its meaning? It was nothing more to me than patterns on a page and there was a gap in my mind where definitions lived. I was thirteen years old in an age when adulthood lay far off on the horizon of time.

  ‘I saw the way you looked at that boy, the Cameron boy,’ mother continued. Her voice was sharp and thin as a blade. ‘The lascivious glances, the unashamed desire. You must know, girl, that love of the flesh is base and coarse. It is a mockery of true love, which is spiritual, which is God. It is the reason we were ripped from Grace. It is foul, as Satan is foul. I saw you through the window. I saw the filth and corruption in your face. You are stained by it still. And do you now deny it?’

  Mother’s hand still gripped my hair, tilted my face towards hers. I could see her eyes, the smooth sweep of her pinned-back hair framed by flickers of lightning. I still didn’t understand. Something in the way I looked at Daniel. I searched my memory, but could find no clue. How had I looked at him? He had made me smile once or twice, but that couldn’t be it. Could it? But I knew ignorance did not equate to innocence. I must have looked upon him in a way that was offensive to mother and to God. That I was unaware showed only a lack of self-knowledge. Nonetheless, I grieved that I did not understand how I had sinned. It meant I could not correct my failings. Contrite though I was, how could I avoid repeating my mistakes? I was terrified that I was set upon a path to damnation and had no means to alter the direction of my footsteps.

  ‘I am sorry, Mamma,’ I sobbed. ‘I have sinned. Show me how to repent.’

  Her eyes softened and the fingers in my hair relaxed. She pressed down on my shoulders and I sank again to my knees. She thrust the Bible into my hands.

  ‘Pray, Leah,’ she said. ‘Through prayer you will find the way.’

  I clasped my palms against the warm cloth of the cover and bent my head over the book. Mamma was right. The book would show me the way. Books had always shown me the way.

  I heard Adam’s voice, but it seemed a long way off. I concentrated on the words in my head, the recitation of familiar patterns that comforted. Power was invested in words. I knew that even then. Far away, Adam called my name, over and over. I shut him out. I shut everything out.

  I do not know how long I prayed. I was suspended in a state of mind where time, too, was suspended. My eyes focused on the arrowhead of my hands, the dark spine of the Book and the knotted boards that flickered as the storm hovered over us. Mother’s feet floated into my field of vision. I looked up. She carried another book in her hands. I got to my feet and my knees throbbed with redemption. Mother prised the Bible from my grip and gave me the book. It was my gift. My Dickens.

  ‘Destroy it, Leah,’ she whispered. ‘Destroy it.’

  A deafening clap of thunder filled the silence left by her words. I glanced at the roiling sky, flecked with flashes of light and charged with power. The air tingled, but no rain fell. The world held its breath. I studied the cover of the Camerons’ present, the gold stamped into leather, the promise of riches. I opened it. The cream of the paper, the rustle of quality. I took two of the pages between my thumb and forefinger. I tried to tear. My brain sent orders to my body.

  But nothing happened.

  My knuckles blanched, a muscle twitched in my arm.

  But nothing happened.

  A tear rolled down my cheek. It hung for a moment on an outcrop of chin and I sensed it fall. In my imagination, I saw a small circle appear on the floor beneath my feet, a dark stain that would, in moments, shrink and vanish.

  ‘I can’t Mamma,’ I said.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said my mother. ‘Or do you hold to your sin yet?’

  She gripped my hand in hers and yanked downwards. The pages split along the binding, a lightning flash that forked towards the bottom of the spine. It was as though something ripped inside me. My fingers lost their hold and the book fell to the floor. The torn pages drifted after it, like pale memories.

  Mother stooped, picked up the book and shredded more pages. There was wild fire in her eyes. In her frenzy she gripped too many and did not have the strength to rip the paper free. She was forced to take a thinner hold. Within minutes the book was reduced to a drift of patterned pages. Some caught in the building wind and danced the air to darkness. Most carpeted the verandah.

  Mother panted. Her chest rose and fell. When all the pages had been freed, she tried to split the leather shell, but it was too sturdy. She grunted with the effort. So she cast it from the verandah, a maimed bird that flapped briefly and fell to earth. We gazed at each other. The silence broken only by the wailing of the wind. I dropped to my knees yet again, spread my fingers through the creamy drift of paper.

  ‘Leave it, Leah,’ said mother. ‘Leave it, as surely as you leave your sin behind.’

  I tried to obey, but once more my body rebelled against the commands of the will. I was paralysed. My fingers clenched around a sheaf of paper and I could not prise them loose. Mother grabbed me by the arm and pulled me upright. She tore at the battered prize scrunched in my hands. I cried as her nails tore at my skin, though it was not the physical pain I responded to. Mother screamed into my ear, though the individual words were lost beneath the tide of her anger. I didn’t hear the growl until she suddenly stopped and wrenched her eyes from mine.

  Pagan was at my feet. Teeth bared, legs tensed, tail tucked between his legs. A small trail of drool hung from his lower lip. He rumbled at my mother. She let go her grip on me and backed away a pace or two. Pagan was rigid with intent.

  I do not know if he would have attacked her.

  I suspect not.

  But in the end it didn’t matter. Mother turned to the door, disappeared into the house, returned a minute later with the gun nestled in her arms. Then she took my dog to the barn and put a bullet in his head.

  It is strange.

  I look back through the pages of my life and some are etched indelibly. I see everything in minute detail, hear sounds that are pitch perfect, smell rain in the air and touch once more the bark of a tree, the rough cast of a dog’s coat. But the minutes that preceded the gunshot are cracked and scattered. I know the sequence of events. I understand what happened. But all is fragmented.

  Perhaps my mother did not take my dog to the barn at all. Perhaps she made me loop the rope around Pagan’s neck, and drag him to the barn. I think I screamed and begged. I think I did not look away when she brought the barrel down. I remember the look in my dog’s eyes. I remember the glint of lightning against gun-metal grey. I remember the explosion of sound. I smell still the burning. I remember his legs twitching, stilling with dreadful finality. And I re
member the blood staining my dress as I cradled his shattered head in my arms. I looked up once. Adam knelt on the other side of my dog. His face was twisted in pain and love and hatred. He kissed my tears away as quickly as they fell. I held on to my dog and Adam held me.

  Outside the sky finally ripped. Rain whipped the ground without mercy.

  CHAPTER 8

  FOR A MOMENT I have difficulty breaking the chains of history. I am there, piecing together the fragments of the past. Then I am here and my body aches. The residents’ lounge welcomes with bland familiarity.

  ‘Oh my God,’ says Carly. Shock is stamped on her face. It is naked now there is no make-up to clothe it. I say nothing.

  ‘Your mother … well, hey, Mrs C, no offence. But she was a real bitch.’

  ‘Was she?’ I reply. ‘I suppose it must sound like that. But she wasn’t, you know. She was just … flawed. As we all are. Some flaws, though, are especially dramatic. They demand their own spotlight.’

  ‘She killed your dog …’

  ‘And I am the author of this narrative. In its telling, she is not my mother anymore. She has been transfigured into character. I select the words of her portrayal. If she appears a monster, then the fault is mine for I must lack sufficient skill.’

  The girl is silent for a moment. I’m not sure she understands my point. That is fine. I’m not convinced I understand it either.

  ‘I mean, I know you loved her and everything,’ she says finally. ‘At least, that’s what you tell me. But she did what she did and how you tell it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t appear a monster. She is a monster. That’s the simple … truth.’

  I smile and shift in my seat. Even something as straightforward as that causes pain. My joints have become laced with ground glass.

  ‘This was a farm,’ I say. ‘A dog was not a pet, but a worker. Mother could have shot him when he no longer had a function to perform. Most farmers at that time would not have hesitated. He ate food we could not afford and gave nothing back. Yet she allowed me to keep him for no other reason than I loved him. Is that the behaviour of a monster or a caring mother? Then he growled, threatened her. She believed he would attack. Every farmer would have done what mother did. The world has changed, Carly. Don’t judge the past with the standards of the present. It leads to … error.’

  ‘But …’ She stops for a moment, marshals her thoughts. ‘You already said it wasn’t a farm anymore. Your mum was selling it all off. So that argument doesn’t work, does it? And I reckon you know it.’

  I smile. I am beginning to like this girl.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘You are right.’

  She waits and I smile again. I think she is learning my techniques.

  ‘I have had a lifetime to reflect on things that as a child I barely comprehended,’ I continue. ‘I see it in sharp focus now. Mother was eliminating competition. Now there’s a modern strategy for you. When father died, no one remained but me and God. So she poured her energy into both of us. God is a very special friend and I know He’s always around when you need him. But he’s rather like an imaginary friend, don’t you think? Flesh and blood, no matter your spiritual devotion, always takes precedence.’

  ‘What do you mean, “eliminating competition”?’

  I take a drink of water. It has a metallic taste. The water of my past was not like this.

  ‘Conflict.’ I say. ‘My narrative must rely on it, but it is rarely the stuff of day-to-day existence. Mother and I clashed infrequently. When we did it was because someone else intruded on our world, threatened it. The Camerons, later the church. Mother was only truly happy when it was just the three of us. Her, me and God. Alone on the farm.’

  ‘So what’re you saying? She got rid of your dog ’cos you loved him when you should have only loved her and God?’

  ‘I don’t think it was anything conscious, but yes. Pagan took love that was rightfully hers. When he was no longer there, the last impediment to total devotion was removed. Mother wanted a world that was always shrinking. The farm. Us. Her image of paradise, I imagine, was a small plot of land, a transfigured Eden, containing only her, me and God.’

  ‘Oh, right, Mrs C. Not a bitch, then. Just a freakin’ psycho.’

  I laugh so hard my water spills. Carly scoops up her recording device and takes some tissues from my bedside table. She mops my lap first, then her machine.

  ‘Judgemental, aren’t you?’ I say when I get my breath back.

  ‘Hey, I just think some things are right and some are wrong.’

  ‘You’d have got on well with my mother then. That was precisely her philosophy.’

  That stops her. She takes her seat again and we are back in the old position. All we need is a television camera and it would be like a political interview where we bat conflicting world views back and forth and no one is any the wiser. She repositions her machine. I wonder who, if anyone, will listen to these hours of rambling reminiscence. It’s a strange thought. That when I am dust this device will remain, perhaps in a desk drawer. It will contain the seeds of my story, waiting for someone to water them to life, if they can be bothered, or if time doesn’t destroy it. It’s an extension. My voice reaching to the future, even if it is destined to be unheard.

  ‘At least you still had Adam,’ she says. ‘Your mother couldn’t touch what was inside your head.’

  Carly’s voice jolts my thoughts off track. It takes me a few moments to redirect them to her subject. Yet another sign of decay.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I still had Adam. But you are wrong if you think he was beyond mother’s reach. Oh no. I sometimes think nothing was beyond mother’s reach.’

  Carly has her legs tucked under her again. It looks painful, but she is clearly comfortable. Her head tilts to one side and she regards me like a bird. I know she wants me to explain, but the time is not right. Anyway, she owes me and it is my turn to collect.

  ‘It’s time for your story, now,’ I say.

  She blinks.

  ‘Hey, Mrs C, I already told you. I don’t have a story.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  We regard each other for a minute or so. I wait for the thumbscrew of silence to produce its effect.

  ‘So what happens now?’ she adds. Her hands flutter. ‘I keep saying I don’t and you keep saying I do? I reckon we’ll both get tired of that real soon. Take it from me, Mrs C. Nothing interesting has happened in my life. I can’t even remember any stories by other people – you know? The books and stuff we’ve studied at school.’

  ‘I don’t want those. I’ve probably read them all. I want yours.’

  She grabs her hair in her hands.

  ‘Read my lips, Mrs C. I don’t have …’

  ‘Where did you meet that boyfriend of yours? What’s his name? Josh?’

  She brings one hand back to her lap. The other plucks at her lower lip.

  ‘Josh? At school. I already told you that.’

  ‘Yes, but where specifically? Did you see him in class? Did he sit next to you? What did you think or feel when he touched you for the first time? Was the sun shining or did rain beat a tattoo on tin? Did he smell of fruit or day-old sweat? Are his fingers calloused from the strings of his guitar? Do his hands sing to you? Do they play you?’

  Carly laughs. Once again I notice the rainbow of her braces. I will ask her about that when I have extracted what I can of her story. This will be difficult. She resists me. But I will win. Age, for once, is on my side.

  ‘Hey, Mrs C, you sound like my English teacher. She’s always going on about stuff like that. Use the senses. Describe the details. Maybe we can come to an arrangement, you and me. What do you charge for writing an English essay?’

  I do not reply. She laughs a little while longer, then stops. This time I tilt my head to one side. She holds up her hands in surrender.

  ‘Okay, okay. I have no idea why you’d find any of this interesting, but okay. I first saw Josh in the Undercroft. It’s a place at my coll
ege, close to the canteen, where a lot of students hang out during frees. He was playing his guitar. Something slow. It wasn’t fancy. I mean, he wasn’t showing off or anything, like some kids do. Like they think they’re hot shit and need everybody to know.’

  Her eyes become distant. This is what I want. When the vision turns inwards and you lose yourself in a moment. Not recounting the past, but living it. Finding the truth.

  ‘I think that was the thing that made me notice him. The way he was … what’s the word? Like, completely living what he was doing. Know what I mean? As if nothing else was happening and nothing else mattered. Into the music. Really into the music.’

  ‘Do you love him?’

  Her eyes snap back to the present. I am not unduly worried. She can immerse herself in story and will do so again.

  ‘Hey, Mrs C. That’s kind of a personal question.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ I reply. ‘There’s no point asking questions that aren’t. Should I waste my time and yours by asking his shoe size? Do you love him?’

  She uncurls from her seat and turns off the machine.

  ‘It’s time I went,’ she says.

  ‘Sit down,’ I say. She doesn’t. She stands, one hand on hip and regards me with studied neutrality. Her refusal is a small victory. ‘Is this what you think communication is about?’ I continue. ‘The exchange of trivial detail, the refusal to talk about matters of importance? Words, words, words. They’re free. They’re easy. They exist, not to reveal the truth but to conceal it.’

  I feel a pulse drumming in my temple. This conflict is not what I want, but I am powerless to prevent it. Words tumble through my mind and my lips phrase them. I have no control over this process. There is no filtering of what should be said and what withheld. The girl is offended. She is right to be offended. I am rude. But the words sweep me along. I am adrift on their current. Helpless.