Being Here (11 page)

‘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 remember 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

F
OR 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.'