And so it goes...

The house next door was a brothel. A place where drink and sex were traded for money and favour. The children played in the garden oblivious to the performances of paid personal closeness that took place when required.

That day there was a commotion on the street outside the brothel. People were yelling, pointing, ranting and standing by to watch and as we drove by slowly I saw her come stumbling out onto the street. Her mouth wide open, wailing and her eyes showing immense fear and pain. I watched her, arms outstretched, body weak and the tears that ran the length of her cheeks stained with dust and dirt. She fell to her knees and from behind her there was a flash of wood as someone holding a plank slammed it with such ferocity in the back of her head. The blood that stained her Mary blouse was washed afresh with red which ran like little rivers from her head, through her hair and down her face.

My breath caught in my throat and I felt the bile rise together with the hair on my skin. She wasn’t moving too much, except to react with buoyancy to the blows raining down upon her face and back and flinching with every sudden movement that appeared to be directed toward her. My eyes grew wide in shock and my heart hammered in my chest. I reached out instinctively to grab my mother’s leg as if in doing so I might inspire her to stop this madness.

We pulled into the driveway of our house and the garden boy opened the gate waving us in with urgency. Through the window we listened to the screaming. Her wails filled the sticky tropical air and all those involved in her corporal punishment screamed in delight and condemnation.

I couldn’t process the madness, I’d never seen anything quite like it. I couldn’t understand why these people were not filled with any kind of pity or restraint. I wanted to cry, it hurt in an unimaginable heart wrenching way. It hurt from the inside out in a way that made me dry wretch and well up at the same time.

Pulling on the sleeve of our deaf gardnerer I spoke slowly so he could read my lips

What's happening?

D - shook his head and through muted rounded vowels and relayed his version of events:

She'd been drunkenly enjoying a night of excess before arriving at the house next to ours and at some point during the day. Still heady and high on cheap beer and wine she had accused her friend of stealing 20 Kina from her bag. A small amount to some, but a days wages to her. The alcohol had made her bold and her accusations which grew louder and more vicious fell on the ears of friends and family members associated with the accused. An argument broke out and before long the two ladies began to trade slaps and punches. According to D she had lost her footing and slipped. By the time she found her feet again she wasn’t just fending off blows from one person, but from the entire family. She bled and the blood mixed with tears and desperation and all for the loss of a 20kina bill.

No police came, nor an ambulance. Eventually the punches stopped flying and while I watched through the fence, she crawled, stumbled and made her way off into the rippling heat - her wounded wailing mixed with the sound of honking horns and daily grind

I don't know what happened to her, but as I watched her stumble off into the distance and the dust began to settle, D started to sweep the leaves again and my mother called out to us

'Girls, go cook the rice for dinner'.

One of Five Lives

All packed. The truck is filled with my sofas, the wooden coffee table I picked up in a back street in St Kilda for $20. The Wooden chest of drawers too shallow to hold all my clothes and the TV cabinet - large and cumbersome. Each item is wedged into a space and I’m struck by how my years of hard work and countless direct debits has come to fit in the bed of a two by four metre truck.

The stairs up to my apartment look long and desolate and I can see the windows over the balcony staring empty back at me. Inside I know I'll stop and stare into the corners where my couches sat snugly and held me under soft lamplight in the early morning. I'd sat there many times with a cup of tea, wrapped in my bathrobe and felt safe. I'd watched the early morning light cast a soft hue outside my window and listened to the first twitter of bird song. I'd dreamt of other lives and different worlds while my toes curled up under me and my body sunk deep into the pillows of my life.

I lived, loved and longed here. I slept under the duvet pulled down neatly over the bed and lived amongst the kitchen dishes washed and drying in the tray on the sink. One cup, one spoon, one plate. I’d waited for a time in my life when my space would my own. When the bench in the kitchen would hold only my car keys and purse. I’d waited for the time that I would open the door to my home and find I was free to walk naked from room to room or litter my clothes across the hall. The day I would shop and eat what I wanted and take phone calls in the middle of the night. I’d been waiting for the singularity and then suddenly there it was – larger than life.

That day the apartment held all but me and instability. The heating was off and every surface lay bare. I remembered when I first arrived. A friend of mine had given me a posy of dried lavender. She told me to light the lavender, blow out the flames and allow the scent to fill the room. 'Walk about waving the small posey into all the nooks and crannies and think happy thoughts' she said. I had nothing to lose and as silly as it felt and looked, it was the kind of childish act that I loved. Back then my little home had been a cold stranger with no character, but we made friends. I filled her with my memories and laid the pictures of my life like layers of clothing over her. We whispered to one another in the dark, she with small creaks and sighs and me with long ramblings, sometimes in my head, and other times shyly into my pillows. I came home to her and she welcomed me with warm, soft, safe open arms.

Today we're strangers again - her cold and dismissive and me sad, but optimistic. The light is all but gone and I shut the door behind me, take my two bags and tell myself ‘goodbye little world, hello universe’.

Piccolo

Last night I poured 15ml of night nurse into a measuring cup, prepared my throat for the bitter taste before pouring the lot back. Sleep hasn’t come easily these past weeks and with a thousand thoughts spinning through my head I decided I wanted the kind of deep and lasting sleep that you wake groggily from and wonder where you are.

It worked. I fell into a cavernous sleep, hollow and without dreams. I woke once or twice and felt a hazy pleasure that the hours before dawn were still a way off and my body still had time to dig itself deeper into the mattress. I pulled G’s arm like the corner of a blanket and wrapped it tightly around my waist and then I slept some more.

I’m not sick, but my heart hurts and I feel the cloud that peeps out from behind my sunshine making its way out into the open again.

This morning I woke up and tore my weary body from the groove in our bed. I flung my feet over the edge and forced my self upwards in one drawn out and heavy lunge. G smiled sleepily at me and in that one moment it all felt sunny again. I felt him follow behind me into the bathroom and I watched him move clumsily through morning rituals while I waited for the water to run hot and the mirrors to fog up in the mist.

With the taste of peppermint on my breath and a layer of moisturiser coating my skin I slipped into a pair of trousers I hadn’t worn in months and felt a small leap of pleasure that I’d found my way back into them and didn’t have to hand them over to the pile of long forgotten items that no longer saw the light of day.

G pulled Piccolo the scooter out for me. I popped my helmet on and laughing I let him kiss my nose goodbye through the lid shade. Piccolo feels like an old trusty friend that bobs beneath the weight of me. He’s a new purchase, a gift from my love and the space where my best alone moments are spent. Piccolo is my white chrome rimmed scooter with a ferocious 50cc engine that I unleash with ladylike pleasure on the tarmac that stretches out before me. I love him even when the temperature drops and I climb on back to feel the icy cold wind cracking like a whip across my face. I revel in every moment I’m free as a bird bobbing along to the pepp pepping of his voice as we make our way through the grind. Our trip is my awakening and while we’re zipping along I can feel the morning sleepiness vaporise or the evening smokiness dissolve.

This day my heart hurt, but after waking next to G, watching him make my morning full and listening to the deep tones of his voice wish me good day, I climb on back of Piccolo, pull the accelerator and forget the heaviness and the weight around me. Today I'll let my spirit soar.

Best Strangers!

I’ve met loads of people who talk of the strange relationship they have with their siblings. They always talked about rivalries and feelings of ill will or discontent. I never understood it. We grew up sometimes at one another’s throats and sometimes we banded together to fight our battles in unison. I remember hating and loving you both with the same ferocity, but never because we had anything more or less than one another. In fact I always thought how unfair it was that there were people who wanted to make each of us different. How they tried to put us in boxes and label us with dye cast from their own fingers.

I love and loved you both with equal measures. I missed you both with intense sadness and could feel the shredding of my heart when you went. We stood and said goodbye to one another so many times. I wanted you to go, I wanted you to have freedom and in my heart the loneliness spread like blood ebbing from the knife wound to my soul. We said all the things we had to – ‘go, it’ll be ok – I’m good, I’ll write to you and everything will be ok’ and through it all I could see the pain reflected in our faces. You had to go because our freedom depended on it – and so you did and we stopped writing about the sad things and painted the perfect picture to make the going away easier.

I think I wanted to love you both less, I needed to feel numb so the spaces wouldn’t feel so empty without you and although we were close I chose to pretend it was just me in this world even thought it never was. As much as we all existed for ourselves, my highest priorities always included the two of you. For whatever love we couldn’t have I’d be sure mine was full and all encompassing.

You asked me to come one summer. We were older and you showed me the fissure that made your half filled cup weak! I packed up everything and sold the possessions I spent 5 years filling the wide open spaces of my life with! With two bags and half a prayer I began my pilgrimage believing that now it would all be different. Now we were the masters of our fate, the money we made and spent was our own and the choices we made we didn’t need to ask permission for anymore. You asked me to come and I thought I would buoy you up with love and support and we’d be just like we were 13 years earlier when you took your chance to get away! I was wrong. It was hard and I realised we were siblings before we were friends.

For all my faults I loved you with and without flaws. For the times we didn’t see eye to eye I chose to let you be you. I put my judgements and opinions aside and encouraged you to make your choices however much they didn’t agree with my morality. I figured we’d been forced enough and I hoped that when I made mistakes you would be a source of strength and my stable shoulder to lean on.

At some point I realised that your tolerance of weakness was low, while mine is a wide open canyon where I pack the feeble, the conquered, the lonely and desolate. This canyon is also the space now that has opened up between us, broad and looming. I don’t know how this happened! We come together and move around one another like two strangers in a pregnant space. I’m sad and I can sense you’re indifferent, but I don’t know what to say or how to say it and to be fair it’s just easier to go away feeling cheated than to point the finger at all the things that are wrong and demand to know why.