May 01 2008
Amnesty (Part 2)
[story continued from Amnesty, Part One]
It wasn’t until after the bottle of wine had been drunk and her packet of cigarettes finished that she spoke, but I was content just to be there with her in the darkness. She talked to me about her marriage and her childhood and the men in her life as though I were an adult. I listened, rapt. She told me she had gone to my father’s surgery at lunch time and found him in the back room with the nurse. She told me about other affairs he’d had. After the first few times, she had forced herself to stop being suspicious: She didn’t want to live like that. She couldn’t leave because she loved my father. She told me the story of how they met and, looking more often at the blue curtain outside the car than at me, she told me what he had been like. Then. I didn’t quite believe her. And then she rounded on me, hammered questions at me. I found it hard to answer most of them. Her eyes were very bright. Maybe she was a little crazy.
“…I like my room…I don’t really like living here…I like being by myself…I like writing…I would like to live in England or in a city at least…Because there would be other things to do apart from sport…I don’t like sport, I’m no good at it…The kids don’t like you if you don’t play sport…I wish that you had let me learn the flute…I wish that I lived just with you Mum, or all by myself…”
“…I wish that Dad didn’t drink…He makes me feel embarrassed…He makes me uncomfortable…Sometimes I’m afraid Mum…I don’t like the way he hangs over me when he talks to me…I don’t like the things he says…I like being by myself…That’s what I would like the most…Just to be by myself…To be by myself…”
My mother took the wine from my hands and swallowed it all. Without it, I felt naked and the air outside seemed to grow thicker. She said, “We’re leaving,” and I thought she meant that we were going home. I wanted to now because I didn’t have the cup in my hand and everything was dangerous. I wanted to be in my room. I put my seatbelt on. She wasn’t looking at me.
“We’re leaving. I’ve got the money. I’ve got enough money to go to Melbourne and find a flat and find a job and the schools are better there. I can’t go on forgiving him for the rest of my life. Besides, I’m afraid of him too sometimes and he won’t stop drinking. We’re leaving.”
I wanted to so much. I was shivering with the idea. I wanted to scream Are we really? Are we really? and to throw my arms around her neck. But I didn’t. I was scared she would change her mind. She started the car. I didn’t know what to do with all my energy while we drove home and it seeped out in little choking noises. My mother didn’t notice.
She didn’t say anything more, not while we drove and not when we arrived home. She walked slowly up the stairs to her bedroom. The light was on. It was the only light on in the house. I rushed to my room and rushed to my alcove, pulling a box clumsily through the sliding doors of my cupboard on the way. I filled it with books. I went out to the kitchen to find more boxes and I filled them with books too. I crawled beneath my bed and gathered up all the brown paper lunchbags I had hidden under there. I gathered them up and put them in the box my rollerskates had come in. I hugged the skatebox to me tightly. My eyes were glazed and my room had taken on the unreality that rooms always do at 3:00am. The rims of my eyes were burning, itchy and pleasant. I was tired without realising it. My mind was already searching for a flat in Melbourne. What would it be like? Wonderful. The city was an ocean. I would be a fish, and I wouldn’t flounder any more in all this fresh air. I looked at my boxes, wondering if I should take them out to the car. With my skatebox still hugged to my chest, I walked out to the hall, to the family room, to the bottom of the stairs. I stood staring at the blank wall where the stairs turned left and waited for my mother. Maybe she was packing too.
After a while, I sat down. It was cold because the fire had gone out and I shivered. The grey walls of our new house glared at me, reflecting the light which came out from under the door of my room and from my mother’s room upstairs. I didn’t care that the walls were mean. I didn’t have to live here any more. I shivered again and then the light upstairs went out. I sat for a little longer and then I went back to my room. I put my lunchbags back and I put my skates back in their box. I unpacked my books and got into bed. I was glad that I had turned my electric blanket on before my mother had come in to tell me that I was going with her.
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