The broom closet - Page 3

From Griffith REVIEW Edition 20: Cities on the Edge
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.

Written by JT Glazebrook

THE HOOKS IN THE BROOM closet are high so you have to stand up on a wobbly creaking chair to thread the rope and belt through five of them. You look at the sixth hook and think what might have been. The last feller who lived here bolted them in to hang his tools. He made them strong and firm. There was no chance he'd let the hooks fail.

You drag Alexis into the kitchenette first because she will be the hardest. Even though she's only five, you find it impossible to lift her up to the height needed, so you push the loop of rope around her neck and leverage her up. She doesn't stir a bit. Half-way up your hand slips and Alexis comes slapping to the floor and you hear that something might've broke, but you just start hauling again. When she's high enough you tie the rope off to the window bars, which are sturdy and won't give. You carry Karen-Anne in and do the same with her, and she's easier to lift up. Alexis's face has gone a little purple and you can't tell if she's breathing.

When you try to carry Jemimah up on to the chair you tip off the chair and drop her, and she hits her head. You get down near her face and listen for her breath but there is none. Lowering to her chest you try to hear her heart. There's no sound. All you can hear is the buzz of the fluorescent light. You leave Jemimah on the floor and walk in to get the baby, who gurgles suspiciously at you. She isn't asleep because you couldn't give her any hot chocolate and she wouldn't take the bottle.

You carry her back into the kitchenette and tie her off up at the top of the broom closet. She kicks around, but the rope around her neck is too tight to let her cry. Liquid has pooled on the floor beneath Alexis and her face is a beautiful sheen of blue.

Walking outside into the dust you collapse into the ground and retch, strings of vomit flying out over the sand. You wipe your mouth and look out into the night and start to laugh a little. All the trailers across the park are silent, still, so perfectly formed against the barren landscape. You think about all the dreaming that is going on inside them. You think about how the safety of the heavy bolted door and the barred windows let the people dream. You stopped dreaming so long ago. Your nights pass and you are always awake and always grey. The blunt sting of regret never changes or stops.

SUDDENLY THERE IS a screeching wail followed by a sickening thud and you turn to see a cow flying apart up on the highway, having been wholly mashed by a passing road train, which quickly resumes its journey and in a minute is gone. The carnage appears to have come from nowhere. The grassy odour of shit hums along the bitter breeze. Not a soul in the trailer park stirs to life.

You return to the kitchenette and step on to the chair, passing the rope down your face, pulling it tight around your throat, so tight you can't swallow. Spit wells up in your mouth and dribbles, ebbing down from the corners of your lips to rest soft on your collar bones.

Before you kick the chair away, you look at the kitchenette, the dishes stacked in the sink, the blackened pan on the stove-top, the little crumbs of chocolate on the table, the haphazardly gathered cards. All the signs of life and simple happiness, this is what you see. You look at it hard and try to find your own happiness, the feeling that used to get you up at six in the morning ready to face the world; the feeling that helped you ride over the ceaseless waves of a childhood tragedy. But it's gone, to who knows where.

Tears come though, for the first time in months. They pour down your cheeks and release feels ... it feels sublime.