Jacaranda Blue Read Free

Hurting.
    â€˜Father.’ The word was raised in some distant place outside of conscious thought. The gates. The gates. She always opened the gates for the minister when he returned after a long day. She always had a hot meal ready for him when he returned.
    But tonight the world was spinning on its edge, and no longer her world.
    Where was she? Had she fallen?
    The shed.
    Her hand reached out, touched the car. She’d fallen. She’d hit her head on the car.
    But answers came too fast on questions’ heels.
    â€˜No,’ she moaned, denying answers. ‘No. No. No. No. No. No.’
    Her head lifted. It slammed against the running board, bruising a place already bruised.
    â€˜Keep your mouth shut, Stell.’
    And she remembered. And she remembered. And she remembered.
    â€˜Keep your mouth shut, Stell.’
    She lay on the earthen floor, looking at the light in her garden. She heard the ancient complaint of the gates as they swung to. She heard the squeal of the bolt sliding home, locking him and his car in the yard. She heard the roar of an impatient foot on the accelerator. She saw car lights move to the house, light the house, then with no thought of whether she could, she rolled, coiled to her feet, and scuttled like an injured rabbit through the side door of the shed, across the vegetable garden, around to the back door, then upstairs to the bathroom, where she locked the door and stood in the bath, the shower raining down.
    â€˜Daughter! Daughter!’ A door slammed open. His footsteps were slow, heavy down the dark passage.
    She saw her face in the mirror opposite the shower. It was the face of a stranger, ghost white, a dark bruise beneath the hair line of her brow. Still looking at the face in the mirror, she let the water wash her blouse from her back, wash her bra straps from her shoulders.
    â€˜Daughter! Daughter?’
    She heard his footsteps on the stairs, heard them still as he reached the small landing. Heard them climb again.
    Slowly the water peeled away her clothing. Her slip was bloodstained, her cream blouse ripped, her beige skirt muddy. She stamped on the skirt, stamping, stamping it into the white bath, watching the pink water coil and trickle away down the plug hole.
    â€˜Daughter!’ He was at the bathroom door. ‘Daughter!’ Now he hammered at the door.
    Her nails were chipped, her legs bruised. Her neck stung, and her back pained. She raised a hand to her neck, fingered the broken skin, then rubbed soap into it. She scrubbed the external flesh, trying to force the soap to clean beneath her skin, and deep inside, to the part of her that would never again be clean.
    â€˜Daughter?’
    Place of raw, aching pain . . . and shame. And the shame. She needed a knife to rid herself of shame, to gouge memory of him from her, to wash him from her with her own blood.
    â€˜Stella!’ Martin’s voice now held concern.
    â€˜I . . . I . . . I . . . ’ She tried to find the words but they were not there. Words were a rasp on emery. She looked at the door, shook her head.
    â€˜Stella, are you in there?’
    â€˜I’m . . . I’m vomiting,’ she said. And she did. And he heard her. He went away.
    Stella stood beneath the shower, vomiting and soaping in turn; soaping and vomiting until the hot water became cold, and her father went to bed.
    Martin was not particularly hungry. He had eaten well at the wake.

Keep Your Mouth Shut
    Her limbs were lead on the mattress, weighing it down. Sleep was out there. Sleep and forgetfulness were hovering out there somewhere, but each time she released her grasp on consciousness, she heard the roar of hell’s breath beneath her mattress. Old roar. Wind tunnel roar. Black roar. It was down there, an open maw of darkness waiting to suck her in. To suck her from sanity and into –
    Her arms flailing, she refused sleep. For hours she fought her way free of sleep to rise