The Bequest

The Bequest

It feels heavy in my hands, this small notebook. It’s soft but it could burn me. It’s black but I close my eyes against its luminescence. It invites me to open it, but its simplicity repels me. Because I know what’s inside. As soon as I open its covers, the secrets will start spilling out, spilling over me, searing my skin and making my eyes and nose water with their acrid odour.

I’m being melodramatic. For all I know, it might be full of to-do lists or dates to remember or accounts or anything. It’s only my imagination that makes it come alive in my hands. Pandora’s box, that’s what I’m expecting. If I open these covers, I will release all ills upon the world.

I place it back on the formica table and push it away from me. She wanted you to have this, Jack said. He'd been keeping it since she went into the home. I'd thought all that was left of her when she died was her clothes and toiletries. We stuffed those into garbage bags and dropped them off at the Op Shop. There were some faded plastic roses that went into the bin. We didn’t know where they had come from, maybe the staff trying to brighten up a room devoid of photos or ornaments. It did look like no-one cared about her. Perhaps no-one did.

Can’t you even forgive her when she’s old and senile? I had put that question to Jack, but I was also asking it of me. What difference does it make, he said. He said, and I thought. She’s still the same person who made our lives hell all our lives long. The drugs, the hysteria, the slapping and banging and breaking. I never wanted you, she told us. I wanted to be a writer and you ruined my life. She could have given us up, of course, left someone else to rear us, but she was more concerned about how others saw her than she was about our welfare. When others gooed and gaahed at the twins in the pram, she smiled and agreed we were adorable. They always laughed when she said our names were Jack and Jill. But it was a different story at home.

Why did no-one pick up what was really going on? I wondered that as far back as I can remember. How come no-one noticed? The answer is simple, no-one wanted to see. So it was just my brother and me and our madwoman of a mother, until we were old enough to escape. We ran away together, planned it for ages and then finally did it, but we found out everyone in the world was like our Mum, no-one wanted to take on twins. We were severed, if you know what that feels like. If you don’t, take a serrated-edged knife and saw it down your middle until the blood and guts comes gushing out, then try and stuff it back in because you have to survive, and then you might know what I mean.

I had thought her death would be a release, and it was, of sorts. Jack came to see me after the cremation and we shared a bottle of single malt as we farewelled the past. In the haze of heather and turf-scented spirits, we found each other again. But then he gave me the book.

Mum wanted you to have this, he said. Said she seemed lucid at the time, had asked him to keep it for me and to give it to me when she died. He said he had never looked inside it, didn’t know what it would say. I threw it back at him. I don’t want anything from her, I yelled, screamed, hated the sound of my voice echoing like our mother in one of her rages. Jack picked it up off the floor, placed it back on the table, looked at me with heavy-lidded eyes, green eyes just like mine, like hers. She wanted you to have it, he said, then turned around and walked out the door.

If I’d had a fire, I’d have flung it in there. Instead, I left it on the table, looking at me, whispering to me. Maybe I might find out who our father was. Where he was. Maybe I would find something of her I could like, could love. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to know why, what her excuses might have been, what dreams she had once had. I didn’t want to know.

But there it is. She had never given me anything, not anything I wanted. But this, sitting there on the table, waiting. Black, moleskin, a band of black elastic holding it closed. My hands reach towards it, trembling. I slide the band off, open it at random.

Blank. Blank pages. There is nothing here. I flick through the pages, fanning them through my fingers. Cream-coloured, pale blue lines, and not a word to mar their virginity. WTF! She has given me nothing.

I grab hold of the pages and try to tear them apart but paper is strong when pages are held together. I throw it away, watch as it smacks against the pantry door, watch as two items fall to the floor. A piece of decorative cardboard, blue-bubbled pattern. A scratched scratchie. A scratchie worth $20000. How old is it? She’s been in the home for a few years now, but surely they will still honour the prize. I hope. I don’t care who it comes from, $20000 will fix a lot of problems. I turn over the cardboard and read the loopy handwriting of my mother.

“Dear Jill. I wanted to be a writer but then you two came along and it was the end of my life as I knew it. I was a bad mother, no point in saying sorry because that won’t undo the harm I did to you and Jack, but there was something right I did do. You are a creative soul because of me. You learned to live in your imagination, as I did when I was a child. Use that now. I give you this book so you can write your thoughts, your imaginings. Write your dreams. Mine came to nothing, but I wish for you that yours come true. Write!”