The unlived life

Outback Queensland, Australia

***

I stand in the middle of my block of land and watch the world.

Facing west, I look over a fertile plain, seasonally rich with the fruits of agricultural labour, behind which red and green craggy hills jump up to fill the horizon. Boulders, like freckles, decorate the hills with the space in between filled with tall sinewy gums, forever dancing a lover’s tango with the wind. Behind me to the east, the grassy scrub slopes down to the turquoise bay, broken only by the red gash of the access road. The road and farm land are the only signs of human inhabitancy.

I stand here, strong, with my feet sunk into the cool ground, toes curling around the ancient soil. I have been on this land for 70 years, a lifetime for the people here, but barely a moment for this landscape. Time has passed quickly for me, the seasons blinking past in a kaleidoscope of reds, greens and browns. Years alternating between those where summer rains bring the landscape to life, growing rich and green and bountiful, and those where the dirt around my feet is baked hard by the relentless sun and where cracks in the ground grow wide enough to swallow any remnants of hope.

I sit in the shade of the gums whose roots jostle my toes for space. But I am not flesh. It is neither blood nor sap that runs through my veins. I am timber and steel, doors and windows, brackets and hinges, screws and nails. I am days, weeks and months of hard toil under the beating sun.

I have known three families. The first, who built me, whose blood, sweat and tears hold my walls up and keep my roof sealed tight from the summer deluges. They left shortly after the reds and greens of the horizon turned to blacks and oranges, walls of greedy flames as tall as the gums devouring crops, and coming close enough to blister and peel my paint.

My second family was never going to last long. They came with unrealistic expectations of a luscious tropical retreat, with gardens of plenty and long evenings outside enjoying this vast red land. But they didn’t count on the evening bugs attracted to my lights, or the many months of the year where even the hardiest plants wilt and wither.

Only the third was my real family. He was a handyman, working the land, my gardens and doing my repairs. And her? She was everything. She warmed my rooms with easy laughter and quick smiles. She raised my roof with joyful singing. She was the first and only to turn me from a house into a home. With time their family grew, her belly filling until it was as round and ripe as an apple at harvest time. A girl. It was in my walls that the girl had her first laugh, first steps, first words. She blossomed, as did her mother in her company, the singing and dancing becoming a duet. She had the girl, and I had her.

The girl was born during the last of the summer rains. As she grew, the land grew drier. By the time she was ten she had never known the joy of a muddy puddle, or the sweet scent of rain falling on hot earth. Her childhood was dust and sunburn. When she was three the dam dried completely. The time he would have spent working the land, he spent working the bottle, drowning himself as if to make up for the lack of water. The drink diluted his kindness and love, and he found only anger and violence at the bottom of his glass. Trips into town for essentials grew less frequent and then became strictly monitored, coins and notes doled out on departure and counted back in when she returned home. The few visitors that came to us started making excuses, until eventually we were alone.

The first time he hit her, she was too shocked to think of anything other than the girl, safely asleep in the next room. The second time he hit her she worried about how she would hide the bruises when the girl came home from school. The third time he hit her, she filed the paperwork to send the girl to a boarding school in the city. After that the singing and dancing rarely came, my rooms grew cool and my roof grew heavy. He filled my spaces with hate and resentment, pushing out the joy. When the girl left, the hitting turned to beatings. Never before have I wished I was built less solidly. How I wished I could cushion the floors when she was knocked down or bend my walls to catch her when she was shoved. The rains eventually returned but the man he was when I first welcomed them into my walls, never did.

I did not want for her to leave but I did not want her to stay. She did try to go but he always found out and hit her until she was incapable of escape. Even if she had had the courage to try again, where would she have gone? I am her home, her shelter, and he controlled the money, and her self-worth. So she stayed. She waited for the girl, and I waited for her. We waited for days and months and years and an eternity but the girl never returned for longer than a weekend.

Over the years she grew a shell, a hard exterior which absorbed the brutality. But within her, there was still love. For the girl, for me. She started a secret vegetable patch with seeds saved from kitchen scraps, tucked in her bra and smuggled out after dinner. On the rare permitted trips to town when he was too drunk or too hungover to come, she managed to smuggle out some produce to sell. It was a meagre income but it her hers. She also started taking a few coins from his pockets when he came home steaming and left his clothes strewn around my living room before passing out. Over the years her stash grew - not enough to leave but enough to lift her spirits.

In the early years, my kitchen took the full force of one of his rages. He slammed my doors, punched my walls and kicked at my cupboards until the hinges gave way. Back then he would sober up, contrite and begging forgiveness. He spent the day mending what he could of my kitchen, although I was never same. Hidden underneath a poorly repaired cupboard, there remained one loose footboard, behind which she discovered was a small cavity. The next time he passed out, she hid her savings in there and this became a secret we shared. Finally I had a way I could help her.

One morning when it was too hot for insects to chirp and the heavy, sticky weight of building clouds pressed down on us, he sent her to town alone, too sapped by the humidity and drink to move. The storm broke late in the afternoon and continued for hours, the rain drumming on my roof and lightening tearing the sky. As night fell and she hadn’t returned, he drank and paced and watched the rain, filling my rooms with the stink of sweat and beer and his fear that he might be losing control of her. For the first time since the girl left, she was away all night. In the morning when the sky was once more clear and blue, he saw her coming up the red gash of the access road and he waited silently in the doorway – the quiet far more dangerous than his rages. Red mud stained her clothes and she was calling fearfully that the road had been cut from the storm. He dragged her by her hair through my rooms before shoving her in the kitchen and locking the door. We all three knew he would be back. While my windows were still jangling with dread, she gazed out the window and despite everything, smiled. Her smile was rare nowadays but even this fleeting glimpse was enough to once again warm me. In our hiding spot she slid a slim black notebook.

From then, she seemed happier, not restored to her former self but like the kitchen cupboards, roughly repaired. When she was sure she was alone, she would bring out the notebook and write. I watched her work anywhere she could, writing a quick sentence or sitting for hours. Over the space of a few months the book filled and she grew stronger. He seemed to sense this change and picked fewer fights. It wasn’t peace but a wary truce.

One night, the night everything changed, she was humming as she worked through her chores and made dinner. I was glowing with her happiness, the kitchen lights spilling into my garden for all to see my joy. Coming home earlier than expected and with too much alcohol coursing through his veins he broke the truce, enraged by her happiness that he knew did not come from him. Without a second thought, she grabbed the knife she had been preparing dinner with and held the point against his chest. I’d never seen her eyes glow with hot fury like they did that night, no longer did they look down or flinch in the face of his anger. But far more used to being the one holding the weapons, he easily pushed the knife away and disarmed her. Without its protection, fear rushed in and she backed away from him, stumbling backwards over a kitchen chair and falling until the bottom of her skull hit the corner of my cupboard door. My door which hid our secret and which had never properly closed again after his botched repair. We looked down on her, him blankly and I with despair. He called for help but we both knew it was too late, and he walked out my door into the blackest of nights long before help arrived. After all the years of hurt he inflicted, it was I who dealt the final blow, but he was without a doubt responsible.

After a long week of empty spaces and echoing walls, the girl returned. Cautious, as if I wasn’t the home she grew up in, the girl stood in my kitchen doorway for a long while, tears sparkling on her cheeks. Making it to the spot her mother had fallen, the girl’s knees faltered and she slumped down to the floor and wept. An eternity later as the girl rose to leave, her foot caught the loose footboard. A flash of silver and our secrets were bared. The girl pulled out the small bag of coins, a picture of herself in a frame where the glass remained miraculously intact, and the small notebook with its soft black cover. Opening it, the girl read the front page written in her mother’s soft loopy style:

My life unlived

By Sara Coleman

The girl sat and read for hours, her mother’s hopes and dreams, hurts and heartbreaks, the lotto win. As she reached the last page, a sheet of paper slipped into the girl’s lap. The girl picked it up to find a cheque for $20,000 with her own name written on it. On the back was more loopy scrawl;

It was too late for me but its never too late for you.

Whatever you do, be free.

***

I stand here, strong, with my feet sunk into the cool ground, toes still curling around the ancient soil. I have been on this land for 70 years and I’ll be here for many more. For now, I wait for my next family. But this time, she lies here waiting with me and it is now her toes I jostle with for space.

***