So This Is Home?

A great writer before me wrote about the necessity to go forth into the world and enter upon a new life; with the ability to act for ones’ self and discover unknown talents. The story of Agnes Grey- the heroine of the above mentioned adventures- is somewhat similar to my story; beginning at eighteen, when the desire to see more of the world empowers a journey away from the security of home to the great unknown. My story does not begin in a rickety cart borrowed from the grocers, instead in a near ancient sky blue corolla and lacked the company of the grocers son; however, it brought about a similar effect.
I sat, stuck in traffic between a large four wheel drive and a shiny beetle, knowing full well that this trip was going to change my life. That was of course assuming that I didn’t get lost on the way.
“C’mon Baby” I muttered to the empty car as we putted through traffic. I was a cautious driver to say the least, but most drivers are cautious in the first week of their full licence. “Don’t fail on me now, Baby.”
This leg of the trip was to be the easiest, I’d driven this way plenty as a learner, often with a trained professional beside me, nudging the pedals to avoid a collision, but everything is so much more daunting on your own. At least I had my car. I didn’t know much about cars and although I own one now I can’t say I know any better. We had trudged through second hand dealers and web sites to find a car that suited my measly budget. I had my heart set on a Ford Angela, a nice blue one that may or may not possess the ability to fly, but they apparently they had stopped making them some years back. One that started when required and stopped when asked and didn’t look like it was about to fall apart suited me fine. Through friend of a friend, we were passed onto another friend, who made it his hobby to fix somewhat ruined cars. And so I was introduced to my Baby.
She – as I had decided the first moments I saw her that there was no chance it was a boy car – had successfully gotten me through a panic stricken driving test, which against all odds I passed and had a comfortable enough seat but the stereo could defiantly be better. With a strong dislike for any CD, she spat them out ruined and the volume control depended on the state of the road; but I was content with the radio.
“Ok Baby, this is it,” With only a slight hic-cup with the gears we passed through the last set of lights and onto the smooth freeway, “No turning back now,”
We calmed down on the freeway, cursing along in top gear, radio blaring on such a new road, singing along to songs I knew and avoiding awkward glances from other drives as they over took us. But as we drove, the exit signs became less familiar and it dawned on me that I was now, quite very far away from home.
For eighteen years I lived by the shore of a pristine beach, and never really expressed any interest in moving. It had hit me one night, as I lay awake, starring at the ceiling, that I was completely content with the life that I had. Surrounded by the sanctuary of family and friends, and the familiar pace of the sea-side town, I was so comfortable that I was happy to live like this forever. But it was for that reason that it was absolutely necessary for me to get out of there when the first opportunity rose. Vivid images of thousands of cats swarmed in my head and the next morning I declared my intentions of moving out.
The opportunity came when school finished, and the choices for the next phase of my life were placed before me, in the form of university brochures. My desire to move influence my choice more than the university’s itself, and through that process the remarkably well established campus only twenty minutes from home was scratched from the list. I didn’t want to move to far away either, I had too close a relationship with my parents for it to be stretched over hundreds of kilometres, so anything past Melbourne was also cut.
I was left with eight choices; three of them didn’t offer a course that looked interesting, two of them highly prestigious and therefore highly competitive and one of them a class mate had already been accepted into and the idea of being in the same vicinity made me feel queasy. So I narrowed it down to two options. To which one my mother was an alumni and the other of which my sister was a current student. And not wanting to have my decisions effected by the personal opinion of those around me, I did the only logical thing: flipped a coin.
The shiny head of Queen Elizabeth told me where I was to apply and unable to argue with our monarch I was to follow in the footsteps of my older sister.
According to Rose, following in her footsteps was what I did best, so I was oddly cautious of telling her that I was going to do it again. With only sixteen months between us, we’d grown up identical. Everything was shared: bedroom, toys, clothes, morals and the unexplainable fear of man sized koala that regularly visited our play group. Every new experience we experienced together, making us grow into two people who were too similar for their own good. But we got past our similarities in the form of a yearlong argument as young adolescents until accepted them as an inevitable factor in our relationship. She’d moved out this time last year, leaving me to be content with bi-weekly phone calls and irregular handwritten letters. It had been a difficult year for us; we had been almost inseparable for nearly two decades and to be rather suddenly separated. Rose had to live ten minutes from campus in a share house. And knowing that this might spark another argument about the need for individuality, I told her about the possibility of me living nearby.
“Rose, I think I’m going to be going to La Trobe,” I had said one night she had returned home. We were watching television.
“What?” she was distracted, just as I had planned.
“La Trobe. Me going.”
“Ok,”
Monosyllable answers were not always comforting, so I tried again, but before I could ask her a third time her attention obtained.
“Where you going to stay?”
“Dunno…”
“We should get a place.”
And so, with no regrets of leaving her current home, we began an odious search. We looked at hundreds of rental properties, each in varying states of decay and neglect. All of which I approved of. But my approval was not entirely necessary and Rose kept looking. I didn’t think there was much wrong with them. Some of them clearly still had the aroma of previous occupants and there might be a shopping trolley or two on the porch, but they were cheap, and we had enough personality between us to inflict upon the glummest of houses.
There was only one that really stood out; a little flat, just round the corner from our university. The fresh coat of paint couldn’t hide the old charm found only in the old fashioned door handles and the big key used to lock the back door. These little details satisfied me. Mum and dad approved of the price and Rose approved of everything else. Thankfully, the landlord approved of us.
So very quickly I went from living in my childhood bedroom, with a lifetime of trinkets stuffed in the corners, to a student, who lacked enough boxes. For a week I slept in a sea of the half packed, my days spent cross-legged on the floor, dividing my room into piles of ‘keep’ and ‘toss’; the ‘keep’ remarkably larger.
With Baby filled with the contents of my bedroom and every coffee mug mum and dad intended to dispose of, I left. We had a prolonged salutation on the driveway with mum and I trying to avoid tears while dad retained his strong compose nature. My younger sister of fourteen, Jane wasn’t there to say goodbye, she was off gallivanting with her array of curious friends; most frustrating because she had promised to return the shoes she’d borrowed before I left. I only stalled once when I tried to back out of the driveway; encouraging a loving smirk from my parents questioning the sanity of the person who had sanctioned my licence.
Beside me, in the passenger was a sheet paper, with printed on it were the directions from the end of the freeway to our house. They were not the most conventional directions: Turn just after the car wash and the street just after the house will the gnomes. And written in my mum’s familiar scrawl: Don’t forget to breathe. But for some unknown reason, the path between my two homes had been forged in my mine and the trip was surprisingly simple; pulling into the new driveway with far less panic than anticipated.
It’s on a busy street, my new home, the first one a block of four, just behind the rubble that had previously been the front fence. It is a shabby little unit with a patch of dirt beside the front step. There was a square of grass where I parked, on an angle to the curb that would have been an instant fail in any sort of parking assessment and made my way to the front door. The absent of Rose’ car told me she was still at work as I juggled with keys and the stiff lock.
The house was dark, the blinds shutting out the afternoon sun and still had a strong smell of new paint. The front door opened into the lounge room; thin cream walls, prickly blue carpet and no furniture. Off the lounge was the kitchen; brand new and very white. From the kitchen window you could see right into the neighbour’s garden and the little old lady hanging out her washing. From the second door off the lounge - a wonky sliding door - was a narrow hallway, connecting the two bedrooms and small bathroom. We were used to sharing a bathroom; this one however was smaller than our one at home and was to double as a laundry which made it even smaller. The bedrooms were relatively the same size although Rose’s room did have a double wardrobe I had been determined that an argument wouldn’t come from it. My bed room had become storage; all the empty boxes from the move piled up around the door and on top of the camp bed that I was to sleep on: a sad, dreary collection of the unwanted.
“So,” I said, now officially talking to myself, “This is home.”

Roller-Coaster

The city had turned into a blur of coloured lights, blending together in the night sky; streaks of yellows and reds, purple, green and the faintest hint of blue. Sound too, melted together. The wind gushing through our ears, the occasional scream and the manic laughter from behind us, and there was always the constant rattle beneath us. We plummeted for the ground; wind billowed past us, pulling at hair and tugging at our clothes. I felt a scream leave my own mouth and beside me, over the noise of the wind and the ride and the countless other people I heard a chuckle. His face was the only thing in focus as he reached out and took my hand.
*
“Rose,” I whined, angrily rifling through the wardrobe and throwing clothes to the ground. “Rose,” Only just out of the shower my hair was wet and wrapped in a damp towel with long strands sticking to my face and neck and I was quickly growing impatient with the lack of options that the wardrobe supplied. “Rose!”
“What?” she called from the bathroom over the drone of the hairdryer.
“I don’t know what to wear,”
She poked her head in through the door, stretching the cord from the hairdryer across the hallway. Her hair was already dry, just billowing in the hot air around her face.
“The black skirt” she instructed.
It lay crumpled beneath my feet, already deemed unacceptable, but not wanting to question her judgment I slipped it on, hoping it would smooth out. Leaving the hairdryer on the floor she found a shirt in the back of the wardrobe.
“And that”
Pulling it on, struggling a little with the mound of towel on my head, it didn’t look bad. It had calmed me a little, but my pulse didn’t feel like slowing, my stomach churned and a lump was beginning to grow in my throat. Looking in the mirror, my pale reflection glared back.
You’re going to have fun I told myself sternly and running my fingers through knotted hair. It’s going to be fine.
The station was a sea of people mixed with the stench of the city, tobacco, petrol coffee and the faint aroma from the florist on the steps. It was all a bit overwhelming. But through the crowd I could just make out a face through the crowd; thick black hair with streaks of blue with a bright red bow on the top and wide grey eyes that widen further when she spotted me.
“Emily!” Alana cried, causing heads to turn around us “You’re here!” Pushing her way through the crowd, she drew closer she threw open her arms and hugged me. Her perfume wafted around me and she squeezed me harder.
“I haven’t seen you in ages” she smiled widely, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Come, meet everyone,” Grabbing my hand she pulled me through the crowd, over to the huddle of people beside the ticket booth.
“This is Charlie,” Alana beamed as we approached, and Charlie, rather pompously held out his hand.
We weren’t really the generation of the handshake, but his formality was comforting. As least someone knew what to do. He had a round face glasses and a friendly air. I smiled nervously and hoped it wouldn’t show.
“And this is Campbell,” Alana smiled. Campbell’s slower reaction suggested that he too was confused with how to behave and a sliver of relief came over me as he stretched out his hand for an awkward handshake. He was taller than Charlie, with light brown hair that swept across his forehead, small eyes and thick brow.
“Campbell. Like the soup,” I blurted out as my face turned red.
“Kinda” He laughed.
Alana was already making plans for dinner, claiming that the best Indian restaurant was right round the corner and began to drag us through the crowd. Charlie tried to keep up with her, but my shoes restricted walking as fast, so Campbell slowed down to walk beside me; the lump growing larger in my throat.
“So, Alana says your best friends” he said calmly.
“We went to school together, feels like I’ve known her forever,” I replied honestly, not indicating whether it was necessarily a good thing.
He nodded as we waited for the lights to change, hands deep in his pockets as we watched Alana and Charlie make small talk with the waiting crowd. We both looked around, trying to find something to spark a conversation.
“The city’s nice here” He said, looking up at the buildings, “I spent the last three years in Singapore. Here you can see the stars,”
“Singapore, wow”
Talk of his travels managed to get us safely to the restaurant, were we were reunited with Alana and Charlie, who were already chatting eagerly with the waitress. Knowing full well that my measly student budget didn’t allow for flamboyant eating I ordered coke on the understanding that I’d already eaten and lentils wouldn’t mix well with roller-coasters.
Over dinner we briefly swapped life stories and by the time the plates were clean of what smelt like delicious curry we were laughing loudly. Charlie and Alana were in the same Spanish class, Charlie and Campbell had met in Singapore to be reunited as housemates and Alana kept looking at me with her intense grey eyes, trying to figure out if I was feeling alright. While we finished our drinks, I looked at Alana for the next phase of the night.
“The carnival” Charlie exclaimed, replacing his glass with a little too much enthusiasm, sloshing coke down his hand.
As we re-traced our steps through the city, Alana walked with me, linking arm like school girls to and she jabbering endlessly. I wasn’t really listening, mostly watching the path ahead, making sure we didn’t fall behind too far and watching the windswept hair ahead of us.
“Emily,” Alana prodded me in the side, “are you even listening?”
“What- yes, of course”
“Really!” Her eyes glowed eagerly before laughing laughed loudly and prodding me in the arm.
The riverbank was filled with people, giant rides erected from trailers, flashing and spinning wildly. The smell of damp grass and popcorn mixed with the natural stench of the river. The lights of the ride glistened in the still river, music pounded and people shouted; some in excitement from the ride, others trying to encourage people to step up take a shot and win a prize.
“This one!” Charlie laughed, pointing at a large Ferris-Wheel that tilted as the ride progressed.
“Nah,” cried Alana, bouncing over to a Giant Drop.
Over the next half hour excess money was spent, tickets bought and stomach churned as each ride was sampled. The Giant Drop was an exaggeration. Above Average would have sufficed. And the line for the insane Ferris-Wheel wound its way around the corner for a ride that lasted a little more than a minute.
We followed Alana to the line of the Cha-Cha, but I chose to hold her bag rather than join her. I’d already had to come to terms with not getting petrol for another week. But as I stepped aside, Campbell looked up from his conversation with Charlie.
“Can you have three in a carriage?”
It sounded innocent enough, but something about it made my heart race, and fumbling with the strap of Alana’s bag, I tried not to look so overwhelmed.
“I can wait here,” I said, hoping it sounded convincing while my gut screamed in rebuttal. But to my utmost relief, Campbell stepped out of the line as Alana and Charlie were shown to their seats.
We watched as they were tossed around, thumping into the sides. But the ride soon became repetitive and topic’s for conversations few, so I turned around, trying to find something of interest.
“Look at that one,”
Campbell pointed to the roller-coaster previously obscured from view by the shooting gallery.
“We have too; you said you wanted to, c’mon”
Alana and Charlie found us in the queue, where Alana relieved me of my bag holding duties.
“That one was so much fun!” she said, bouncing again. “You have to go on it. And Charlie was telling me about this club, it’s just down the road. And…” she smiled gleefully, “Free entry!”
She waited for me to show as much enthusiasm as she but I didn’t.
“I just wanted to go on this one,”
“But we’re going now, it’s only free before eleven,”
“We’ll meet you there,” Campbell interjected, “We already have tickets.”
While we had been bickering, I hadn’t noticed that we’d be pushed forward through the line, now at the ticket booth, and Campbell holding two slips of paper.
“Well, ok, call me when you need directions, ‘kay,” She beamed yet again and turned away, flicking her hair over her shoulder as she walked.
The short conductor showed us to the back of the ride, and after ensuring our safety rails were firmly in place, he turned away.
“How much do I owe you,” I asked, pulling out my near empty purse, not willing to believe that chivalry still existed.
“Nothing; two for the price of one,”
“Oh,” I tried to control my smile as I returned my purse to my bag.
“Did you know” he asked calmly, looking down at the track beneath us, “that if just one bolt fell off we would all die?”
“That was just what I wanted to hear right now,” I laughed, as the ride began to gain memento.
The city lights quickly blurred together with the sound of the ride; the wind, the gasps and manic laughter. The pit of my stomach gave way as the track suddenly dropped, and from the collective gasps around me, so had every ones else’s.
“Just one bolt” he shouted, a single loose screw”
“Don’t tell me that!” I replied, portraying more fear than I felt and he laughed.
The track dipped and weaved, throwing us around, jolted by the will of the roller-coater- my knuckles white on the rail- and as we pulled around a sharp bend I felt a scream leave me.
Again he was laughing, but it wasn’t cruel. Instead he reached out and covered my hand with his. It was surprisingly smooth. I tried not to look at him to save the embarrassment of him seeing my blushing face.
It was just his hand. Just in mine. Nothing should be made of this, yet something other than the roller-coaster was making my inside dance; something that was turning me into my fourteen year old self.
We never met up with Alana and Charlie, who were both ignoring their phone. So we wandered through the carnival, until I felt it time to find a taxi. He waited with me at the taxi rank and we watched the businessman in front shout into his phone before giving up his cab and storming down the street.
“Well…”
“Yeah,”
The driver nudged at the petals, making the car roll slightly, signalling that our time was up.
“I’ll see you around sometime,” He said, stepping back so I could shut the door.
I smiled, and nodded, not entirely sure what I was supposed to say, so I simply waved goodnight and shut the door as the drivers pulled off the curb.
I glanced over my shoulder.
He was still standing there, the glow of his phone lighting up his face, and just as the car approached the corner, he looked at the cab. And smiled.

Morning Reflections

She stands there, in faded pyjamas and slippers. Straw coloured hair hanging limply around her face, grey eyes surrounded by faint lines, thin, pale lips and soft hands feeling out the work before her. The rhythmic work, smoothing the creases out of white pants, unaware my presence. I stand outside. In the pane of glass I can see my reflection looking curiously over her shoulder: dressed in the apparent uniform of early morning, hair arranged artfully by the night, a pale face, shadowed eyes and a dog standing on my foot, aching for the attention to return to it.
And she does not notice.
The room surrounding her, and I, is cluttered: an assortment of clothes, bottles, a mop leaning against the wall, it’s sad, grey head softly dripping. The washing machine rattles beside her, decorated in a week’s worth of single, lonesome socks and behind us, an open door; leading out from the grey of this room to the subtle green of the next. My translucent face rests on framed memories; faces that have passed or aged beyond recognition, the captured moments of childhood, happiness and blissful ignorance. And there I stand, in the clouded morning sun, unaware that it had softly begun to rain.

The Writer

A half-moon looked in through the crack in the curtains where the yellow glow of lamplight rendered it redundant. A chaos of clothes and books spread across the floor; drawers gaped open spilling forth more clutter. The bed of heavy black iron sat in the middle of the small room, pillows and blankets draped over the bedhead and onto the floor around it, leaving the mattress empty: save for a young woman. 

Her mess of dark hair was pulled hastily out of her eyes into a knot on the top of her head, but long strands escaped to fall lose around her face. Clad in flannelette pyjamas and a single sock, she lounged over a notebook, the side of her hand stained in smudged ink, pen dancing across the page in an untidy scrawl. With dark circles beneath her tired eyes and a faint glow appearing on the horizon, little would stop her writing, save her falling asleep on the half-finished page or the desired sense of completion arising in the pit of her stomach. She endured. Keeping her eyes to focused on the page; forcing her hand to keep writing, though an ache was growing in her wrist; she wouldn’t let herself glance over at the clock on the side table that would tell her how little sleep she was going to receive. The night needed to be savoured.

She didn’t particularly want to be awake. The idea of falling back into pillows tempted her; enfolding herself in dreams was so inviting at such an early hour. She so longer to sleep, but she could not let herself want, she needed to write. Writing was not a want, writing, to her, was as necessary as breathing or eating. It had grown from a mere hobby to an addiction. Life was put on hold to feed her writing. It was these precious moments when words flowed effortlessly and seamlessly from mind to page. She wrote feverishly, not for pleasure, although enjoyment did linger, nor for lack of time, but in fear: fear that if she stopped, the words would too and she would be left with a mere memory of them in the morning. But her addiction prevailed over her tired mind, because this was the life of the writer, and she had to write.   

She was not a writer because of her habits but a writer because of her mind.  It was not that her passion had erupted and the urge for writing had overcome her, rather it was the way that she thought. She saw the world in already formed words. A constant narration played within her head describing to herself the world around her in great detail, as though she was trying to remember while she searched for pen and paper. 

You could not fix on the time or place the when she awoke to know that she was indeed a writer, for it was too long ago. She was in the middle before she knew what she had become and there was no changing that. There was some point when she realised that the tool which she had been equipped with for so many years was the tool that would save her. She just had to write. It was the release when nothing else was working, it gave her the ability to fly when reality grounded her; it allowed her mind to wander when she was stuck in the mundane; writing kept her sane.

The clock on the side table clicked over for another hour. The house around her was still filled with the sound of sleeping: a soft rumble of the fridge, the tick of the clock in the other room, the slight rattle of pipes through the walls. But outside, the world was starting to wake. The trickle of traffic grew into a consistent stream, birds began their morning discussions as early rises rose. And finally, the pen was laid down, eyes finally closed, and head dropped as the writer succumbed to the same need as everyone else and fell asleep.