What Does Blue Feel Like? (8 page)

In home class one morning we have to sit in a circle

and tell everyone else

where we see ourselves in five years.

(At least they don't make us hold hands and sing.)

Most of the boys laugh,

jeer,

and say they'll be pub-crawling and vomiting in gutters,

professional dole bludgers,

or working as personal assistants for
Playboy
models.

Some of the guys are serious

as they talk about jobs and uni, and maybe travel.

Some of the girls say they'll be married,

with kids probably,

their entire lives already mapped out.

Most of the girls say they'll be living on their own,

working or studying,

not having to bother about cooking and cleaning for a man.

Jake laughs and mutters something about crazy old ladies

with lots of cats.

Our teacher smiles and says she'll still be teaching

ungrateful kids,

probably still needing therapy from putting up with us lot.

Then

everyone's eyes are on me.

I don't know what to say

so I ask for suggestions.

Everyone seems as vague as me

about what I should do with the rest of my life.

I just can't imagine myself any older.

I'm not a bloody fortune teller.

I'm helping Mum with dinner,

slicing meat,

when I slip,

cut myself.

Mum shrieks,

but all I can do is watch,

watch the blood racing out of my hand.

It's coming out like it never wants to stop.

Maybe this is what people mean when they tell me I'm

self-destructive.

Flow.

Flow.

Flow.

I stare,

transfixed.

Mum screams, ‘Put your arm above your heart!'

I obey,

and gasp as the blood runs down my arm.

Looks like I've tried to slit my wrist.

It's probably only seconds

but it feels like hours later

when Mum wraps a tea towel around my hand

and drives me to the hospital.

She can't watch,

says it makes her feel sick

when they poke the needles through my skin,

sewing up the hole with precise, tidy stitches.

But I stare,

watching them patch me up,

sew me back together.

Mum buys takeaway Indian for tea,

vegetarian.

Tim says it was the cow's revenge,

but even he gags

at the sight of the steak, the knife, the bench

covered in my blood.

Bronwyn asks about the bandage on my hand.

She still worries about me, I think.

She asks me to come to her place after school

for a sleepover.

I don't know why, but I say yes.

We read magazines, watch telly, eat lolly snakes.

Sometimes I forget

I'm not the only one

who knows what it's like

to be lonely.

We share a bottle of Baileys,

drinking straight from the bottle.

Bronwyn can't drink like me.

A few drinks and she's drunk.

She's a sad drunk.

I take her into the bathroom,

help her brush her teeth,

put her into bed.

As I turn out the light, she says mournfully,

‘Char? What happened? You used to be

my best friend.'

I should

be having the time of my life.

New boyfriend,

reconciliation with an old friend,

halfway through Year Twelve.

But —

there is a blackness inside,

hungry

yearning

pulling at me.

I sit on the train,

watching people.

A young girl with a black eye and smashed nose.

A mother screaming abuse at her child.

The kids who think it's funny to kick the homeless man

then run away, around the corner.

The man on another corner with the heroin addict look.

The girl in the reflection of the window

with eyes so bleak I can't believe they're mine.

If eyes are the window to the soul

then mine must be empty.

The voice in my head says that there's enough despair in

this world without one more hopeless case

like me.

I eat my vegetables, what for?

I do my homework, what for?

I'm polite to my teachers, what for?

I don't argue with my brother, what for?

I iron my clothes and shower and brush my hair and hand

in assignments and try not to fall asleep in class and think

about what I'll do next year and participate in this whole

goddamn awful thing called life, and

what the fuck for?

I go back to the doctor's

for another prescription of knock-out pills

so I don't have to drink myself to sleep.

He's asking me a whole barrage of questions

about school, and my parents, and how I feel,

when I just want the goddamn pills.

He insists on doing a physical,

says everything's fine

and tells me he can't prescribe me pills any more.

‘It's unnatural for a healthy young girl to need

sleeping pills,' he says.

‘There must be an underlying reason you can't sleep.'

He gives me a referral to a ‘very nice woman who might be

able to help'.

‘A faith healer or shrink?' I ask.

He tells me if she thinks I need sleeping pills she'll

prescribe them.

A shrink with a prescription pad, I guess.

I want to scream.

When I get home

Mum is screaming.

She was cleaning my room

and found the goodbye notes I'd written

months ago,

dropped under my bed.

A knot grows in my stomach

and a lump forms in my throat.

The shit has hit the fan.

She thinks I tried to slice my hand off on purpose.

Thinks I tried to slit my wrist.

She makes me sit in the kitchen until Dad gets home,

like she used to when I was little and really in trouble.

Dad turns pale,

goes ballistic.

Tim comes in to see what all the fuss is about

and gets ordered out of the kitchen.

I try to leave,

get held back by my parents.

They're both crying.

Now I really want to die.

Mum grabs my handbag,

rifles through it.

Looking for drugs,

I guess.

She finds the referral from the doctor,

screams even more.

Dad whispers to Mum

and walks out the door.

Minutes later, there's banging upstairs.

Bang

Bang

Bang

Bang

He doesn't come downstairs for ages.

When he does, he's carrying a box.

They've found condoms in my room,

and alcohol.

The box has all the stuff they're taking off me, I guess.

The shit has hit the fan.

They scream at me until my eyes glaze over and my ears

start to hurt.

Eventually

Mum loses her voice

and they let me go to bed.

I'm trapped like an animal

waiting for the slaughter.

My window has been nailed shut,

that's what the banging was about.

The lock on my door is gone.

I feel like I'm waiting

to be led to the gallows.

I'm going crazy.

I can't live this life any more.

Can't do it.

Can't do it.

I have to escape.

I've never been a fan of razors, but I have no option tonight.

The only way I can get out of this is by slitting my wrists.

I grab a piece of paper,

a million words in my head,

but all I can write is

Sorry I was such a fuck-up.

Better luck next time.

I can't live like this any more.

Tonight,

I really don't care

whether I live or die.

And I won't wait until morning to live in hell on earth.

There is no other choice.

There is nothing good in my life.

Nothing.

There is no future for a person like me.

Even I can't live with myself.

I need to shut up this goddamn voice in my head.

I head to the bathroom to find my razor.

 

It's gone.

 

Not just mine, Dad's as well.

Even the hand mirrors out of the drawers are gone.

 

It'll have to be a knife then. I'm panicking.

 

They're gone too.

 

Every single sharp knife out of the kitchen is gone. Every

one of them. Even the potato peeler is missing.

I bolt back up the stairs.

 

I just want my miserable fucking life to be over.

 

Check the bathroom for painkillers — anything!

All of the medicine is gone except for Dad's

antacid medicine,

and that's not going to do much.

 

Ransack my drawers.

Must have something!

Nothing.

 

Everything, every single fucking thing I could've used,

is gone.

 

Mum hears me walking through the house

and makes me a bed on their bedroom floor.

I watch in horror as they slide their bed

against the door.

 

I'm stuck. Trapped.

I don't think I've ever felt so low in my life.

I suck at living, and I suck even more at dying.

Why can't the earth just swallow me up?

I lie on the bedroom floor,

curled up in a ball,

and weep.

I let my tears and snot run onto the pillow,

not even noticing, not even caring.

 

How can I sleep after something like this?

I sit up in bed, crying silently.

Staring at my sleeping daughter.

Staring at the box Paul has placed in our bedroom.

Condoms — my baby has condoms in her room!

Alcohol — alcohol! How did Char even get alcohol?

She's only seventeen.

Painkillers — Char's gone and bought painkillers,

and most of the packet is missing.

What is this child doing to herself?

Razors.

Knives.

Mirrors.

My sleeping pills from years ago.

All confiscated to get my baby through this night.

What has she done?

What have we done?

What have we done wrong?

What am I going to do?

Why couldn't she talk to me?

It is that thought

that hurts more than anything else —

more than the thought of Char having sex and drinking

alcohol,

more than the thought of hiding the razors in case she

gets desperate,

more than anything,

the thought that haunts me —

why didn't she come to me?

At first light Julie reaches for her telephone book.

Surely there must have been someone who saw

something they didn't see.

The school was asked if they had noticed a change in Char.

Why didn't they alert her parents? Why hadn't there been

any parent–teacher meetings so they could work

together?

Jim was asked where the hell he had been when this was

going on, and what he'd done to her.

The doctor was asked why he hadn't told her parents that

he was referring Char to a shrink.

Everyone talked a lot, but no one actually had

any answers.

Funnily enough, the school, Jim and the doctor all said,

‘Let us know.'

‘Let us know what happens.'

‘Let us know what happens with Char.'

‘Let us know what we can do.'

I'm at a circus.

There are zombies,

dressed as clowns,

their mouths black and rotting,

holes where their eyes and noses should be.

There is a man,

very tall,

dressed completely in black.

He's wearing gloves,

I notice,

woollen gloves,

as he tries to take my hand.

I don't want to go with him.

I run.

There are bats

trying to bite at my neck,

their claws scratching my skin.

I try to bolt

but I'm running in slow motion,

my legs are jelly and my feet seem glued to the floor.

Suddenly

I hear a gunshot.

The bats disappear.

There is a burning in my chest

and blood flowing out of my body.

I'm dizzy

and start to fall . . .

Falling . . .

Falling . . .

Falling...

     I wake on the floor with a gasp.

Still scared and goosepimply, I climb into bed and huddle

under the covers.

 

I'm such a weirdo, even in my dreams.