A Piece Only (Date: 14/03/2016)

Author: wordledger

I pull the journal out from under three biographies on my overcrowded bookshelf. It’s been over a decade since the last time I even thought about it, but a woman was writing on the commute to work this morning and it got me thinking. The leather binding is still beautiful, an intricate pattern impressed in soft material. It would’ve cost a fortune, which is partly why I kept it. Another part is the mystery.

I open the cover to read the first entry, but there’s no need; it still makes no sense.

Find me.
I ………… didn’t  …………………….
…… believe …  .
I   …………  disappear,  …………………broken ……….… ………over.

……………………………… memories. ………  … Park, at … ……… of Feb, ……….

 

The journal contains clues, but no indication as to what it’s about.

I look around my study, the books and artworks, the desk, the laptop. There’s no reason to assume the internet holds more answers now than back then, but there is a chance. I place the journal on the desk. It falls open to a page containing a single photo of dirt and a shovel. These are the clues: a few photos throughout the journal, never anything definitive and, sporadically across the pages, words, as though paragraphs have been written and all but a word here or there has been omitted.

The page that always intrigues me the most is right near the end:

I …………………………… kill ……………… chance. ……  my life ………… …………. … packed …………,  ………………………………………………………………. My wounds ………………… healed. ………………… … … even to me, he was  …………. Behind closed doors…………… vehemently …………….
Every ……………………………………, help …  , and …………, …… sincerity………….
I want to believe him, …………………………………………………… doubtful of my motivations.  …………………………………………………………,
watching ………………………………………………… the facts. He was still jealous. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………  I couldn’t be sure ………………………………  he needed me to need him, ……………………………………………
…………………in  ……………………………………………… traffic …………… I said I was leaving …………….…………………………………………………………… I devised this plan ………………………………………………… with the instructions to find me  …………………………………………………………………………………………………  

when him and I ………………………………………………… broke the pieces of my whereabouts apart   …………………………………………………………  and each other ………………………………………………….

With love,
Libby

 

I drop every word into the search bar, obsession sinking its teeth in. I dig deeper, scan the photographs and try an image search. Hours (or days) later I’m still at it. Then the most random link-to-a-link-to-another-link-to-an-obscure-footnote-to-a-vague-looking-other-link suddenly lands me on a page of pieces.

About nine years ago, six journals surfaced, each containing different words, different images, or headings to photos not there, but in my book. Words to fill gaps in my paragraphs. Seven pieces to the puzzle of a single journal. Seven people. Six friends. One stranger unaccounted for: Me.

I look at the first entry again, words falling into place.

 

Find me.

I wish I didn’t have to do this.
Do not believe him.
I needed to disappear, believing I wasn’t broken and my life not over.

Find me at the tree of our best memories. Duncan Park, at noon on the 5th of Feb, 2009.

.

I sit back. Unmoving. Silent.

I’m seven years too late.

Let the man come

Image Source, Author: wordledger

Sometimes, the story begins before you take up your part in it. This was such a time.

I nursed you, watched over you. Cried with you. You were always going to cry, you were barely two months old. And I … well, I’d been told this was my life now. The child I’d had before was gone and you would be my little penny.

I wish I knew what happened to the man who brought me to you. If he’d had the gall to stay around for five moments more, he might have heard my desperation, the notes of my despair. He might have heard my despising you. I cannot forgive it. I had a child. A little one. And I’ve heard it all before. One turnip is as good as any other, but for the fact that you were never mine. I was nursing you until I wasn’t, waiting until the man would come back for you once more. I had no say in any part of it.

Or so they thought. So they would like to think, those that take and displace, moving one controlled life into another.

And here, with you, they relied on a mother’s instinct. A woman’s nurturing nature. But they defined my child’s life. And to define is such a luxury. This is the choice that was not granted me.

Let the man come. It is done.

the three

Author: wordledger

 

Tell me how to obey, for I am slipping.

Help me to stand, for I am crawling.

Bring me to life, for I am dying.

Open my eyes, for I have closed them in fear.

Help me to rest, for I am weary.

 

There’s a room. It’s bare and dull, without any furniture or decoration. There are three people inside. The first stands. He is the mask, the show, the bearer. He can take on everything and soldier on. He feels the burdens, is intensely aware of them, but still moves forward, not looking back.

The second sits slouched on the floor. She is endlessly lost, endlessly weak. She looks to her past for answers. She crumbles visibly beneath her burdens. She faltered, she fell, and then she stayed down. She refuses to get back up, allowing misery to overpower her.

I am the third. I watch them both from opposite the room. I see the soldier in his silent strength and the girl in her pathetic stupor. I watch as the newest blow hits them each separately. The soldier winces, a grimace pulls at his mouth, his jaw clenches. His eyes are closed as he digests the possible pain, and then pulls at his resolve.

The girl shivers. For the tiniest moment I think she might fight the sensation, but then her face crumbles. Tears start up in her dull, red-rimmed eyes. Every blow seems to shrink her a little.

I notice that the soldier glances at her, taking in her hunched figure, the trembling in her tiny frame. He inches away, lifts his chin. A soldier can have no tolerance for weak things.

Satisfied that nothing much has changed, I turn towards that single door. I turn the brass doorknob, close my eyes, push, and enter the world outside that room: my life.

My house is silent.

I stay still for a moment before I climb to my feet from my seat on the floor and go to flush one toilet after the other until all three bathrooms exude the sound of water rushing through parched pipes and lingeringly make the house a little bit smaller.

I drag my feet to the kitchen, opening the fridge, closing it again. The sharp light from inside seems too bright. It doesn’t matter; I’m not hungry.

I turn from the fridge and spot my pot plants on the window sill. They’re not fairing too well. I tried, once, to drape the heavy curtains over them so they could be on the outside, in the sun, but the material bruised the leaves and the effort resulted in too much light streaming onto my bench tops. I give them water every day, but mostly they’re just mush now.

I leave the plants behind and move on to the music room. There are sheets of music strewn all over the floor. They scrunch beneath my bare feet as I walk over them. The feeling of paper rubbing against the cream carpet used to make me grind my teeth.

Past the piano and the keyboard, past the drums and the guitar leaning against the hard-backed chair, until I reach the couch.

I sit there for a while, my back straight, and look around. I can distinguish the outlines of all the furniture in the room. I never have to wait for my eyes to adjust anymore. The clock on the wall tells me its nine forty-five in the morning. I should probably go.

The word CHURCH is stamped in big white letters on the black of the garbage bin. My eyes sting; they’ve been doing that a lot lately. I have to go in now and they will all be there. Not waiting, but expecting me to come nonetheless. It’s my first week back. My first Sunday.

I open the car door and put my feet to the ground, straighten my back and lift my chin like I’ve seen the soldier do. Walking up to the glass doors I see my reflection: the defeated set of my mouth, the shutters that vanished my tears weeks ago.

Maybe they won’t recognise me.

I pull open the doors and take a seat in the first chair I find, as close to the exit as possible. I stare straight ahead, but can still see certain members of the congregation turn to stare at me. I’m reasonably certain Clarice, my best friend before I left for Europe seven months ago, waves at me. Though she stops at my complete lack of response. I probably didn’t see her, right?

I sit through the sermon, as I intended to do. I listen to every word, but can’t remember much. Something about the Holy Trinity. Probably wasn’t important. I leave at the beginning of the last hymn.

Later, I receive a phone call from Clarice, but I don’t pick up. In the voicemail she asks why I left early and says we should catch up. I’d been gone just over a month when she stopped responding to my emails. There is some leniency allowed, I suppose, in the fact that I know she has always led an extremely busy life, but there is too much to catch up on. Best to leave it altogether.

I’ve watched them for a while now, these two opposites: the girl and the soldier. I always wonder why they stay in this room. Then again, I always come back here, too. I’ve never discovered what it is that makes me re-enter through that single old-wood door. The room has nothing to lure me. But here the three of us are. Three facets of a whole.

 

(Written for an assessment in 2008)