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| Rock Hard Place Bastard | |
| By Loz | ||||||||
| 23 January 2008 | ||||||||
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The title comes from the four words that my writing buddy M gave me as a form of inspiration. We regularly swap random words but this time he suggested that I write a piece that included Rock, Hard place and Bastard. It's amazing to think that given the same trigger no-one would come up with anything like the same thing. Anyway, here's what came to me. My sister used to have nineteen bottles of nail varnish, I counted them. She had them lined up on her dressing table, shoulder to shoulder, as neat as soldiers. From left to right: colourless and frosted, through the pinks, the reds and what I now think of as most apt, black – as if her fingertips had been caught under the falling lid of a desk. I heard her describe that dressing table as kidney-shaped, I couldn’t see it myself, it had a flouncy skirt that you had to fumble under to reveal drawers that were too small for anything bigger than a hankie. And doesn’t everyone use tissues these days? And who’d want to sit in front of those three mirrors, angled so that you can’t get away from the reflection of your reflection? My sister, that’s who. Afterwards my Mum didn’t even bother asking if I wanted it in my room, it just disappeared one day while I was at school. When I told my sister about the name calling she said that she and I are stuck in the middle – between a something and a somewhere – I can’t remember what exactly. I told her how I’d been sitting alone on the wall waiting for the bus when a group of fourth formers had shouted the rudest of rude words at me and walked off laughing – Look, said my sister, you’ll get used to it, I have. With a name like Cunis we’re not one thing or the other. But nowadays those same girls only whisper behind cupped hands when they see me. Dad must have helped Mum to clear the stuff out of her bedroom. He probably wouldn’t agree but I think he’s stuck in the middle too. Stuck between two banks of the estuary, ferrying people from Padstow to Rock, stuck between me and Mum, stuck between the grief and anger that makes his jaw jut as if he’s permanently facing into the wind off the open sea. The police have tried to warn Mum about tying flowers to the crash barrier, it’s a hard place to reach without putting herself in danger from the traffic that rushes to by-pass our town, but she doesn’t seem to hear them. She doesn’t hear full-stop. Not my long thin wail in the safety of the night, not the slam of the door when Dad escapes to somewhere, not the kindly meant advice from friends and neighbours – nothing. Maybe it’s because she can’t hear that she didn’t give Rob a chance to explain or apologise. I was in the middle again, sitting half up/half down the staircase when I saw her swing the front door open before the bell had a chance to ring. Rob was caught with his hand clawing through his thick dark hair and it froze there, he looked sort of withered, Mum screamed Bastard and he took it like the slap that it was. I don’t go to the by-pass or the cemetery, she’s not there. But I do go in her room. I lay in the body dip of her mattress and look at the greasy blobs on the wall where Justin Timberlake used to be and I crawl on the floor to release the knots in her furry rug, the one that used to have its own special comb. I remember how she toasted her beautiful long legs in front of the electric fire that always smelt of burnt dust and all her big-sisterly warnings about running with scissors, getting blood poisoning from drawing on skin, staying away from swans that could break an arm – so what the hell was she doing getting on the back of that motorbike? Her room still smells of her but that’s not really her, she’s not there either. I don’t know where she is but I like to think that she’s not stuck in the middle anymore. She used to be one thing but now she’s definitely the other. Look, she’d say if only she could, you’ll get used to it, I have.
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