Heroine - Alice Halden
Heroine by Alice Halden was the Second Place Winner of the 2022 Murrumbidgee Short Story Competition in the Open Category.
Abby held the small plastic peeler in her hands, her skin tightening from the starch of the potatoes. Long flaxen hair came to her, black as ink and sailing through the cigarette smoke of a Top End bar. A sweet, sharp voice telling her that starch was good for ageing skin. Abby couldn’t imagine Loo’s Loo’s hands anything other than small and soft but wanted nothing more than to watch them age. It was the end of the war and so any and all things were possible.
….
Now Abby hears the nuanced cries of her children in her sleep and that’s much preferred to what she could be hearing once the lights go out. The kitchen is detailed with banged up linoleum which sponges under Abby’s scuffed slippers. She has worn a slight trough on the path between the fridge and the sink, oven and kettle. The linoleum is a warm colour, to match the warm day and her light cotton, hand-stitched apron plays tag with the breeze flowing through the lace curtains. White.
Some things ought to be lost Abby thinks. Not socks or underwear, keys, or patience. Although Abby has her own theories about where they go. But dark things, dark with distaste and stinking to high heaven of pain. It was times like this, peeling vegetables at the sink that Abby welcomed emptiness – that delicious grey blanket that allowed her to forget. Or try to.
Her children’s cries and her husband’s touch were welcomed into the club of things that make up her proper life – distractions. Abby holds her legs steady, small fists clutching her skirt and continues right on peeling the potatoes. If she was a food, she would be potato she thinks. Not because she doesn’t like the look of her body, but because she’s versatile and always a comfort.
....
Brielle holds that same, electric green peeler in her hands, small scratches and chunks taken out of the plastic tell stories of many a dinner, many a meal prepared, on all kinds of weeknights. She holds it tight for a second, then releases, wondering how Grandma Abby used to get the peels to fall from the vegetables so easily.
She inherited G.A’s gift of solving with food, that, and her middle name. Brielle Abigail Brotham was born Australian (whatever that means) in a time when Disney princesses came on chunky plastic bricks called ‘VCR’s’ and ‘Dixie’ was the softest, cloud-like summertime treat she could get her sticky little hands on.
“Were having bubble and squeak tonight” she calls to Andrew.
Since becoming engaged she has found herself wandering in thoughts of how and when and why she would like to raise children. She’s no closer to an answer.
When Brielle isn’t working from the office, she is “working from home” which consists of fussing in the kitchen between emails and chucking on a blazer for the sporadic Zoom meeting. She updates her food Insta that has 0 followers (on purpose) with last night’s Chicken Fajita Soup. Too salty she thought. “Amazing comfort food” she captioned.
Today she is making ratatouille, because she doesn’t want her only experience of the dish to be the Disney Pixar movie (although she’ll probably watch that tonight let’s be honest).
When Brielle was little, GA would put on a VCR and bring her snacks while she sat in the good chair of the lounge room. Sometimes Brielle would put on the apron her grandma had made her, it was red and white check with a “B” across the chest in scarlet red thread. She still has it because Grandma Abby made it adult size for her to grow into (so it was really more of an elegant ball gown on a sticky seven-year-old). Sometimes they would shell peas, or lay pumpkin seeds in the sun for drying, and sometimes, G.A would ask Brielle “Are we cooking it or eating it?” (mostly in relation to cake batter).
Brielle cuts the potatoes into chunks and drops them into a medium sized pot – filling it three-quarters with water and generous salt (yes, she is ignorantly enjoying her cholesterol-problem-free youth thanks very much). She places them onto boil and makes a start on the pumpkin – laying the seeds on paper towel along the windowsill for drying as Grandma Abby would. Grandma Abby, Abigail, Mrs Abigail Clarice Brotham. So formal for such an informal lady – so grand for such a humble woman. Brielle recalls this particular picture of Grandma Abby in what she referred to as “the heyday”. It’s sepia and square and totally understated except for a beautiful woman with a long cigarette, her hands tipped with short, natural nails. She is leaning forward from the shiny, studded leather booth of whichever speakeasy she is at. Smiling demurely but eyes alight, she looks straight past the camera at the person taking the photograph– fabulous.
The picture sits amongst others Brielle has arranged in a collage at the entry of her place, but it is by far her favourite. She imagines herself there, the swing of the band, the sweat. The sweet, sickly smell of tobacco in the air and her grandma, young, smiling and drunk on the potential of life. Who was she before she was my grandma? Bri wonders. She washes the pumpkin and places it in the now boiling pot, wipes her hands and grabs her phone to organise a visit with G.A.
“Beautiful. See you then. Feel free to bring a treat if you are in the mood – L.O.L!! -G.A”
Noted. Brielle mentally clocks a bakery that’s open on a Sunday between her place and the home. It’s against the rules and G.A’s health care plan but at eighty-nine Bri felt G.A had the right to decide which rules she broke.
“You don’t waste time” Andrew says, walking in from outside and eagerly eyeing the pot of veggies. No, Brielle thought, no I don’t.
….
“No Grandma” Brielle gently interrupted, her pointed finger making an arch in the air. “I mean before that, who were you before you met Grandpa?” she smiled, knowing she was in uncharted territory, but feigning sweet, sweet ignorance (ahh to be a granddaughter). Grandma Abby’s eyes shifted beneath her glasses quickly towards the window and then down to her hands.
“Oh dear you don’t want to know about that, ancient history at this point!” she strains to laugh.
“Oh no I do Grandma, I know the story of you and Grandpa so well by now, but I realised last night I don’t really know anything about your life before then”.
She raised her tone into a question and furrowed her brow, she wasn’t giving up.
“Oh” Abby paused. “Well why don’t we get out of here?!” she continued, forced smile.
Abby’s chest was getting a little tight and this room she realised with overwhelming clarity felt as stale and confined as old people’s breath. Brielle was confused.
“But where would we go?”.
“Oh, anywhere dear, to the park, back to your place, one gets sick of the same four walls after a while”.
Grandma Abby smiled and started shifting forward in her armchair, making motion to leave. Brielle followed suit because she felt bad about secretly recording Grandma Abby and was open to absolving her guilt. She knew it was wrong, recording someone speak without permission, but it would only be for herself. She wanted to type up the transcript, holding all of those lovely “heyday” memories and childhood stories safe in the cloud and she knew G.A would never, ever agree to talk if she knew.
….
Abby thought of those soft lips, strange – those thoughts had been distant friends, passing in and out so sparsely over the years you could almost forget – almost.
Funnily, the strongest memories would come to Abby in childbirth, all 6 times. Maybe her mind was trying to protect her from the pain she thought, take her to a beautiful place. But having it come up in a state where anything could come out was just more distressing to her. She refused the drugs because of the stigma but also because she didn’t want anything slipping out as she skirted between consciousness and oblivion. All her childbirths were fine regardless, healthy children, all their toes and such, thankfully. But Abby couldn’t help feel like the lips of her vagina were giving birth not just to two sons, three daughters and one late miscarriage, but to a betrayal of her life before – of those soft lips. Abby knows she’s not getting “old” because she can still remember them clear as the bright daylight that announces itself in the window of her room. Bold. Like the owner of the softest lips she ever saw, burned for, kissed.
Abby hauled herself into her plush bed which brimmed with pastel florals, she hated this bed spread but it was a gift from her eldest son for Christmas the first year she moved to the home and bless his soul, she wasn’t about to be the one to ruin his impression of himself.
She lay and whispered her incantation, she wouldn’t call it prayer because what was there to pray to? For her? A sinner of the highest order, blasphemous in spirit. No, she would not pray, but she would never forget and that would be her devotion.
Most nights she would do it without a second thought, her eyes heavy from the day and her body welcoming the rest, but tonight was different, she knew as soon as the medication nurse left her room for the night, she could feel it blooming inside her. She was determined however, to go about her routine first, set herself in bed and then, let it take her there.
Abby was exhausted from today, holding it all in in front of Bri. Good heart that girl. She scooped heavy breaths through her mouth and clutched tight her eyes whose force pushed the tears, streaming like a pulse down the sides of her face and tickling behind her ears. She wouldn’t wipe them. She was locked in the pain that washed over her chest, spreading through her like it did, her hands braced tight on the covers. And finally, she exhaled.
“I’m sorry” she whispered through grabbing breaths, like the ones children grasp for when they cry.
“I’m sor..sorry”, and she grasped again.
She let herself go to all the places, all the memories that she tapes off, out of bounds, no entry. She let herself be consumed because every once in a while, you have to, to satiate its hunger. Each vision pumped new power into the sadness heavy on her chest, pushing it out to her whole body like blood. She finally palmed her eyes for they were blind with tears and let out a sound so wounded she thought her neighbouring residents would most definitely hear her. They never did. She was grateful. Now her chest was aching, suffocated with the weight of the pain. She grasped again for breath, but it barely came. Loo Loo’s face, skin like glass. She scooped a shallow breath, but it wasn’t enough.
Calm she thought, slowly, d e e p.
A babe, walking wonky-legged across the lawn, black hair, like her mother, shining in the sun. Now the breath would not come at all, she scooped and scooped with her mouth, nothing came. Her chest was tightening, her tears a steady pulse. She rolled over and smacked the orange, glowing call button.
They say the grief you feel for lost loved ones doesn’t get smaller, the vessel in which it’s held gets bigger. But it didn’t happen like that for Abby. The grief, open and bloody like a wound inside her swelled fat and slick with anguish. She didn’t get any bigger, and when it realised that, the grief galvanized its edges inside her, rigid, eternal. She would never not feel it like a stitch in her side, but at least the hemorrhaging was over.
All her life, Abby had witnessed a litany of hate, spat hot and foaming towards the “other”. The end of the war saw Asians from all nations released from POW camps across Australia, but they were not free. Not from the hate. Abby could never feel it for herself. She thought Lynette was empirically beautiful, like the stained-glass windows of her youth. Emboldened with life. Her skin, yellowed as gold and smooth as glass, her eyes warm and safe, her home. It was Loo Loo’s hair Abby liked best, so different from her own curly, Anglo nest. Loo Loo’s slinked around her body and glinted in the sun like a wink, it drove Abby wild when she whipped it around to speak to her. Abby was glad their daughter had hair like that, flaxen and winking. Was to continue living not penance enough? She had wanted to cease living, to be rid of pain and aloneness. But her Irish Catholic upbringing wouldn’t let her do it. And so, Abby reconciled with that too: that she was a coward as well as a sinner.
….
Brielle could feel her Grandma’s resistance like a pull in the air, dragging something back inside her that Brielle was desperate to draw out. She had never seen Grandma Abby so uncomfortable, so conflicted. It scared her. She flashed forward to see a bed-ridden Grandma Abby, wasted away with age and disease, closing her eyes for the last time. Bri squeezed her eyes shut. It just isn’t right Brielle thought. To see someone reduced from the memory you have of them, the way they always were. Or at least, the way they were to you.
Brielle felt a real moment of panic. She wouldn’t let Grandma Abby be forgotten for all that she is, all that she was. Brielle couldn’t imagine losing herself so completely in the role of wife, mother and grandmother, and even though she loved hers, it was the main thing keeping her undecided on children. Brielle sat down to type up the transcript from her outing with Grandma Abby, she had managed to get some details out of her, lots of who’s and when’s to start off with. Brielle did her best to chronicle all the dates and names and places, leaving gaps for what she hoped would be filled. The smell of refried beans drew her out of her focus and a smile across her face. Andrew was cooking and that was more than enough excuse to close the laptop and join him.
“Mi amor”.
Andrew placed a full and steaming plate of food down in front of Bri.
“Gracias mi amor”.
She replied while taking a photo of the meal (as someone of Irish decent she reserved her Spanish solely for someone who wouldn’t judge the way she butchered it).
Smiling up at him as he explained about his day, Bri did feel for a moment that she would enjoy having Andrew’s caramel babies and she hoped if she did, they would inherit his skin and her eyes. She would bring them to the kitchen, to dry the seeds and mash the veg, to wash and drip and continue the song of the kitchens that reached far into her ancestry.
….
Bri could barely wait out the working week to head to her Mum and Dad’s place in search of more photos of Grandma Abby. Shuffling through the spare room where all their family ‘shit’ resided Bri plunged into the boxes of their cumulative memories. Labelled “Abby”, one box called meekly from the bottom of a pile. Bri already let herself feel the satisfaction of finding the treasure trove of photos, letters and journal entries. Cuttings of newspapers and old bills from the local lands council whilst historical, didn’t quite have the sparkle Bri was hoping for. She did, however, find a solitary photo, 4x6, bent into a square. It was taken in the same booth as her favourite photo of G.A but in this one Abby was giggling, her small, round nose pinched. Bri gently fanned the photograph open like the wings of a delicate butterfly, dried and fragile in this grimy box. Along the very left edge of the image was a whisper of some long, glossy black hair in mid escape from the frame. Bri flipped it over and found some cursive on the back, “49” was all she could make out.
….
Abby was happy to see Bri, don’t get her wrong. Bri always visited her and never asked for a thing. Which is why she was the only grandchild who Abby still slipped a Christmas present to. But Bri had that determined glint in her eye, the same she’d had since she was a babe and the very same that Andrew and Abby would laugh about the dangers of. Abby was drained from yesterday and she didn’t have it in her to hold it all together if Bri was going to resume the third degree.
“Look Grandma I found something yesterday at Mum and Dad’s, but I can’t read the names on the back”.
Here we go thought Abby.
“Yes dear, let me get the goggles on”.
Abby took her sweet time getting her “good” glasses out of the cabinet, she settled into her chair before taking in the photograph. She inspected the back of the square.
Harry’s 49’Loo Loo & Ab
Her stomach dropped and she felt icy all over.
“I could read the year, but I don’t know the rest” Bri offered eagerly.
Abby straightened the photo and slowly pressed it flat against the tops of her thighs. She flattened it again gently with her fingertips, as if to smooth out the ancient fold. A few more times she did this before she began weeping. Not crying or sobbing. She silently wept and a smile bloomed across her lips as Loo Loo’s black hair winked back at her.
