Innocence Revisited

by Cathy Kezelman

  ‘NO, I’m not!’ I confirm with myself.

  My father is dead!

  My father is dead!

  My father is dead! I practise saying the words over and over in my head but they don’t make any sense because it can’t be true.

  My mother and I shuffle to the car like a pair of deaf mutes. I toss my bag into the boot like any other afternoon. My mother climbs behind the wheel. I clamber into the back, taking the seat behind her.

  My mother doesn’t like me sitting in the front next to her.

  I buckle my seatbelt. My mother turns the key in the ignition, releases the handbrake, and drives out of the Grammar school car park.

  For the forty-five minute journey home I stare at the back of my mother’s head, replaying the events of the earlier morning in my mind’s eye. I could see my father hunched over his Uncle Toby’s. He was in his PJ’s, the striped short pair he wears when it gets hot. Simon and I were sitting opposite him crunching on our Weetbix. No-one was speaking.

  ‘Cyril, what on earth are you doing? Don’t you know what time it is?’

  Our mother, buffed and polished for work, had pierced the deafening breakfast silence.

  My father had gotten up, walked into his bedroom and emerged soon after in charcoal Bermuda shorts, beige knee-highs at half mast and his signature short-sleeved shirt with shirt tails flapping. His wavy, greying hair was unruly and his shave, rough. I notice a small patch of stubble he’d missed on his chin. He pushed the front door open, the fly screen door next, walked down the steps leading from the veranda, across the front garden, over to his small green Fiat. He got into the driver’s seat and squeezed in behind the wheel, backed out, pausing at the end of the driveway for a break in the traffic and disappeared into the Moggill Rd peak hour stream.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh some sort of attack.’

  Every now and again I lean forward to make contact with my mother but she’s concentrating too hard to notice. The suburbs flick by like the discarded pages of a picture book - car, trucks, people, children, trees and houses. By the time the car tackles the incline to our carport, we still haven’t shared a word. My mother turns the engine off and removes the key, winds her window up, opens the driver’s door and gets out. I get out too. My mother locks the car and strides around to the front of the house. I trail behind.

  I creep up the steps and onto the veranda, in through the fly screen door and inside the front door. I look around; everything seems the same as when we left in the morning. I think of Simon and wonder whether he’s been told. I open his door but he isn’t there and go into my bedroom and shut the door behind me.

  I throw myself across my bed and sob so hard that my bed rattles. As the first flood of tears subsides, I look around to see my teddy perched on the bookshelf opposite. He looks sad; he’s been watching me cry. I take Teddy off the shelf, carry him back to bed and say gently, ‘Teddy, I’m afraid I have some bad news.’ I feel his little body tighten.

  ‘Our daddy is dead, Teddy.’ Teddy starts crying; I hug him and hehugs me back. Teddy is shivering. So am I. We climb under the covers and pull them up over us, snuggling closer than ever before because our Daddy is dead. I sing to Teddy until he falls asleep, but once he does I feel more alone. I tuck Teddy in so he’s warm and snug, half hoping he’ll wake up; but he doesn’t, and I can’t bring myself to wake him.

  I draw my knees in and wrap my arms around myself, because then at least someone is holding me. I cuddle myself tight, so tight that it hurts and I rock back and forth, back and forth, rhythmically like a metronome - click, click, click. Nothing makes any difference; I am cold and alone no matter what I do. I cry louder and Teddy wakes up. He hugs me and sings to me until I doze off.

  Teddy and I sleep fitfully under the covers all afternoon. Every now and again I get up to check whether Simon is home. He takes such a long time to get back that I start to worry that he is dead too, but Teddy tells me not to be silly. Teddy says that Simon isn’t dead and he’s right because Simon does come home eventually. And when he does I go to talk to him, but he doesn’t want to talk. In fact he closes himself in his room and won’t come out. Simon doesn’t want to talk at all. Lucky that Teddy does, otherwise I wouldn’t have anyone to talk to on the day my father died.

  The next day after lunch, a shiny black car pulls up out the front of our house.

  ‘Hey Catherine, see that car out there?’ Simon is pointing to the shiniest black car I’d ever seen.

  ‘That car’s going to take us to the crematorium.’

  I don’t know what a crematorium is so I ask Teddy. He doesn’t know either. I don’t ask Simon because he doesn’t like being asked things. In that way he’s a bit like my mother. The shiny black car drives my mother, Simon and me through lots of suburbs that I’ve never seen. And when the road runs out of suburbs it snakes through the bush where there aren’t any houses or street lights. The trip takes ages and my tummy is doing cartwheels by the time the car finally slows down in front of a set of metal gates. The gates open and the shiny black car crawls over a grid, up a long circular driveway, past a row of rose bushes and pulls up outside a dark brick building.

  A man in a black suit with pasty skin and pokey eyes opens my door. I jump out quickly. I don’t want to stay in that car any longer than I have to. The man leads us through a door down the side of the brick building and into the back room. My mother walks right behind him. Simon is next and I drag along behind. The room is empty except for a large wooden box, balancing on a stand.

  ‘Your father’s in there’, my mother announces pointing to the box. ‘We can see him if we want’.

  I don’t want to at all but when my mother and Simon start walking towards the box, I follow them. The lid of the box is open. They peer inside. I follow suit. Some silky white stuff is growing up the inside of the box. It looks creepy; I don’t venture too close. Someone is lying inside the box; someone is grey. It can’t be my father because my father is not grey. My Daddy isn’t dead.

  The pasty-skinned man leads us into a hall around the front of the building. The hall reminds me of my Grandmother’s church. It has two straight rows of pews separated by a corridor. There is a stand out the front with a microphone on it. Two bunches of gladioli, and some other flowers that I can’t name, fill two large vases on either side. I think they are meant to make the hall look pretty, but they don’t, because nothing is pretty when my Daddy is dead. Somehow the box has followed us and is perched on a table behind the stand. The hall has lots of people in it. I don’t recognise most of them, but some boys are wearing Simon’s school uniform and some girls are wearing mine. Different boys and girls are wearing a different uniform. I imagine that they are from my father’s new school. I wish some of my friends had come, but none have.

  My family sits in the front row, the one closest to the box. My mother sits between Simon and me, with my grandmother taking the seat next to Simon. I’m glad that my grandmother doesn’t sit beside me because I don’t like her. I wish my mother had let Teddy come, because then I would have someone to hug. It’s chilly in the hall with no-one to hug.

  I can’t sit still during the service even when my mother shakes her head. At least when she glares at me I can see her face. I haven’t seen much of her face since my father died. Her hands are clenched making her knuckles turn white, but she isn’t crying. My mother doesn’t ever cry, not even when my father is dead. Simon isn’t crying either and my grandmother never smiles, laughs or cries, so I don’t bother to check her face. I can’t stop crying. I wonder what is wrong with me.

  Different people get up to say nice things about my father which is nice. I wonder who asked them to speak and why they didn’t ask me. After all I knew Daddy better than anyone. Not that I would have been brave enough to stand out the front of a big hall and utter a sound, especially with lots of strangers watching.

  I get a shock when the black curtains from the side shoot across in front of the box with the gre
y person in it. And another shock when there’s a heavy thud, followed by a dull, whirring sound. That’s when I realise that they are taking my Daddy away. I shoot out towards the box, but my mother grabs me and holds me back. She tells me that I’m not allowed to go there and holds onto me until my father is all gone. Some music starts playing and my mother, Simon and my grandmother get up off their pews and walk towards the side door.

  Everyone else stays in their seats waiting. I stay too but not because I’m waiting. I can’t leave my Daddy behind. My mother dashes back inside to get me. ‘Come on, Baba. Get up! Don’t you think I have enough to deal with?’ I shudder, springing to attention. I don’t want my mother to be angry.

  I never wanted my mother to be angry.

  I try to walk outside like a good girl but my legs are too wobbly to carry me. I topple sideways and start to fall. As I do, a pair of hands grabs and holds me. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart.’ My mother’s friend, Lily, smiles encouragingly.

  ‘I’ve got you now.’

  Lily gathers me up and draws me towards her. She feels warm and snugly, like teddy, and I nuzzle my head against her chest. Lily whispers into my ear, that she understands, that it is okay to cry and feel sad and that she is there with me. And when I can take the weight back on my feet, Lily walks me ever so slowly outside and leads me away from my mother and the people milling around her. She takes me to the rose garden we’d passed on the way in and the rose garden is full of perfume and colours and the warmth of the sun.

  When it is time to leave, Lily strolls back with me to the car. She kisses my cheeks and gives me one last very big hug before I get back into the black car to drive home to teddy.

  The next morning Simon and I get up at the usual time and put our school uniforms on. Our mother is dressed and ready as we sit down to eat our Weetbix. When we’re finished she drives us to school.

  At the end of the day the three of us drive home together in silence.

  Teddy is waiting for me when I come home from school. We cuddle straight away and we sing to one another. And when he falls asleep I change out of my uniform and put on my shorts and T-shirt, lace up my Dunlop volleys and take my tennis racquet and a ball, hop over the side fence and into the Fig Tree Pocket Telephone Exchange. I hit the ball and I hit that ball against the brick wall of the Fig Tree Pocket Telephone Exchange. And I hit the ball until the light of the day begins to fade, the mozzies start to bite and my mother hollers ‘Dinnertime!’

  On the day after my father dies dinner is on the table at the usual time of 6 pm. As the sun begins to go down, my mother, Simon and I sit down to eat our chops and potatoes at the table in the nook in the kitchen.

  Other than that I don’t remember much about what happened on the day after they took my Daddy away. I do know that I didn’t get called out of class again. I also know that I didn’t say much because I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Nothing had changed and yet everything had changed.

  My father was dead and his place at the dinner table was empty.

  My father was dead.

  chapter 6

  It’s the first Saturday since my father died and I miss him. The house is still; Simon is asleep and my mother has gone out shopping. I’m feeling sad and alone and don’t know how to occupy myself. I try to sit down in the kitchen, but can’t settle because it feels too creepy in the nook without Daddy. I’ve stuffed myself silly going back and forth to the fridge. I’ve switched on the TV, but only the cartoons are showing and none of the cartoons are funny. I don’t want to play with Cherry even though she keeps licking me; I don’t even want to pat her. I’m even feeling too sad to play tennis. That’s how dreadful I’m feeling.

  I even try doing the crossword but I don’t finish it because I can’t solve all the words and besides, it’s boring. I’m mindlessly flicking through the rest of the paper when I notice that someone has taken to it with a pair of scissors. That’s when I remember a story my mother had told about her grandmother. About how her grandmother would cut bits out of the newspaper when she wanted to hide something. I wonder if my mother is hiding something from us kids.

  With my curiosity tweaked, I start eavesdropping on my mother’s late night phone conversations. My mother doesn’t have many friends but those she has, she speaks to, on the phone at night after Simon and I go to bed. Instead of sleeping, Teddy and I kneel together on the bed with our ears pressed hard against the wall. Luckily the walls in our house are thin so the sound carries.

  Two conversations in particular intrigue us. In the first, my mother rants about journalists. I’m not sure what ‘irresponsible journalism’

  means, but I feel certain that it relates to the missing articles. In the other conversation my mother complains about insurance companies and how outrageous it is that her insurer has refused to pay up ‘under the circumstances’ especially when she’s ‘paid her premiums all these years’. I look ‘premiums’ up in our Pear’s Encyclopaedia, but still can’t work out what circumstances she’s referring to.

  The next day when my mother goes out I start poking in all those places I’m not meant to look. I’m nervous at the thought of being caught, but the urge to solve the mystery galvanises me. Teddy’s my ‘lookout’ because spies always need someone keeping watch. I knew that much.

  Our search has extended into its second week when I open the bottom drawer of a dresser to find an official-looking envelope.

  ‘Coroner’s Office’, it says. I don’t know what a coroner is, but don’t wait to check. I slip the contents of the envelope out.

  Cyril I.

  Institute of Forensic Pathology 2/10/68 at 10:30 am

  Gunshot wound to abdomen

  Jindal at 1/10/68 approximately 10:00 am

  I don’t know what Forensic Pathology means either but I do know what a gunshot wound is and who Cyril I. is too. I also know full well that a gunshot wound is not the same as ‘some sort of attack’.

  *

  I don’t tell my mother what I had uncovered. Ours is not a ‘normal’ family in which children ask questions and parents do their best to answer them. Besides, my mother didn’t want me to know the truth. Why else would she have lied? I also can’t tell my brother; he is caught up in the same dynamics of secrecy.

  My brother would not learn that my father had been shot until he was in his twenties. It was never discussed; nor did he ever ask.

  Armed with this new and crucial fact, I set about piecing together a picture of what had happened that spring day.

  At around 8:30am on October 1, my father backed his little green Fiat onto Moggle Rd, and died an hour and a half later. He died from a gunshot wound. I found it hard to believe that a father could be shot dead in real life. I thought that only happened in the movies or on TV. I couldn’t I bear to think about him dying. Getting shot hurts; I knew that because I’d seen cowboys get shot on TV and Indians and other baddies too. And people who get shot bleed a lot and they cry for help. When Daddy cried from help, I wasn’t there to help him. I don’t think anyone was.

  I don’t see Daddy’s car again until two weeks later.

  When the mechanic from the Golden Fleece garage in Toowong brings it back, he parks it under the date palm populated by flying foxes out the front of the house. The car looks spiffy. It’s been given a good wash and polish and even a scrub on the inside. I’ve never seen Daddy’s car looking so smart. There’s just one thing wrong; my father isn’t inside. Why didn’t the mechanic put Daddy back? I keep going outside to check, just in case, even braving the squawking flying foxes.

  My father never did appear back inside. He really had gone forever.

  *

  After my father died, my mother cleared the house of all his things. That included any photos, not just photos of him but those of us together. I think she wanted us to forget that we’d ever had him. Why else would she have taken his picture away? Why else did she never talk about him? Why didn’t she reminisce about the things we did togethe
r as a family?

  When Angie died we did whatever we could to keep her memory alive. Simon enlarged several of his favourite photos of her and hung them in rooms all over his house.

  For over thirty years I didn’t have any photos of my father and for a lot of that time it didn’t bother me. It was only when I started remembering him that I realised how much I yearned for some. Even before I set about finding some photos of him, I went out and bought a photo album - just for Daddy. As I carried my album home I felt like a kid who’d been given a fabulous new toy. I was chuffed.

  All of the photos of my father were at my mother’s place and there weren’t many. In those times photographs were taken more sparingly than they are these days. My mother’s albums formed an eclectic mix of varying shapes, sizes and styles. Some were square, others rectangular, some, skinny and others, bulged. There were the relics and the new, as well as the emblazoned and studiedly plain. Her taste in albums bore no relevance to my journey, but the manner in which the photos were arranged did. Many of the photos she owned had not made it into albums, but those that had seemed to follow no logical sequence. Their presentation portrayed life events with such randomness and disregard for continuity and chronology that it denied all establishment of any sort of context. Different generations were thrown in together to form one gigantic image soup. Take the gaudy blue album for example. It housed photos of my children, followed by some from my mother’s childhood, some of me as a baby came next with several of my mother’s parents and her grandparents after that. Any photos of my father or of us as a family were placed haphazardly throughout. I would have to pore through each of all the albums to collect what few photos of my father there were going to be.

  As for the itinerant photos, their life of freedom had done them no justice. I rescued several crumpled and discoloured photos from behind the out-of-date medicine collection in Simon’s room, from inside the linen cupboard under stacked towels, out of boxes in the sunroom and from the back of my mother’s wardrobe.