The Truth as It Is

The Truth Be Told

I hold it in my hand my hand shakes I know I shouldn’t touch it or even have opened the red velvet trunk it was in. Mum has told me a hundred times grandma’s attic is for adults only, don’t ever go up there and never open the red velvet trunk. I look around and dust surrounds me and cobwebs fall from the rafters. This is a magical place and I love to sneak up here and just sit, wonder and imagine the people who’ve been here before.

It wouldn’t matter Aunt Jenny was on her seventh whisky and would be flaked out, sprawled across grandpa’s great arm chair which smells rather like rat’s urine. He doesn’t seem to notice the smell I guess because his sense of smell is as good as his hearing and that’s not good. Grandpa and grandma have gone into the city to talk business is what grandpa told me. Of course, grandma didn’t say much more than, “Us adults are doing what us adults are supposed to do!” Which is the answer she gives to most any question I ask of her.

With one gentle puff I blow the dust off the little black moleskin book and my hands tremble as I begin to open it. The screech of car wheels outside followed by a loud bang jolts me from the trance I find myself in. I run to the window to see Mr. Harrison the bootlegger from way down in Hicksville has ran into Grandpas letter box, the one he made from an old oil can. Mr. Harrison is hanging out the window laughing, as grandpa and grandma climb out of his old rusty truck shaking their heads and mumbling.

I fly across the attic, replace the black moleskin book in the red velvet trunk and slide out the door as if I’d never been there. I dust myself off before I reach the kitchen, throw the kettle on the stove, grab one of grandpa’s rabbit hunting magazines and plant myself at the table as if I’d been there for hours. Grandpa walks into the kitchen and says “Why, my little city sparrow has put the kettle on all ready for us”” “Few!” I think to myself “all is well and no one has thought otherwise”. As I scan the pages of the rabbit hunting book of which I have no interest my heart races and the thought plays over a million times, “What is in that little black book locked away in the red velvet trunk in that dusty dingy attic?”.

“Grandpa and Grandma” I ask, “Why did Mr. Harrison bring you home?” The question lays unanswered and disappears into the uneasy air surrounding us in that cold and dusty kitchen. My two little brothers Harley and Smokey run into the kitchen covered from head to toe in feathers laughing and squealing after shredding grandmas finest duck down pillows which dissolves the emptiness, the coldness within the room. Good on old Aunty Jenny who was left in charge is at her usual finest spread out comatose on grandpa’s armchair reeking of whisky. I really don’t know what Aunty Jenny does for work she lives in the back room of grandpa and grandma’s house in what was once the servant’s quarters. She never seems to do much other than flutter around skirting us kids like we’re vermin from the underground and drain the last drop out of every whisky bottle in the house.

There is a knock at the door and it’s Mr. Harrison and he staggers in without being invited. “Jimmy”, he mumbles “you forgot to pay me for the,’’ Before he finishes the sentence Grandpa jumps out of his seat, ushers Mr. Harrison out the door onto the front verandah and muffled words are all I hear. “Oh, what else am I not to know. Am I not entitled to know what is happening around here?” I scream in frustration to myself. I feel the veins bulging on the side of my temple my heart begins to race my fists clench as I begin to stand grandma stares at me with piercing eyes and I know that look. “Its mind your place you don’t need to know what us adults are doing!” I freeze, this merry go round is spinning I don’t know where to turn.

I rise disorientate and exclaim, “I am tired I’m going to bed” when in fact I’m exhausted from the emptiness, brick walls and broken alley ways that surround me. I fall fully clothed onto my bed and stare up at the ceiling. I retrace the steps of my life a little girl born to a teenage mother and runaway father I never knew. Harley and Smokey’s dad Saul entered our broken and shattered family portrait only 5 years ago after mum and he had a one-night stand and he moved in the next day.

Then grandpa and grandpa came in the middle of the night and took Harley Smokey and I from our beds without much of a word other then, “Us adults are doing what us adults must do”, and brought us home to live in the house of my mother’s childhood. I realise now as I scan the rooms in this house with my mind there are lots of photos on the walls. There are photos of my Uncle Hester as a baby all snuggled up in grandma’s arms and Aunt Clarice with chubby red rosy cheeks but there is not one photo of my mother as a baby. Why? I ask myself. My mind crisscrosses in all directions and I fall asleep exhausted and confused.

Days turn into weeks and the emptiness the unanswered questions continue to engulf me and suck the spirit from my being. They disorientate me I have no bearings and I question who am I and where do I belong? “Is it” I ask, “My sanity I sacrifice to escape the roth of my grandmother or do I risk her roth to call halt to the emptiness the brokenness that is life?” Enough is enough I call to the breath that is mine and I don’t care if my grandmother strings me to an iron bed for the vultures to feed, I’ll not sacrifice my sanity for anyone’s greed or need.

So, the plan has been laid this Sunday I’ll not attend church with my Grandparents and brothers I will feign the type of headache teenagers get with chaotic hormones. I will slip up and get that black book rip it open and place sealed on the emptiness that is my life. On Sunday the sun rises and as do all from their beds in this eerie southern home. I lay still until I hear the knock at my door and grandma waltzes in. “The lazy shall lay and the abundant shall rise. The day of rest is not for the plump and wise”, chants grandma in her Southern monotone drool. I lay limp and hold the hot water bottle close to my cheek until I hear grandma’s footsteps approach my bed and she pulls back the covers. “The lazy shall lay and the”, she stops mid-sentence as she sees the fiery redness in my cheeks. “Oh”, she says “and the sick shall stay in bed”. She places the covers back and utters, “I’ll pray for you”, as she leaves the room closing the door behind her.

I lay in bed until I hear Mr. Anthony honk his horn out the front. I run to the window and watch as grandma, grandpa, Smokey and Harley jump into the back of Mr. Anthony’s tray back truck. Today was the day I started to question myself. “Maybe I wasn’t old old enough to know what adults have to do”. “Maybe I shouldn’t go into the attic and open the red velvet box and the black moleskin book as mum had always said the attic was for adults” “Well I’m 15 now and that’s close enough to be an adult as far as I am concerned”

I climb up the ladder to the attic. I lift the door and slip right in. The attic is particularly eerie today as its overcast outside and the wind blows the shutters backwards and forwards bang bang bang. Panic consumes me I turn to leave but within the depths of my soul a cry comes from within “You need to know, you have to put an end to this, to this emptiness” You’ve got to make a clear path for yourself and those beautiful little boys who deserve much better than this”. A razor-sharp focus overcomes me a wave like stability a physical reaction and at once I know why I am here. I bend down and lift the velvet trunk lid up slowly and learn further inwards to reach the little black moleskin book and it isn’t there.

Just then I hear a huff and I turn around to see Aunt Jenny step out from behind the thread bare curtains. She holds in her hand the little black moleskin book I so desperately want. She waves it in the air and says, “Is this what you are looking for Sherlock Holmes. I’ve been watching you I’ve seen you escape up to the attic. I’ve seen you piece the puzzles together. I’ve seen you counting how many whiskies I drink. So, what is it you think is in this book?” I stumble unable to get a handle on the scene I find myself in. This isn’t how I planned it to play out.

Sanity versus the roth of my grandmother plays in my mind. I walk slowly without a word towards Aunt Jenny as I lock eye to eye with her. “This is my life this is my breath and nothing or no one will stand in my way”, are the thoughts shadowing my every step. I lunge forward I knock her to the ground and we rumble for the book until Aunt Jenny lays motionless concussed or comatose from the whisky she’d sunk this morning to gain the courage to confront me. I know not what but at this moment it does not concern me.

A razor sharp focus continues to consume me I have a mission and I look down to see the black moleskin book laying in my hands finally. Gone is the that naïve little Southern girl to be replaced by the stealth hardened core of girl hell bent on correcting the wrongs. I open the book to find the first page covered in droplets of blood and a note written by my mother as I recognise her meticulous slant.

Hanna it starts, “I have led you here this very moment I have willed you to be here. Well done! For you see I am your mother we share the same blood but we do not share the same blood as the people you call grandpa and grandma. They stole me from my home up North when I was a child when they were working as missionaries and before I had words to create a memory. By the time I worked it out and put the pieces together you were born and I didn’t feel like I could find or even return to my real family.

I felt in my heart that ill would come of us one day and so it seems it has. I feared we would be separated and I just had to leave a trail an escape route for you somehow. Well, this is it. You must take the bonds that are in the book worth 20 thousand dollars and use the money in the envelope to flee the grips of these people before ill shall become of you and your brothers. Wait until the dark of the night and run into the arms of my family, your family! They will be waiting and so shall I.