Curried Sausages

Unspoken words hang in the evening air. Outside, two little grey moths flutter aimlessly around the wan patio light. I hear the never-ending howl of the highway close by in the night, familiar as the sound of my own, quiet breath.

I sit at the dining table, which is cluttered with home-school books and scrap booking supplies, playing with the grey sleeve of my pajama shirt and watching my dad clatter in the kitchen. Spice jars clink and plastic pasta packs crinkle as he searches the pantry, then places something on the kitchen bench. I can’t see what it is for the clutter there too: Empty Tupperware water jugs. An opened cardboard box of biscuits. Sickly black-spotted bananas going bad in the fruit bowl, furnished with a small congregation of fruit flies. Two dirty plates with silver cutlery on top. A tub of medication boxes, tiny black text like mould upon their flat, white sides. In our house, some things just live on the kitchen bench, and we make do with whatever space is left.

My older sister walks in, dressed in her own pajamas; loose black singlet and grey sweatpants. Her brown hair is wet and wavy, catching the light as she dries it with a baby-blue, bleach-stained towel. A whine comes from the fenced enclosure beside the kitchen bench, next to the back door, where three little dogs stand beside their bedding: One tan with a grey muzzle, one white with gunky eyes, one black and white with its tail between its legs. My sister drapes the towel over the black leather couch that forms the border between the lounge and dining rooms, then lets the dogs out into the backyard. The metallic rattle of the enclosure panels is loud in the night.

My dad pushes aside the clutter to make space on the kitchen bench, revealing the orange and black tin of “traditional” curry powder he must have found in the pantry, then places down a plastic meat pack from the fridge.

“We’re having curried sausages tonight.” He says in a flat voice. His short black hair shines in the white overhead light. I see a grey hair for the first time. My sister and I don’t speak. I can’t remember seeing him make dinner before.

That morning, my mum wore an orange and black dress when she emerged from her bedroom while my sister and I sat at the dining table, eating breakfast. She wasn’t herself. She acted strange and seemed nervous, as though she knew something terrible but wouldn’t tell us. The many bracelets of semi-precious stones she wore clattered as she moved, smoothing her dress or brushing away stray strands of hair. We were just kids. We didn’t know what to do, so we just pretended everything was normal and got started on our home-school work.

But my mum wanted music, so we all went down to the theatre room. She lay on the lounge while I sat, spinning on the computer chair, and my sister played piano, clean notes filling the silence. The piano was old and upright, with carved ornamentation and yellowed, cow-bone keys. As she played and played and played, my mum slowly huddled in one corner of the lounge, legs folded up under her with bunches of her orange and black dress gripped in each hand. She barely seemed to pay the music any mind at all.

“Can you unpack the dishwasher please?” My dad says to me as he places a frying pan on the stove. My sister is reading on the black leather couch with her back to us. I stand and drift to the kitchen. My grey sleeve is stretched and crinkled from me fiddling with it.

I open the dishwasher, but the clean dishes smell dank. We left them sealed inside all day without thinking about it. I begin to unload as my Dad taps butter into the pan with a black plastic spatula and turns on the gas, then slices open the sausage pack with a broken-handled knife. There are eight sausages, round and pink, speckled inside the casings with spots of fat. Goo inside. Flash paste. The metallic smell of raw meat fills the kitchen.

My dad rolls the sausages into the pan, and they start to sizzle. I unpack the cutlery, drying each rust-dotted knife and fork and spoon individually, placing each in the draw with a clink. At the smell of meat cooking the dogs appear at the door with another whine, scratching with one paw. My sister lets them in, and I see their little black noses raised to the air and wiggling as they sniff. In the frying pan, the sausages are starting to brown, bursting and curling like banana peels from the excessive heat. My dad quickly turns down the gas. Sausage skin and fat are already drying out on the sides of the pan. My stomach rumbles.

From the dishwasher, I grab three plates and take them to the dining table. I made space amidst the clutter by stacking our home-school books and my mum’s floral scrap booking supplies in piles at either end of the table. Without the clutter, I can see the scores and scratches on the tan, lacquered surface of the table. Pen marks and holes poked in the wood, like tracks in the wilderness of long use. I lay the plates out and leave my mum’s spot empty.

She sat there after lunch, hands folded over her stomach. She didn’t journal, read or scrapbook, just nervously glanced between the front door and the table. My sister and I did our home-school work in silence. The highway was quiet, and the dogs slept soundly, curled like furry little prawns on their bedding and oblivious. An hour wore on, long and unchanging, as though the scene was caught in amber.

“Are you ok, Mum?” My sister asked, breaking the stillness, ball-point pen poised in her hand. My mum took a deep, shaky breath.

“I’m ok.” She said, “But I need you to call daddy.” Her voice sounded different to normal. Brittle, pulled taut. She didn’t look at either of us. I watched her blue-green-hazel eyes behind her cherry-red glasses shine with welling, unshed tears. My pencil lay abandoned on the table and my hands twirled and untwirled the drawstring of my pants around one finger. I looked to my sister.

“You want us to call dad?” She asked, keeping her eyes on my mum.

“Yes.” My mum said, with small, jerking nods. “Yes, call daddy.” Tears began to fall as she took off her glasses and wiped her eyes.

My sister stood, grabbed the home-phone of the kitchen bench and walked into her bedroom. Butterflies churned in my belly. I moved over and sat next to my mum, rubbing her arm.

“It's ok, mum. Dad will be here soon.” I said, “It’s ok.” I could hear my sister talking in her bedroom and felt relieved. “Hey. Dad will be here soon.” I said again. I couldn’t think of anything else. My sister emerged.

“Dad’s gonna come home from work.” She said and moved over to stand beside my mum and rub her back comfortingly, who wiped her eyes again, but left her glasses on the table.

The wait felt very long. My mum wept. Her coughing breath was loud, and our timid comforts were soft. Her cheeks went red and sweat beaded on her temple. Every few minutes she would ask us where daddy was, and we assured her that he was on his way.

Finally, we heard a car pull up, a car door open and slam closed, keys rattle at the front door and the front door open. My dad walked in wearing a suit, leather work bag slung over one shoulder. His eyes focused on my mum, as she hastily put her glasses back on. Her face crumpled, lips pulling back to bare her teeth as she shook her head, childlike and frightened.

“It's the wrong daddy!” She shouted, bottom lip trembling. I pulled my hand back and looked between my dad and sister. My mum wept in earnest again with great shuddering sobs. “It's the wrong daddy!”

The scene plays in my head as I repack the dishwasher with dirty dishes, soggy crumbs and sodden morsels unnoticed on my fingers. It was the wrong daddy. My mum wanted her dad, grandad, but he was a long way away. I felt numb.

In the pan, the sausages are a burst, curved mess, but now also a well-cooked brown on every panel. My dad begins lifting them out, then slicing them into rough, uneven discs. The smell of fat and juices fills the air. Jagged patches of burnt butter and skin are a crusty layer on bottom of the pan. In their pen, the dogs begin to whine and stomp for their own dinner.

“Can you feed the dogs?” My dad says to my sister, who doesn’t react for a moment, then sighs and closes her book. I put away the last dishes as she grabs their bowls from the floor and divvies out a scoop of biscuits into each. They smell savoury and are shaped like squares with the corners curved, coloured a deep green, red or brown. The dogs are excited, whining and jumping up with their front paws on the fence, then twirling frantically as my sister lowers the bowls in, and they start eating, crunching the biscuits between their teeth.

My dad finishes cutting the sausages and rolls them back into the pan with another slice of butter. My sister and I stand watching as he pushes them around, then taps a few generous shakes of the curry powder on top. The orange powder immediately begins to clump, failing to mix well with the fat and butter. My dad stirs more furiously, squishing the clumped powder with the spatula to break it up. My sister lets out a soft laugh and my dad smiles sidelong at her.

“It’ll be good.” He says.

I am lost in my own head, eyes on the separated, fatty oil and the orange-brown powder. It looks like mucus; something that comes from the back of your throat when you’re sick; the snot that comes out your nose when you have a virus, gooey and squishing out the tissue as you ball it up.

That afternoon, my mum screamed someone was coming to cut off her nose. I watched from around the corner of my bedroom door, seeing but unseen.

My dad stood with her in the theatre room as she hyperventilated, wiping the tears from her eyes onto the orange and black dress she still wore. The bracelets on her wrists rattled as they shook with emotion. Fear. I was shaking. My dad tried to reassure her that no one was coming to do that. Everything was fine and she needed to calm down.

My mum just screamed it again. I couldn’t peel my eyes from her shaking hands as they left wet patches from the tears and the tears she missed catching ran down and down over her cheek and chin to make runnels down her neck. Her whole body shook. My mind filled with horror at her horror:

They were coming to cut off, cut off, cut off her nose like they did to that guy in the Conan the Barbarian movie we watched a week ago. Cut, cut cut off. They’re coming! She’d lose her nose. Coming coming. Blood and mucus, red and green, seeping into teeth. Two face holes, strangers in the house with knives and torture violent freezing rough hands, coming to cut and carve flaps of skins with the blood and mucus on the carpet, screaming, holding her down the blade is coming closer closer closer. They’re coming, they’re coming to cut off-

My eyes lost focus and my parents fuzzed. Behind them, through the glass sliding door, the afternoon sun bathed the neighbour’s auburn roof tiles in golden light and our backyard in shadow. I watched our dogs waddle across the freshly mown green grass, past the pots of struggling herbs and snuffling at the rotting wood planks we shoved against the fence to keep them in. The sky is smokey blue and looks flat, like wallpaper-

Steps. Movement.

My parents walked out of the theatre room and didn’t notice me there. My mum was subdued but breathing long, heavy breaths and my dad’s face was stony. I just stayed in my room. It looked unfamiliar to me, like someone else's room where I was visiting. The bed creaked as I sat.

Out in the kitchen, I heard my dad talking, keys jingle, the front door open and close, the car doors, then the car drive away. My sister came in and sat next to me on the bed, but neither of us said anything. The house was still and silent except for the scratch of the dogs at the backdoor, waiting to be let back inside.

The curried sausages are ready. My dad switches off the stove and brings the still sizzling pan to the dining table, then hesitates. My sister grabs a hot pad and places it between our three plates, and the pan follows. The food homogenised to a sickly brown colour; discs of meat in globular, oily goo. Viscous.

We sit, and my dad says grace. He prays for the food, for us and for my mum, then we all say amen in unison. He serves himself a generous portion then passes the serving spoon to my sister, who uses it and passes it to me. The curried sausages make a wet, splotching sound in the quiet night as I scoop them onto my plate.

With a fork I place the sausage discs one by one into my mouth. I suck the oil and curry flavouring off first, then slowly slice up the meat with my teeth, swallowing it bit by bit. The action takes my full attention. I stare at the table as I chew, trying not to look at the spot where my mum would have been.

No one speaks as we eat. The only sound is the clink of our cutlery and the highway’s never-ending dirge.