The Cupboard

It was time – to enter the cavern, to go through that door I usually passed with a shiver for as long as I could remember. It was time to face the mystery behind a dozen nightmares.

Mum’s punishment was not supposed to be so harsh. It was my choice. You know, like ‘the money or the box’ and I chose the box. But there was more in it than I bargained for.

‘You pick it, Janie,’ she said, and I knew she was fit to sizzle. I could see the steam shooting from her nose and her eyes were blood red.

‘You are going to be punished this time. You’re lucky I caught you and not the police. God, what if you had an accident? You are going to be punished, and you might as well pick one or the other, because if you don’t, I will.’

She tapped her foot, hands on her hips, like that woman in the cartoons with the big slobbery dog and the tiny kitten. The choice was simple. I spend the whole three-day weekend cleaning up the house, or I was grounded for a month. Sort of like either doing three days of hard labour or four weeks of house arrest.

Yeah! I picked housework. I figured that if I really threw my back into it, showed some remorse, she might take pity on me and let me have some of the weekend off although I knew she would probably be hiding her car keys from me from now on.

‘You can start with your own room. Pick your clothes up off the floor, bed linen changed, make your bed while you’re at it, clean up all the cobwebs, vacuum, clean out your wardrobe, tidy your desk …’

She added washing the windows! I mean the windows? I think she expected me to whine about it but I was determined to maintain my silence. Not even a mutter came out of my mouth. And besides … I did let her down so maybe the punishment was right. I looked her square in the eye and I said “Right! I got this! Good as done!’

I expected it wouldn’t take me long, but I had trouble with the cobwebs. I’m not a girly girl who can’t stand spiders, quite the opposite. Ever since a friend of mine wrote this really cool play about a kid who had a daddy long legs as a friend, an Irish one at that, I sort of grew to look on the spindly little things quite differently.

Anyway, I picked everything up off the floor, folded clothes and put them away, vacuumed, made the bed but forgot to change the sheets so pulled it apart again, changed the sheets, then made it. I was really determined to do it right so the old girl couldn’t pick fault with what I’d done.

It was easy to get side-tracked. Especially when you find something you had lost under all the junk. I found a magazine with an article about Emily Dickinson in it that I’d only half-read so I lay on my bed to finish it. Just as I finished the last paragraph, I remembered the cobwebs. I heard a fly buzz – furiously – and I looked up above the curtain thingy, the pelmet, where there were heaps of cobwebs. Sure enough there was a filthy little thing had got itself into a right mess and was trying to get free.

Then I watched the most amazing thing. Two spiders, one a daddy long legs (Irish no doubt) and the other one, a huge, fleshy, black tank of a thing, began to edge their ways from opposite directions towards the fly. They hesitated and then edged forward again, like two gunslingers at midday in their game of death. I was sure my little mate was going to end up the entrée, but guess what! The black tank was chicken and nicked off to leave the fly to the daddy long legs. I didn’t watch the DLL eat. I’m not that morbid. But I just didn’t figure it – why did the little guy win against the house spider?

I decided to leave my spider friend in peace and I hoped Mum wouldn’t look up there. I asked my science teacher about that spider versus spider business a couple of years later (basically, after the trauma that followed that afternoon subsided), and he told me a heap about spiders. He said the big black guy would have lost against the DLL because it was hard for the big guy to find a spot to bite on the little spider, but the DLL had plenty to target and his toxin was pretty potent against other insects and arachnids. Interesting huh? No wonder the black spider chickened out – live to fight another day.

Anyway, enough of the lecture. Mum decided I had been too quiet and she knocked on my door. I shoved the magazine under the mattress, picked up a cloth I had used for the windows, and then opened the door.

She thought everything was ship-shape and I was worried she would spot the cobwebs, but the dust on top of the door saved them.

‘Are you kidding me?’ I said surprised she would be so petty, but she was still really pissed at me. I cleaned the dust off with my rag, muttering all the way about how small the dint was in her car’s bumper bar, knowing that was not the point.

The cupboard … that cupboard … was still a fair way down the list.

‘Bathroom next!’ she commanded and grabbed my elbow. ‘Shower, bath, both scrubbed. Tiles and grout clean.’ She produced an old toothbrush. ‘Soap residue from around the taps and under them, bathroom cupboard contents sorted and everything with expired dates thrown out. And the floor mopped. Oh, and while you’re about it, you can mash the soap leftovers and put them in the liquid soap dispenser.’

She stalked out. Like hell … all this was such a big inconvenience to her? She was the one getting a clean house out of it. Then again, could I really complain that much? Dad would have grounded me forever … if he was still here.

As I polished the mirror I thought about the DLL and his meal, and I thought about Alice through her looking glass – which you can bet she did not have to polish – and a woman named Fury (but not Mum. Her obsessive regrets came close though).

Fury was a really cool book. I wished I could meet Maurilia Meehan, the author, and ask her why she wrote it. I remember the librarian eyeing me suspiciously when I checked it out and he asked if it was a bit advanced for me. There was no way he was going to stop me borrowing it though. I told him I loved French history. Ha, I lied. But he was not going to censor me!

Mum was always glad I loved reading. She did not seem to care what I read, just as long as I kept opening books. As if I was too young to read about the French Revolution or the birth of feminism or even about how very abused women could be back then, or even now! That librarian was anacho … wait, wait … anachronistic. Yeah, that’s it. Anachronistic. Out of his time. Silly old fart probably thought I was a latent raving lunatic ‘feminist’ and I wanted to stick a knife into some politician while he was having a bath.

I just looked at him with my most ingenuous, innocent, fourteen-year-old butter-wouldn’t-melt look which was a pretty cool trick I had mastered even with black lipstick and nail polish, and pierced ears, nose and navel.

He looked like he was going to argue with me but then the head librarian came out of her office and saw me. She smiled and came over to chat, saying I had made a good choice.

‘Local author. Some good ideas,’ she said and the old dude stepped aside and did not say a word, just zapped the barcode and handed me the book.

I have a few pages to go, lots of knife imagery, perfumed handkerchiefs, and powdered wigs. I was thinking about the cameo broach image, not realising the old girl was standing in the doorway tapping her foot again. She snapped that I had been polishing the mirror for a long time, and asked me when I was going to get around to mopping the floor.

The cupboard … yeah, that cupboard … edged up the list, creeping from the shadows. Maybe those shadows even loomed a bit.

Mum barked out orders all day. She was keeping the kitchen for last. I thought I was doing pretty well, vacuuming, scrubbing. I’m sure she expected an argument, a battle of wills, but when it comes down to it I knew I had been wrong and I sincerely wanted to atone.

See! Nose stud and navel stud and all – I’m not really that rebellious and I love Mum to bits.

But that cupboard!

In the kitchen, Mum went through the list then went back to her office to join a zoom meeting. I started with washing dishes (without the dishwasher, her requirement), dried them, put them away, cleaned out the pots cupboard, did the same thing in the pantry as I had done in the bathroom cupboard – except I did not throw stuff away, just put it at the front of the shelf. Waste not, want not, and what’s a slightly passed use-by between us and our stomachs?

What else? Scrubbed the bench tops, cleaned and sorted sink cupboard and when I finished all of that I even had a go at the self-cleaning oven … just a quick wipe out. And then she dropped the bomb!

‘I want you to pull everything out of the little cupboard next to the dishwasher, sort it, and scrub that cupboard out. There’s years of grime built up. It should’ve been done a long time ago, but there’s no time like the present!’ And, through a sudden cloudburst of despair, I thought I saw her give me a sadistic little smile. After all, she didn’t have to do it. She’d been putting it off for years!

‘But …’

‘Yes?’ she said sharply.

Then that bloody foot tattoo … tap tap tap. Suddenly her shoulders slumped and haunted clouds dimmed her eyes. I wasn’t sure if I was more afraid of the cupboard or that expression and I decided I hated it more when Mum looked so defeated.

‘Well?’

‘Nothing!’

‘Just do the best you can, okay!’ Then you’re paid up in full. Yes, one day instead of three. But if you finish in here you’ve earned it.’ She began to walk out then said over her shoulder ‘You might need to use a paint scraper’.

She left without even saying goodbye to her only daughter who was about to walk into the valley of the shadow of death.

I grabbed a bottle of ammonia and knelt before the porcine-coloured door and reached for the cracked puce knob. (I like that word ‘puce’. The dictionary says it means flea-brown and that was really appropriate for this door).

I meditated for awhile, trying to imagine what could possibly be behind the door that could goosebump me out so completely. There was no way I was putting my naked hands into that cupboard so I put on latex gloves – theatrically, like a surgeon, confident, determined and totally full of crap because I did not feel a single drop of that confidence. The white rubber covered my fingernails, making them look deathly. Anxiety stabbed upward from the depths of my bowels.

As one might expect, the hinges creaked as I opened the door.

‘Great. Gothic sound effects. Just what I need.’

The cobwebs were easy to see, covered in ancient grease, and easy to remove. I told you already that I’m not scared of them either. I used a feather duster, one of those static things, and wound the cobbies around like it was fairy floss, taking care not to squash any resident spiders.

Behind the greasy curtain of webs was a pile of old jars; once containing sandwich spread, they had plastic lids and there was a dozen or so. There were coffee jars, old jam glasses with bubbled bottoms, and a few stray lids. There was enough to fill the recycle wheelie bin. I had no idea this little cupboard could contain so much. It only had a ‘drink me’ sized Alice door. I was betting there was plenty of fungus in there too but none of that would touch my lips, especially if it was labelled ‘eat me’. No way!

I managed to pull out all the jars bar one without freaking out completely. There was this tiny fish paste jar right down the back. The kind with the tin lid. It must have toppled off the top of the pile and rolled all the way down into the bowels of this dinghy nook and it was my job to save it.

For a few minutes I sat cross-legged with my hands on my head, staring at the jar, trying to move it telekinetically, wishing hard it would role towards me. The acceptance that I did not have the power some kids have, like Carrie or Charlee McGee, was devastating. It was worse than the time I tried to stop myself from walking upstairs by pressing down on my head with both hands. That hinky kind of stuff you do when you’re six years old. I couldn’t figure it out for ages and finally decided that my legs were stronger than my arms – never really satisfied with that decision either.

The cupboard!

Down the back, deep down, in the darkness, the black shadows played with my eyes and something moved. It definitely moved. I was almost ready to tell Mum I would take the four weeks of house arrest when I identified the movement as a huge sewer-brown cockroach. Bugs don’t bug me much, but I was still glad I was wearing my gloves when I squashed the vile creature with a jam jar. His revenge was to make a nauseating crunching noise and the warm acid in my stomach swirled around that point of the anxiety knife in my guts.

Jars out. Cobwebs out. Cockroach entrails out. I was ready to use chemical warfare on the years of grimy build up, the layers of mouse droppings that affected beetles, ants and spiders in much the same way as the tar pits on the hapless dinosaurs.

When I sloshed the ammonia about, the stench grew even worse, because the chemical lifted up about a centimetre of grime. The ammonia barely covered the smell of years of decay.

You know how in horror movies you get lulled into a false sense of security? The hero walks along the dark street, a rhythm of street lights are overhead, punctuating the occasional turn of the head to make sure no one is following him or her. They walk faster, and safety approaches; quicker they run and then, just as you start to think they will make it, just as they’re about to step over the magical line, they turn their head to check one last time, and they get a knife in the throat!

Well, that is effectively what happened next.

I was getting a rhythm going. I was getting confident with the scraping, pushing the blade under the carpet of grime, rolling it up, lifting it out, putting the vile mess into my bucket. Each time I pushed the blade a little further in, boosting myself up each time I pulled my arm out so that I would do it again before the thunderstorm of doubt could roll across my brain.

The blade clinked against something hard, like a drawing pin. Curiosity sat right down where caution was previously seated; it seems caution and fear zipped out for a cup of coffee. I leaned in until my head was almost through the door and I picked up the sliver of hard material. I felt it through my rubber-covered fingers, rolled it around as I pulled it out of the cupboard.

I'm not scared of anything, I told myself. And I lifted my hand to eye level to inspect it. A white fingernail, all that was left of …

… a corpse finger!

I screamed.

I jumped to my feet and dropped the gruesome ivory bone to the floor. It lay on the tiles and its wicked deed came flooding back. I saw Robert’s mischievous grin. His pointer finger was a blackened mess with its white fingernail precariously clinging to the deformed brown fingertip.

My big brother had sneaked into Mum’s dresser and found her fake nails. They were pale and reminded me of nails on a corpse – not that I had ever seen a corpse but like on telly, you know! That’s exactly what I thought they would look like, no colour, no healthy pink tinge, perfectly shaped with funny square ends.

Rob grabbed from the fridge a half-cremated thick sausage covered in congealed tomato sauce left over from our Boxing Day barbecue and he put one of those funny fingernails on the end. He shoved the square end into the tip of the sausage and then he pushed his pointer finger into the other end of the charred meat. Ta-da, instant Crypt Keeper finger.

He chased me around and around the kitchen bench and even though I saw how he had made the finger, it still made me shriek and laugh as a six year old would! Tears of mirth and fear saturated my cheeks. But then Mum came storming in from the patio. She was so pissed off. She and Dad were out there talking serious stuff. I never knew what it was all about, but this all happened just before …

Robbie freaked when he saw Mum. She never liked him very much and that made me sad.

He put his hands behind his back and I stood there staring at Mum, frightened by what she might say to him. He wasn’t a bad kid at all and I really loved him. Mum and he just didn’t get along at all and she sometimes told him he should just live with his own mum full time.

Mum demanded he show her what he was hiding behind his back but he would not show her. He wasn’t being defiant. Even younger me knew that. He was scared of her and he thought he was really going to cop it. She grabbed his elbow just as Dad came in to see what the ruckus was all about. Then Mum and Dad started yelling at each other and Dad told Rob to turn around. Guess what! There was nothing more than a greasy black stain on his hands. Where did it go?

Dad started yelling at Mum. ‘You always pick on my boy.’ She stood there and cried, defeated … that look I see passing over her face so often.

I must have known what Robbie did with the sausage all along because I remember he was standing in front of the cupboard.

Mum came running in just like she had eight years earlier. I knew she was busy in her office and I was embarrassed and afraid at interrupting her, feeling what I thought Robbie must have felt when he stood in front of that cupboard. But this time she didn’t look mad. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was a panicked ‘oh’.

It was really hard to explain why a fake nail on the floor spooked me, particularly as I couldn’t stop crying. But she seemed to understand, and she hugged me tighter than she had in a long time. She cried a little too and she said she was sorry. I think she was sorry for making me open the door that took me back to the day Dad and Robbie went away.