It’s too close to home and it’s too near the bone

You lay in the bath, steam twisting into shapes around you while the water thunders in your ears. Elsewhere in the house is bustle and noise, the insect whine of voices on a radio. Your eyes are open, dry with the heat and gritted with fatigue. Bubbles cluster, clinging to your skin like frogspawn. Light burns bright across the tiles, milk-white and shining.

Nobody ever knew that it wasn’t an accident.

*

Children can be cruel. That’s what they told you, with their lips like sugar that dripped concern while they sopped up your tears. Lunch hour spent snuffling and dishevelled, pleading to be allowed to remain behind, safe in the classrooms until the bell rang and order was restored. But instead they clucked, sympathetic, and sent you out to traipse the asphalt outside, reigned over by tyrants with blonde pigtails, their netball shirts swelling with the wind.

Their advice was always the same. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will never hurt you. And you tried to listen, solemn nods while deep breaths shuddered your frame, but after a while the repetitions rang hollow. They hadn’t meant to, but in the end that didn’t matter. They had lied.

By the time you were about nine years old, you had had enough of their laughter, the taunting jeers as they followed you home. You knew they were never going to change. But something had to give. And so you clung, resolute, to the drastic plan you’d formed, your pencil scraping feverish at paper as you illustrated your schemes.

You had never been fooled by the supposedly childproof latches on the kitchen cupboards; the ones intent on sealing them shut. They hadn’t worked. The plastic catches never duped you; instead they only excited further curiosity. The lids came away easily, and the soft glug of liquid splashed loud in the quiet.

You lay there with your chest a slow rise and fall, water sliding off your body, then creeping back in, lakes joining as they closed in around you. It was here, that the songs reached you, muddied by years and distance but growing ever stronger, until the roar of music engulfed you. And then you’re there, borne away; the smack of bare feet across the beach until the dancing ends and you’re swept up with them as they gather before their queen, tribal smiles adorned by paint and muscles flexed bronze. She accepts the gifts and reverence, goddess-like and honoured. You couldn’t believe that she would recognise you. Her emerald eyes mirror your own, and when she beckons you to her you obey, incredulous.

No one else hears the words she whispers to you. Her voice is like gravel, ancient as the dusty sepia stills of family folklore, retold each year, sustaining her memory; echoes of the past. It was she who sent you back, afloat with the strength she had instilled.

*

They found you in the bathroom, barging in when you hadn’t answered their calls, discovering you lost in daydreams, oblivious to their indignation. Your skin was blistered, red raw where the bleach had inflamed it, and they swarmed around, voices choked with anxiety as they called for help. You couldn’t answer. You knew you’d been wrong. And you left the water, leaving behind grains of sand that glittered, unnoticed, at the bottom of the bath.

Nobody ever knew that it wasn’t an accident.

. . . . . . . . . .

Text by Janie Doll, painting by David Hancock "It’s too close to home and it’s too near the bone" acrylic on canvas, 8 ft x 4, 2004.