as they repeatedly stab me with questions and accusations, cunningly trying to catch me in a lie, i wearily relive the experience of discovering the bleeding little girl. no matter what i say to them, they say 'AHA! you are guilty, guilty GUILTY!, you killed her!' their beady black eyes tirelessly roaming my face for tell-tale signs: a bulging vein, a twitching muscle, pearls of sweat and a hasty mouth-covering hand gesture.
again, i try to remember. maybe if i go over the memory with a fine tooth comb i will see some evidence to justify my innocence. i rewind the images and go back to the afternoon in the garden of my childhood home. the white peeling weatherboard, the old windows like blank eyes, the tough elephant grass struggling up through the loose, sandy earth. i sit under the hills hoist, pondering the flawless sky and hearing the restless wind rustling the gums. did i hear the high thin scream from the laundry, or am i just imagining it now, embellishing the memory?
i run around the side of the ramshackle, crumbling shack to the flyscreen door. in the dim light i see her lying on the peeling lino, gasping wide-eyed, matted blonde hair, white skinny splayed limbs, and so much blood spreading across the shabby floor, pooling in the cracks: her life flooding out in crimson, from the chest wound in her small vulnerable body. the knife sticking brutally out of her with its wicked black handle, and mother, kneeling there in the shadows pretending to be attempting to make the girl's last moments as comfortable as possible. insincerely cradling the heavy, drained head - and it was she who took the life. this knowledge slowly stains me with shock. our eyes meet, hers a veneer of grief with dark craftiness beneath the blue iris.
and of course she tries to pin the blame on me. well i have faith in forensic science to come to the bottom of this. but the fear lurks still that maybe mother is cleverer than she looks.
later in the lounge room, i find a packet of photos lying on the tattered seagrass matting. photos of the little girl in different stages of death and decay. on family vacations amidst smiling tanned family, floral shorts and dresses, sea, sand and sky. at birthday parties, on the couch, or propped seemingly playing the family organ, while all around her have shining eyes, warm plump skin and animation, she is white, cold, slack-jawed, her hollow dead eyes ringed with purple and blue. i recognise her too well, for she is me.
copyright 1995 lisa bode