A Short Film
By a.hutchinson
- 449 reads
A Short Film
Although it's summer and the day is coloured bright, she is cold. She
rubs tears into her make-up and sniffs hard, holds her breath with her
eyes closed. The sky fades to night slowly, the dusty orange making the
birds look like black cut-outs against it. We sit on the roof of my
house, our legs hot on the tin, watching the world settle and the
lights turn on. I put my arm around her, because there was nothing else
I can think of doing. Her head fits onto my shoulder, her soft sounds
perfectly onto the breeze.
(fade out)
It is my brother and I who get there first, the cicadas
buzzing like bushfire in the leaves and the smell of cut grass
everywhere. We watch the house from the car seats that feel like they
are melting to our legs, the windows rolled down but only letting more
hot air into us. My brother touches the steering wheel every now and
then, just to tell me how it is 'burning', and we talk about playing
backyard cricket. The front of the house looks as if we are seeing it
through water, like what I imagine a mirage to look like. My heart is
beating faster. I can see it moving my T-shirt. My brother nudges his
fist against my leg, winks at me.
Dean, all red hair and freckles, so many that he looks too
tanned, and Greg walk up in the side mirrors, reach through to unlock
the back doors. They sit behind us, make the car shake, and speak
distantly about the heat. A shadow moves across the window of the
house. Dean asks if they're in there now. My brother spits onto the
dusty road. Fuck 'em, Dean says, and Greg nods, focussed on the house.
I feel heavy, dark. Grind my teeth hard.
'Fuck 'em,' My brother repeats, pulling his body out of the car. We all
follow, stomping heavily and clenching our fingers into tight
balls.
Dean yells from the backyard something I can't understand.
He's chased the second one through the kitchen, must have caught him.
My brother yells in response. The TV is speaking loud, trying to sell
something over the painful groans.
'You shouldn't a' hit him so hard,' I say to Greg. The glass from the
coffee table is shattered around the blood and carpet. The three of us
standing over the fat one, his hair is clumped together and sticking to
his forehead. Dean is talking again outside, but not to us. The fat one
tries to get up, his hand unable to get him off the floor, he winces at
the movement. He sounds like he's choking on water. I can see a tooth
caught in a pull of the carpet. I tell Greg, you shouldn't a' hit him
so hard. And something crashes outside, we go out to
help.
(fade out)
On plastic chairs by the water tank, the mosquitoes, I sit
opposite my brother, Mum in the kitchen window making salads. A plane
flies noisily overhead. He stares at me through narrowed eyes. A ripple
through the leaves of age old trees and whispers of a small
town.
(fade out)
Under stars the lights flash across my mothers face, her hand
over her mouth. My brother stands in front of me, his arms crossed,
talking over the steel gate. His white singlet stained in dirt. He
offers his hands like giving up his weapons, with no resistance, and my
mother cries hard from the front door. We sit side by side, like we
used to on old family trips, in the back of the police car and watch
home disappear, the dog chasing us along the street, like he always
used to do.
(fade out)
She looks as if the tears have not stopped since we last met,
but as if she's continued to apply make-up to her tired eyes. It's
mixed like paint over her skin. She cries louder when we make eye
contact, fast tears across her cheek, deep breaths. I imagine their
salty taste. My brother nods to her, says it's okay. She crushes the
tissues into her palm, puts a hand to her eye, pushes at her skin.
Another officer puts an arm around her, makes her sit down on the
waiting bench.
(fade out)
He writes what I say in notes in a room of stale colours. I
tell him that Greg shouldn't a' hit him so hard, but how they deserved
it for breaking into her house and doing what they did to her, because
she's only small and a woman and she couldn't fight him off and no one
should ever do that to a girl. No one should ever make a girl do that.
I say how the fat one was who she said did it, how he held her down and
struggled with his belt and took his pants off. He should never have
done what he did. He deserved this. The officer shakes his head, looks
at me with sad eyes. Alright, he says.
'Okay', He says.
In the room they've left empty around me, the clouds edge
slowly across the gap of sky. A glint of sun peeks through and brings a
thousand V shapes to life across the meshed wire of the window, like
awkward smiles. A black bird hits heavily onto the glass and is gone
again, just as quickly as it came.
(fade out)
My brother shuffles his feet on the lino, pulls at his
fingernails as if his hands have nothing better to do. Dean sits at my
opposite side, his head down, the sun gone from his expression. Greg
taps his foot, echoes down the hall. A high pitched noise comes from a
radio in another room, followed by voices that speak in numbers. The
shined shoes of two officers double tap down the hall to us, one
holding a clipboard with a sticker on it. The older officer with sky
blue eyes through glasses. He says:
'He's gonna' live, but you boys messed him up pretty good. The other
one's not too bad, a few broken bones.' The officer says that he's
taken a statement from her. Greg's foot stops tapping. The echoes fall
silent.
With an officer holding her arm, she shakes her head when she
sees us. She's still crying, saying no and please to the blue uniform.
The officer leads her towards us, her trying to cover her heat filled
eyes and drained face without make-up. She looks across the four of us
in deep breaths, her eyes squinted, her lips shining under the humming
light. She says she's sorry. She holds her fingers as if her hands have
nothing better to do. Her hair looks slept on.
'I'm so sorry,' she says, looking to the officer, her eyes begging. He
stares unflinchingly. 'They didn't do those things', she says. 'Those
two boys, they never did it, y'know? She adjusts her bra strap under
her shirt. Dean looks as if he's pushing his eyes into his head, he
sniffs. Greg looks away. My brother stares at her. She says sorry. She
says sorry to me.
'They never did rape me', she says. 'I'm so sorry.'
(fade out)
At night. On my roof, the wind has a hesitation which
confuses the birds and takes leaves from branches, and my heart feels
it too. My mother cuts vegetables in the kitchen and says nothing, her
actions communicating all she can think. She cuts more onions than
she'll ever need and hides her tears. She still makes enough for my
brother. I catch my finger in a roofing nail and suck the blood away,
watch the street lights turn on one by one, the grey clouds making it
happen early. The flicker of raindrops unsettle the dust on the tin and
leave marks all around. Just as my tears. They settle, as the day, and
wait for the clouds to clear away, and my brother to return home.
(fade out)
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