Homecoming

Home –coming

WRITTEN BY KYRAH HONNER

The house shouldn’t have been able to stand in the mangroves, but it did. The mud caused the foundation poles to sway, which made the house look like it was alive, breathing. A thought struck me that it was like those abandoned cars, where the vines creep over and swallow the rusted metal. Nature taking the world back.

I shut the car door and glanced at Marnie. She looked back at me with apprehension. The gravel driveway ended about three metres away from the house, so we would have to wade in the ankle-deep muck to climb the veranda.

We held our suitcases overhead as we splashed our way to the house and I thanked my lucky stars that I packed light. Marnie tossed her own suitcase onto the veranda and pulled herself up in a fluid motion. I passed her my luggage and grabbed the bottom of the railing, preparing to heave myself up, but the rotting wood crumbled like a cookie in my hands. Marnie grabbed onto me and pulled me up with an eyeroll.

‘Thanks, tidda.’

I took the housekey from my jacket pocket – now spattered with mud – and unlocked the front door, which screeched like an angry possum as it swung open. We peered into the dank-smelling darkness.

‘This place is a bloody death trap,’ I said.

Marnie hummed in agreement. ‘Can’t believe Nan lived here, ay.’

We scrutinised the place upon entering. The small living room that doubled as an entryway had a large lightbulb dangling from a cord on the ceiling which didn’t turn on when I flicked the light switch. The couch was covered in mould, the TV was a box from the 70’s, and the rug had been eaten away by god-knows-what. The bathroom and toilet were barely usable and only one of the two bedrooms had a bedframe for its mattress. Marnie called dibs on it.

I sat on the mattress on the floor in my designated room. It was clear that this bedroom hadn’t been used for a long time. A thick layer of dust, which wasn’t found anywhere else in the damp swamp house, had settled over every surface – the floorboards, the set of drawers in the corner, the pale blue walls. I dragged my bare toes along the wooden floor, stirring up a cloud of previously untouched dust. It was

the guest bedroom, I realised. Untouched, unused, unvisited.

‘Could Nan even cook?’ I exclaimed later, when rummaging through the kitchen cupboards to find only one metal pot, poxy and busted. We had brought our own food for dinner, thank god.

‘Nan was a simple woman,’ Marnie replied, shrugging. She diced onions on a sheet of paper towel. ‘Maybe all she needed was one pot or everything.’

I didn’t reply. I just watched the water boil in the pot until I could put the two-minute Maggi noodles in. There was a strange reflection in the metal that I couldn’t see properly.

We ate dinner at the frosted glass table that sat in the kitchen, illuminated by a small candle. It was the only source of light we had found in the house, other than hundreds of mosquito coils. I could blame my uneasiness on being wary of bugs in the house, at the very least.

‘Aunty Junie would have a fit if she seen this place, ay? The gammin door to the bathroom fell onto me when I went to go toilet,’ Marnie was saying, gesturing with her fork to the hallway, where the aforementioned door rested against the wall beside the bathroom entryway.

The wind snaked its way through the surrounding mangroves and battered against the house, causing it to rock like a ship at sea and the bamboo windchime by the front door to sing. I felt like a landlubber and the movements put me off my dinner.

‘Isn’t it weird that this is all that’s left of our Nan?’ she continued while shovelling soy sauced-covered noodles in her mouth. ‘We never once visited, but this is all her. All that’s left.’ I stood up. ‘I’m going to bed, ‘night.’

She echoed a goodnight and pulled my unfinished bowl to herself. The house moaned and settled as I ambled down the hallway. A stained, tattered Aboriginal flag stapled to the wall reached out to me on the breeze as I passed.

My stomach was curled into knots, but I couldn’t place it. The hallway seemed to continue the further I went, stretching into the pitch.

I reached my room at last. I paused to glance back at Marnie at the dining table, and froze. I peered closer, my eyes straining in the dark.

In the flickering candlelight, she almost looked exactly like –

Nan sat primly at the table in my cousin’s place, staring at the the candle flame’s dance. She looked pretty much the way I remembered her, from six years ago. Her feathery, black hair cast shadows on her face. Her joey eyes flicked up, and we locked gazes.

My intake of breath echoed, and suddenly I was in the kitchen again, standing in front Nan like a child waiting for a scolding. Sunlight spilling through the windows made the glass table glow. I was mothballed, enthralled by the old woman who used the candle to light a cigarette.

‘Nan?’ I whispered, and the glass table shattered in an explosion of tiny frosted pieces flying up. I instinctively threw my arms over my head, but the cuts never came. Slowly, I lowered them. It was dark again, so I blinked a few times as my vision re-adjusted. I stood before the guest room.

My head whipped towards the candlelight, but it was just Marnie.

COWBOY WORMS IN THE DESERT BY BRONTE MARK