Best Australian Yarn: The Day After Carthage Fell by Darcie Humphreys

Knee-skin felt like parchment, and the ink had bled through. Veins, sinewy and pulsating and active. Tongue, bitten, and throat blistered and melting. It was late May, and my family had come to fetch me from my grave. And they needed beer. Beneath the car, the road crunched. Outside, the town appeared frayed and off-green, grapevines woven into sunken skies and bone-coloured houses swallowed by overgrowth. Uncle Saul feigned relaxation, arm awkwardly placed on the windowsill. His gaze was unfocused. My mother, Annabelle, curled into herself and hunched in the passenger seat, looked around. Her gaze was scattered, unfocused. She had a perpetual air of quiet hysteria. I’ve always felt over-sized. Long and tendril-like, teeth wide and bulging and uncompromising, knives that tease at the big edge of a big mouth. Today, I feel small and broken. Today, I want to die. Saul and my mother overcrowded the silence. Words jumbled and forced into the air. Kookaburra laughter. Hers, maniacal. His, strained and bruised. They were anxious, killing the minutes until the pub materialised on the horizon, red-bricked and rotting. I knew I was the source of their nerves – the freshly-salted, throbbing wound bleeding along the edges of their swathe, bandaged, and half-sutured world. Bougainvillea scraped along the car, and shadow coloured cerise enveloped us momentarily. I almost smiled. “Nina, angel, do you want anything?” My mother chirped. I blinked. She knew I couldn’t respond. She turned, gripping the leather seat, rings coloured green-gold and silver-amber shining. She leaned closer. “Did you want anything to drink?” She repeated. I stared, incredulous. She swallowed. “Some wine, or cider?” Saul began to rub his brow. I pulled a sliver of paper from my bag and wrote for her; I’m okay. I have juice. “You sure angel, we can get that organic one-” I held up the paper once again. I’m okay with juice. It’s orange juice. It’s my favourite juice. “Oh, alright honey.” She relinquished grip on the seat, returning to face the road. Is that all you have to say to me?“I don’t think grog is the best call for her throat, Bells.” Saul chuckled awkwardly. “What could an organic wine do to her throat that half a damn bottle of White King bleach didn’t already do?” Silence. I wondered if that would make him cry. And then, of course, she continued into a new, inane babble, and the comment fell beneath a quickly fraying, over-stuffed rug. “You know, Lesley Beaker’s mother ‘s moved to Sydney last month, in the dead of the night and she took the cat with her.” She wasn’t malicious. She was fissured, endowed with a life decorated in denial, half-truths, and rationalisation of things etched in black. My eyes began to sting. I bit my inner-cheek and began to peel the skin along my left index finger. The neighbourhood blurred; the view crystallised. Between Ballarat and Mt Helen, cinnamon-brown stumbled into cerulean-blue, tall-brick fell into spread-stone, and farmer’s fields expanded. They were green and heaving. This was an alien homecoming. We pulled into the pub parking lot. An invisible sigh rippled through-out the family, and I lifted my legs to my chest. If I held on tight enough, I wondered if cheap leather and sadness could swallow me whole. WHAT IT’S LIKE TO GRAZE YOUR KNEE ON N-BOMB My palms collided with ocean-rock, on cliffs time had carved sharp. Pain crawled through my wrist, nestled in my elbow. I couldn’t see beyond the ridge of dunes, painted purple-black in the moonlight. I felt my vision twist – no, convulse. My hair began to writhe, slipping along my skin and sticking like honey. I felt nauseous. I was afraid. I needed to get up. I lifted my leg first. Electricity surged through my body, flashing and dissipating. I wanted to sob. I did’t understand what was happening. I stood, and immediately felt teeth along my knee. I crumpled around my leg and stared into the swirling tapestry of red pooling in the new cut. The blood danced, lifting, and billowing and smoking. It felt like a thread had escaped, and the unravelling would tear flesh from bone. The nausea began to seethe, and rock side to side. Between the ocean and the night-black cliff, a chanting began. It was directionless. Looming. Untethered. I knew I was crying, but I was unsure if it was tears or blood. The cuts atop my knee began to flash – red, yellow, orange, red again. Everything else hurt too. Watching the cuts breathe and flash, I realised other injury ran deeper – equally raw and undried. My skin puckered and spat. Nausea returned. I fell to the ground again, vomiting and sobbing and reality peeled from the sky like aged, forgotten paint. Months had been defined by yellow-white walls, tiled floor and fluorescent light. Entering Saul’s home felt like stepping into a fever-dream coloured maroon and draped in vine. The house embodied nineteen-sixties eclectic charm: exposed brick littered with a chaotic selection of Polaroids, artwork, and themed knick-knacks my mother began collecting after her children had left home. Here, it felt warm and known and safe. It also felt like I did not belong inside of those things, like they were mummified and placed behind spot-free glass. The roast my mother served for dinner was splintered, and it smelled like blood. Around the family, purple-red-ochre light danced between brick and broken window. They are buzzing with chatter, and it’s warm, and the air is golden with evening-promise, and I want to scream without blisters curdling my mouth. The dining table is dressed in floral placemats, woven and handmade (Saul only buys handmade), with obnoxiously large white lilies placed in the dead centre in a dead-brown vase. I hate lilies. But the sunset is painting them metallic, and it’s quieter than the ward here. Beside the lilies, there is beer and wine and gin. It’s hard to ignore that both Saul and my mother were avoiding looking at me. The aversion is plain. It’s almost comical. I knew my silence was loud, but their fear was screeching. _Who are you now? Did you die there? Do you want some wine? Beer? _Gin? __ “Nina, have more beans,” Uncle Saul pointed his knife at my plate. It is barely half-full. I sigh. “She doesn’t need the beans, Saul.” My mother grumbles. I think it’s meant to be playful. “Her body needs restoration.” “I think her mind needs that more than the body, honey.” He falls silent. She grabs her wine glass. “I never ate my beans, darling, not even when my mother took the book to the back of my head. And I’ve been thin every day of my life, even after giving birth, darl. Always thin.” “Mum never hit you,” Saul sounded angry. “She did.” Another grab for the wine glass. I watch her sip, breathe, sip. For the first time in my life, I notice the knitted jumpers she wears are always dark-coloured. I reach for the beans, placed to the left of the lilies in a floral pot. They match the placemats. My mother licks her lips, watching. Saul smiles at me. I return it. The silence has gotten louder. Another grab for the wine glass. They talk to each other like it’s a slapstick piece. Half-cooked jokes, stories bubbling and overflowing, names, places, and days I didn’t know. Why are you performing for me? The beans are cold in the middle. They start laughing. My shoulders slump. Why are you so hateful? I close my eyes. The lashes are hot. My lids burn. Maybe you did die there. I place a hand on my throat, fingers clasped over the skin as though they’ll piece the flesh back together. Saul notices me and places his fork down delicately. “I’m taking the camera down to Torquay tomorrow, Nins, do you want to come? I’m taking the van.” I smile and nod. I want to make him happy, to be the good niece. Resurrection of a pure image, though I am sullied and broken and a half-version of the girl he raised. Can you love half-versions? The sunset turns silver. “Kendra will be here before nine, darl.” My mother announced. Kendra, their eldest sibling. The loudest. Saul picks loose meat from the frills of his moustache. “Bit late, you sure she’ll get the time? The store has been mad since Fiona left.” “It has. She said she could use the wine.” I reach into my bag, and I stand. I scrawl on my notepad, quickly and blindly. I’m going for a walk. They protest – be safe, don’t be too long, take your phone. As if anything worse could befall me here, in the afterglow of gang-rape and suicide. This place is always green. When autumn falls into winter, and in the throes of summer when the road sweats and the plants drip, it stays green. Everything held the wet better East, and more wet came. It felt like the world around you lived and suspired in tandem with your breath. Something about that made me feel ill. I followed the pieces of road I could remember. Straight and straighter still. I would know the turn when it came. It was on the peak of the hill, and it was a right-turn. There would be a sign reading Bird World. The path into the reserve behind the neighbourhood was steep. At the base, it appeared entirely vertical and the trees at the top glimmered in the spare sun. Next to me, paddocks sprawled. It was idyllic enough to be sickening. The reserve opened like an emerald-brown canyon. The branches and shrubs and grass were wild, unkempt and curling. I felt my body relax. I felt safe, hidden in foliage. And hundreds of kilometres away from the ocean. Leaves collected in a thin blanket. Everything appeared delicate – threaded and made of silk. I wanted to hum. I wanted to sing something childish and rhythmic, and wonder about childish and rhythmic things. My chest felt charred, drooped and burnt and empty. I wanted to feel. I wanted to stop feeling. I wanted to be everywhere, and I wanted to disappear. I wanted to cut the blackened bits from my ribs and breathe in something that tasted like fruit. There was chimney-smoke in the distance – a fire in December. I continued down the reserve trail. Butterflies littered the air – brown ones, the same colours as the undergrowth. This place was thriving, sprayed with summer breeze and willing soil. Halfway down, the fields fade into houses – weatherboard and old. The dirt yellowed. The air began to warp. Over a ridge of sand, and fence and dried grass, an old tin shed sat surrounded by decrepit cars. I paused, shoes crunching. Across the front of the shed, cartoonish letters splattered in apricot-white read McFadden’s. Uncle Saul had worked for McFadden’s for over two decades, sorting and cutting and twisting meat-flesh. McFadden’s produced gourmet butchered goods. In their glory days, their monopoly on the regional market was immense. My entire childhood I had bragged about his employment – like it was some kind of royalty, the tenuous tie to luxury product that proliferated within each grocery store during the twilight of the twentieth century. At age 9, he had told me that each morning they had to pull the meat out of deep freeze and cut away green mould from the edges. I could never figure out whether he was serious. It felt odd to notice this emblem, buried in the wilderness and farmland. It was an emblem that represented relics of the past – a time when Saul was still able to work. A time when my mother’s manner maintained some hint of vivacity without a shroud shaded deranged. A time when there was still an optimistic canopy over my view of the family. The silver-sunset began to wane, and the ribboned strips of cloud above the trees feathered. I decided to turn back. As the sunlight peeled away from the reserve, memories of the dark and the ocean and the past crawled along my spine, nesting in the base of my skull. It was time to leave. The walk home was fast. The green slipped into black, gaps that had glowed with sun became shadows. Warmth had trickled from my face and arms and seeped out of my toes into cold, unknown ground. The crunch of each footstep felt louder and louder. I thought of the shed. I felt sick. I did not know why. The colours of the gardens lining the streets and hills became one with the bitumen of the road – charcoal-blue and shallow. Home still held colour. I walked in the door, and felt each muscle loosen. My mother and Saul sat outside on the back deck, holding packages labelled McFadden’s. When I was six, the birds escaped. Bird World had some kind of breach – faulty netting, untrained staff. The details were blurred by the result. Hundreds of birds escaped into the ether surrounding the sanctuary, and the wrangling effort was lacklustre at best. They stayed escaped. Now, over a decade later, the birds remain in the area – not even a kilometre from the site of the escape. This is due to my mother. She had dedicated herself enduringly to feeding the escaped birds twice a day – once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and only the most expensive mince McFadden’s stocked. In the twilight, the birds circled, and my family sat with the bird-dinner. The collection assembled – wine, beer, gin. Birds coloured fire-orange swirled around them, fat-bellied and black-beaked. My mother threw meat into the trees and flowers that lined the railing. “Nins, how was your walk? You missed your Aunt Kendra.” She sang. I pulled my paper-book and pen from my back-pocket. I watched the birds blend meat with fallen flower, red-blood staining the wood. I saw a shed with Mcfadden’s painted on the side, out behind the reserve before the road into town. Do you know it? They exchanged a look. My mother shook her head, in what was attempted subtlety. “That uh, that’s old Bob’s place,” Saul answered. My mother waved her hand. I wondered how drunk she was. I gestured at my uncle to keep talking, brow furrowed. “He worked with us for, gosh. Maybe ten years? Just shy of getting his pension, something like that. But he uh, he was fired. About, uh, two years before I left.” I held my gaze with him. He pursed his lips and gripped the side of his deck-chair. “He was fired, for uh, for sexual assault.” My mother half-dropped her wine onto the table. Coincidence is an animal of strange, spiked fur. It does not look how it feels, but it feels strongly all the same. I nodded. I wanted to force a laugh, a nervous and void-filling laugh, but the scorched tissue of my throat only flexed.