Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
So here I am in the Gunnas writing class. It’s crazy because I have been thinking about this for the last week or more and have written ideas in my head, but when it comes to it I am lost.
I was sitting here thinking I have no idea what to write because all my ideas are for longer things that I can’t make into a chunk for today. But the reality is that is another excuse. Deep down I know what I have been circling and I am going to have to write it. I search desperately for something else. When I am at a loss I look back at the list of the pivot points in my life I just wrote for one of the exercises. And there it is again. That night. Oh shit I am writing it, please don’t cry yet.
At least if I finally do it then I can use it to say “well nothing is going to be as hard as writing that”. So I take a deep breath and plunge in.
I remember the build-up. The scene is that I am about nine or ten years old in the big shared house that we rent with two other families. The families are firstly, a single mum with one child much younger than me. Because I am 9 I find her intensely annoying she is always ‘borrowing’ my things and not respecting my only-child’s need for space.
The other family (the point of this story) was another single mum and her two children. The boy is my age, and his sister only a year or so younger. I love them both. They are my best friends. I have known them for three or four years, which at nine feels like forever. It is forever. We have lived together since their mother left her husband and moved in with me, my mum and my step-father. And our dog. Oh and the other annoying family… My mum has told me since that she never knew two children who got on so well and played so harmoniously as the boy, my best friend, and I.
So this day, my best friends had gone to see their father on an access visit and it is now getting towards night.
That night.
No, it’s no good, I am going to cry. Plunge on anyway.
It was getting late and I am trying to talk to the mother of my best friends, but she is not really listening. I remember feeling hurt that what I was trying to tell her wasn’t important. I am about nine and have a nine-year-old’s sensibility about what is important. Soon nothing is going to be important.
At some point I must have gone to my room. Been told to go to my room? Because I can remember sitting there and hearing the screams.
I can’t describe the screams.
Now, all these years later and I am a mother myself the memory of the screams is layered with what I can imagine about the screams. Then it was just screaming. Screaming I can’t describe.
Oh fuck I am really crying now – I might need to blow my nose. Why did I start on this? I am now the person who went to Catherine Deveny’s class and cried! Now the woman across the table is offering me a tissue. Oh shit, people are being kind, which only makes me want to cry more.
The screams.
“My babies, my babies”. I remember hearing this over and over again. And the endless barking of my dog. I don’t remember what I am thinking as I hear this. Eventually the bedroom door opens. My dog comes flying in from my mother’s arms.
“They’re dead”.
That was it. That was all she said. And the screams haven’t stopped.
“My babies”.
The door closes. I don’t really remember what I thought as I sat there trying to cuddle and calm my barking dog. I think I remember feeling like I shouldn‘t be left alone, that an adult should be with me. But maybe this is, in part, because I have since spoken (not very often maybe once or twice) with my mother and she asked something about whether I felt looked after that night. I had to admit I didn’t. I couldn’t blame her as she shook her head and felt again the pain that she hadn’t been able to make a difference to either her best friend or to her daughter. That night. But who could help anyone on that night?
I also asked my mother about how I was after. The following week, months. I have very little memory of that time… My childhood memories are very fragmentary until maybe a year or two after that night. That night. I was trying to piece together a bit more of who I might have been then and how I dealt with the grief. She told me that I seemed ‘lost’ for quite some time after. But this doesn’t tell me much either. Lost… how lost? Where had I gone?
So I am here writing about it now – I have gone somewhere – it has never gone from me. That night. And I’m writing about that night but I still can’t describe the screams. I am telling people I want to be a writer but I can’t describe the screams.
How can you describe the screams of a mother who has just found out both her children have been killed by their father?