Innocence Annegato (Drowned Innocence)

1.

The bright light of the morning sun stung my eyes as I opened them to greet the new day. A new, painful, boring day, which I wished I didn’t have to face. I sighed and scrunched my eyes up, wishing I could simply go back to sleep. That obviously wasn’t going to happen, and even as I started to move to lie down again my mother screeched at me to get up.

“Out of bed! You’ll be late for school if you don’t and there’s no way in hell that I’m going to drive you today!”

I could hear my baby brother Dominic wailing from his room further down the hall. Grudgingly, I got out of bed and changed into my school uniform. There wasn’t much point in messing around, after all being stuck at home with Mum while she drinks-oh I’m sorry-works very hard on her TAFE work-is actually worse than going to school. Amazingly. After I brushed my hair into some sort of order and brushed my teeth, I went into Dominic’s room. He was lying down, flaying his arms around in an agitated manner and crying. The heat was getting to him. Mum hadn’t remembered to open the tiny window in his room, and the summer weather could make the small room quite uncomfortable indeed. I slid the window open, shaking my head without really knowing I was doing it.

I picked up Dominic, my arms almost instantly strained with the weight of him. It wasn’t that he was a heavy baby; my arms just aren’t muscular at all. Thin as sticks, someone had once teased me in grade 1. Lord knows why I still remember that… Dominic continued blubbering, but began to calm down after a while.

“Come on Dom,” I whispered to him as I slowly walked down the hallway to the kitchen, “Charlotte’s got to have some breakfast.”

The kitchen was certainly in a rather picturesque state-for a garbage dump. Really, it was quite an achievement for Mum to have so many empty bottles of beer, wine caskets, and rum bottles scattered about just two days after I’d cleaned. Normally such a mess would only eventuate by a Friday at the earliest, but today was Tuesday. I sat Dominic in his high chair and then got myself a piece of bread to eat.

“You’ve got to feed him Mum,” I said as I tried to slathered vegemite on the almost stale bread. It clumped and tore as I attempted to spread the cold black substance over it.

“I know how to look after my own children, Charlotte,” Mum shot back angrily, the tell-tale slur in her voice present revealing she hadn’t actually stopped drinking since she started yesterday evening. I shrugged, it really didn’t matter to me what she thought she knew. I knew she didn’t know how I cried myself to sleep for a month straight, nor how I cut myself. She didn’t know how I had watched the caked blood turn to tiny rivers and rush down my arms and legs as I showered, how I wished everyday that I’d work up the courage to finish my work. Not that I was going to tell her. She wouldn’t understand. And why would you tell a drunk that you were suicidal?

Dominic still sat there, quiet for once, observing me eating my meagre breakfast and Mum glaring at me. Impatiently he banged one little fist against the tray on the high chair. Mum turned her glare to him, but I knew it softened somewhat as she looked at his pale, perfect white skin and blue eyes which were full of hope, life and at that moment, hunger. She got up and began to search through the cupboard for a tin of baby food. The phone rang and I picked it up after three rings.

“Hello?” I said into the receiver, trying to sound awake and pleasant.

“Charlotte? Hey can I talk to Mum?” my elder brother’s voice said to me.

“Sure thing,” I held out the phone for Mum “It’s for you,” I told her and she absently took it from me.

I left the kitchen to pack my school bag in my room. I could hear Mum talking pleasantly to Jonathan, and then she erupted in a rage.

“What do you MEAN you’re dropping out of Uni?” she yelled.

I raised my eyebrows and continued searching for my English book under my bed. Jon was basically the only one of our family that seemed to have been going somewhere. He had all the hopes, mainly because he did well in school and held a part time job for longer than Mum ever had. I, on the other hand, am completely useless and cannot do well at schoolwork for the life of me.

“Where are you going?” she shouted. Dominic began to cry again, scared of all the noise. “You can’t just up and go! You’re just like your father!”

Wow. That was quite possibly the biggest insult she could give him-he would not be pleased.

“FINE THEN-HANG UP!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. I quickly zipped my bag shut and dashed back into the kitchen to say bye to Dominic. I dried his tears with the corner of my long sleeved blouse and gave him a kiss on the forehead. For a second I thought about saying goodbye to Mum, but she was slugging down yet another beer so I just left. I walked out over the dry grass of our tiny front yard, my leather shoes crunching a path as I went. Sweat trickled down my spine as I hurried to the end of the street to the waiting school bus. The sun was already quite high in the clear, pale blue sky and the air crackled with humidity. After school I’d sit around in the pool-at least that would be cool.

2.

It was lunchtime. The school was abuzz with students going to the tuck shop, and finding their friends to eat lunch with. As usual I sat with my group of friends near A Block. The cement was cool on the backs of my legs as I stretched them out in front of me. Tessa, Marie and Jacqueline all opened up their lunch boxes and started to eat. As per usual, I forgot to even try to bring something to school to eat, so Jacque gave me half of her sandwich and a muesli bar.

“How’d everyone go on that English exam?” Marie asked glancing at us.

Jacque shrugged, “It was okay, but I’m pretty sure I just got another B+. I’d love an A, even an A- but you know Mrs Sanchez. Totally a hard marker,”

I just sat there and gazed out at the wilting flowers in the garden bed as they discussed the exam. It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to say about it, but that I hadn’t actually done the exam so I figured my viewpoint didn’t count. The roses were dying, the edges of their buds had been eaten away by some sort of insect and I felt I could relate to them.

“Charlotte,” Jacque said and waved her hand in front of my eyes “snap out of it.”

“Huh?” I said, half startled.

“You were staring off into space again,” she said, popping open a packet of chips.

“So Charlotte, I was just asking Marie and Jacque when your mind was off orbiting Mars, if you’d like to come over and have a swim after school too,” Tessa asked.

“Umm, no sorry. I’ve got to go home,” I declined her offer in a quiet voice, wishing I could in fact go to my friends’ house instead of returning to the hell of my own but I knew I had to make sure Dominic was alright. The afternoons were the worst time of the whole day to not be at home to look after him, as Mum would usually be asleep in a drunken stupor or still trying to drink herself into an unconscious state.

“Ah okay then-maybe on the weekend then,”

“Sure, maybe,” I replied, knowing there was no chance I’d ever be able to in a million years.

3.

As I walked home after school, I absently hummed along to that old Eric Clapton song, “Tears in Heaven”, which I had had stuck in my head for most of the day. The storm birds called hauntingly, predicting a storm. My school bag cut into my shoulders as it was weighed down with the majority of my textbooks. I walked slowly down the aging footpath, enviously glancing at our neighbour’s neatly manicured lawns. Sure their grass, like our own was half dead, but theirs seemed to at least have some sense of dignity in the end of its life. I reached our house and went around the back, pushing through the rusted gate that never actually latched shut at the side of the house. The pool was such a relief to see, after such a long hot day at school. I dumped my bag near the bag screen door and pulled off my shoes and socks, discarding them and dashed down to the pool. In truth, it was just slightly deeper than a wading pool, and I knew the water would only come up to my knees when I stepped in.

But I didn’t step in. I couldn’t step in. Dominic was in the pool, floating on the surface of the water, which reflected the harsh rays of the sun. He was face down in the water, and looked like an unexperienced diver, scared to fully dive under the water in it’s depths. My brother was not a diver. I stood stock-still. I’m not quite sure how long I stood there, absolutely silent, holding my breath. I swear I could hear the thumping of my heart in my chest cavity. The sound of the blood passing from atrium to ventricle, and onto ventricle to atrium in each heartbeat. I stared. Stared at my small brother’s half naked pale body as it floated half submerged in the pool. Nothing made sense, and I felt I finally knew what people meant when they say they simply felt numb. Just that morning I had seen him, alive and so animated. I had kissed him goodbye for god sakes. My mind clouded with questions…so many questions I truly didn’t want answers too, but my heart demanded an explanation.

How had this happened? When? Who had done this terrible deed? I thought I knew, in my gut I knew so I turned slowly and walked away and into the house.

“Mum,” I said quietly. It was as if I couldn’t bring myself to show my anger, or my confusion. I did not understand it. In my mind I saw a flash of the scene I had just seen. Something inside of me snapped.

“MUM!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

“WHAT?” She shouted back. I ran to her room at the other end of the house. From one look at her messy hair and the empty bottles arranged in no particular form of order on the bedside table I knew she’d been sleeping off the drink.

“Did you,” I stopped. My mouth was dry, I whetted my lips and began again, “did you know,” I faltered again. I took a deep breath in, trying in vain to steady myself as I knew I only had so long before I broke down and wouldn’t be able to say a thing “did you know that Dominic is in the pool.”

“Hmm,” she rubbed at her eyes “it was so hot so I let him have a swim.”

“But Mum,” I said hopelessly “he can’t swim. He couldn’t swim.”

“Oh for fu”-

“Don’t you dare. Listen to me! Your son is dead. You killed my brother, you killed my brother and he’s dead!” I screeched at her, knowing I was repeating myself but not knowing what else to say.

Her face blanched. “Are you sure?” she looked at me as hot tears ran down my face and I clenched my fists in rage “Oh god what have I done?”

I couldn’t stand anymore of this. I ran from her room to the kitchen and dialled 000.

“Hello this is”- I hung up. I just couldn’t do it. I sobbed into my hand, my tears running down my arm, stinging the cuts from the night before on my wrist. Again I picked up the phone and dialled. I had to do this, for Dominic’s sake. I stayed on the line that time and gave them all the details I could. I hoped that they understood me. But who else would know how to understand through someone crying better than them? The ambulance came, about twenty minutes later to take his body away.

It was all my fault. I sat under the bench in the kitchen and cried into my hands. I found that once I had started I couldn’t stop and all around me the storm birds seemed to call to me, singing ‘too late, too late’. I couldn’t comprehend it. It was me that wished to die, and my little brother had received the dubious honour of obtaining that goal before I could. Why, I wondered at sometime in my grief, why was it he who was taken, he who hadn’t experienced any pain from life, who had hope left. There was nothing I could have done; I knew it in my heart, though I wished that I could have swapped his fate for mine.