The
unopened windows exacerbated the degree to which the house would each day boil
beneath the rising parabola of summer, the rooms become a vault through which
he would drag his naked foulness, tearing his hair and clawing at himself to
break the skin, mistaken in the thought that it was his physical body inside
which he was imprisoned, each day’s intake of whiskey throughout releasing him
aquiescent into an endurable stupefaction.
Often in
such stasis, Brother Skunk would realise he had actually been speaking the
words out loud, assigning to her phantom whatever words he felt she might have
used at whatever projected age and even performing the role in his best
approximation of how he remembered her accent to sound, managing somehow even
in his condition to negotiate the various currents of his intoxicate
semi-consciousness, simultaneously conjuring the event itself and the event as
referred to within its own aftermath.
ache1 (arriving home): Good
day? Great day?
Skunk (sarcastic): Oh great day, greatest
of great days.
ache1: What? What is it,
what’s wrong?
Skunk: Ready? antler was suspended.
ache1: Oh that is
excellent, great.
Skunk: Yes, yes, except it’s not…
I’m not joking. They phoned not long after lunch and I had to go over. They eh,
they referred to it on the phone as “an unfortunate episode”.
ache1: Proceed.
(cog: No, the point of the exercise was
to promote an awareness of the news, to encourage the children to become more
involved with the media that surrounds them on a more substantial level than simply
reading gossip about their favourite actors or popstars. It was
certainly not to engender some… We expect the children put forward their
own ideas, and not simply become a mouthpiece espousing those of their
parents.
Skunk: Well, that’s ehm, I mean,
that’s an assumption on your part, that the the, whatever antler said was is is
is, you don’t have any idea that those views are my views, or my partner’s
views either.
The news item in question chosen from
the local weekly concerning a mother who, alarmed at finding some broken glass
in a nearby play area still felt it someone else’s responsibility to clear
away, and having failed to alert anyone to the latent danger was now
complaining across the front page because a few days later, in a near incredible
instance of retribution, it was her own son as had fallen onto it and suffered
an injury to his forearm requiring several stitches.
Skunk: If we’ve done anything, it’s…
What we’ve done, our only ehm… Ever since antler has been aware of the news on
tv and the papers and whatever, we’ve both encouraged her always to ask how
that news came to, how it ended up in the papers or on television. You know,
every article all I wanted was that she’d ask herself “How did this get
into the news?” just, even just as a starting point, and this was one she
realised, when she thought about that realised there was something more going
on than just the story, the surface of it. I I, I mean, I find it hard to
believe she would be punished for that, when it seems so… transparent that, it
shows that she’s doing exactly what you eh, isn’t that exactly what she
was supposed to be doing?
cog: Oh this is not a question of your
daughter fulfilling the assignment, the reason you were called in, the reason
for the suspension was to do entirely with the tone in which the
assignment was carried out.
Skunk: That being?
cog: I hardly feel it’s appropriate for
a nine year old girl to deliver her project with such a degree of cynicism,
and in such a sarcastic tone.
Skunk: And we can’t use the word irony?
cog: The lesson was not about
irony.)
ache1: So where is she, is
she upstairs?
Skunk: Yeah she’s reading. She’s a bit…
not upset exactly, confused?
ache1: Well
clearing her throat
ache1: fuck this. So, what,
is there a time limit to this, or do we
Skunk: Three days, which takes us to the
weekend. She described it as a cooling off period, and an opportunity, what was
it she said “an opportunity to assess…” something or other, I forget exactly. I
had actually sort of tuned out at this point.
ache1: And can we appeal the
suspension? Is there is there some board we can go to to
Skunk:
This has got to stop. It has to end. Jesus. Jesus please.
