Her autumnal
morning occurs itself in slow increments, another unseasonably warm day’s sky
already another cloudless blue.
She understands how selfish to welcome this fresh sense of relief, even if just for herself, even if only physically comprising too the absence of her hair’s weight in the wake of its recent cutting for the funeral, within which inherent the suggestion of a new beginning, his perhaps having to momentarily piggyback upon her own. She suffers sudden embarrassment to have forgotten albeit momentarily the presence of that new life she is gestating, and of whose gender they remain as yet unaware.
Brother Skunk, exhausted by his grief, she has left asleep upstairs, and she is damn near halfway through her first coffee, remembering something he had said yesterday
Skunk: I held my face up to the sun for the prayer. Maybe the only time you can face God directly for whatever reason is following the burial of your mother.
when the telephone’s ring makes her jump within herself, now crashing across the room to nullify the possibility of his being woken.
cog: Hello, will you accept a call from [...] who is deaf?
finding herself so wrong-footed by the query’s strangeness she fails to catch the profferred name, the attendant upset over-riding her any inclination to ask or have it confirmed.
ache1: Excuse me?
cog: This is a deaf relay telephone call; I will relay the caller’s words to you, and if you could let me know how you would like to respond I can then type those words out for them to read, and then read their response back to you.
She struggles to comprehend these words’ meaning, already finding herself in the middle of her reply before even fully aware of whatever it is she has just been told.
ache1: Uh, yes? Uh yeah yeah okay, yes, yes go ahead.
pause
ache1: Proceed.
the whole scenario’s seeming absurdity so removing her from the context of her being in this particular house at this particular time she cannot even begin to conjure any possible reason for the call itself.
cog (reading): “Hi it’s only me again, how are you? Are you feeling any better? Sorry I have left it for so long this time.”
pause
ache1, suddenly realising this to be indeed a call for Skunk’s mother, experiences a chill descend and curdle the coffee loose and pooled in her gut.
ache1: I eh, I I I, I don’t know what ah, she eh, she she she... she died on Saturday, the funeral was just yesterday, what do I, what do I say?
cog: I’m sorry, I’m only able to type what you tell me to, I can’t ehm, I can’t tell you what to actually say.
ache1 (bluntly): Well, she’s dead, I don’t,
and then almost immediately speaking as if she too is reading off the words
ache1: “I’m so sorry, I’m her son’s girlfriend. She died on Saturday and the funeral was yesterday. I’m so sorry.”
embarrassed at her lack of that maturity demanded by the moment.
pause
cog (reading): “I am burst into tears at this news.”
pause
cog (reading): “Oh my God.”
pause
cog (reading): “Oh God.”
pause
cog (reading): “Oh my God.”
pause
cog (reading): “I am so sad.”
pause
cog (reading): “I am so, so sad."
pause
cog (reading): “I have to go."
cog: She has now left the call.
prompting ache1 herself to hang up quickly before having to deal further with any subsequent fallout, the gesture’s inherent violence causing the telephone’s bell to vibrate a high and persistent ringing that only seems to increase in volume; she tightens her grip on the handset, holding it fast to the cradle as if in so doing she might prevent escaping whatever she now perceives it to contain.
She feels herself suffering the flood of minutes, and in the call’s ongoing aftermath, in her subsequent attempt at any comprehension of its entirety, she actively fights her body’s understandable desire to embrace convulsion, still clutching hard to hold the telephone together and too suppress that tremor she can sense erupting amongst her fingerbones.
Unaware of his having risen or his any subsequent movement, the voice startles
Skunk (from the top of the stairs): Who was that?
ache1: It was...
shaking her head as if waking from a dream
ache1: It was a deaf woman wanting to speak with your mum.
Skunk (descending rapidly): A, what, a deaf woman on the phone, how does that
ache1: It’s a, there’s an eh, an interpreter who, they, the deaf woman typed her words and then a middle-person reads them off, then I spoke and she typed my words out for them.
Skunk: Who was it though? Who’d be calling to speak to my mum?
ache1 (upset): God, Skunk I’m so sorry, I didn’t get the name, it was
Skunk: What, what d’you mean, this, what d’you mean you didn’t get the
ache1: It was, I was, I was completely... thrown, I’ve never had a call like that before, I didn’t
Skunk: Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.
ache1: I
Skunk: Seriously? Jesus Christ.
disappearing off-kilter back up the stairs to leave her standing tearful, aware now as she is of the separate elements of the telephone’s plastic shell audibly compacting in the ever-tightening grip of her fist.
She knows the coffee will be cold before retrieving it with her free hand, still she tries it even if just to have this confirmed. Setting down the mug, the inflated pulse booming through her other arm, she takes up one of her E.T. doll’s flaking vinyl hands in her own, saying
ache1: It’s all happening, this is all happening way too fast.
her pregnancy, this death and its funeral, her own “mother” replaced by his “cowboy”, the spoiled Christmas cake, the attempted comfort of fellatio failed at his bait and switch, and now this consolidate mass of upset and worry tugging at whatever rug upon which she felt her feet to have had at least some little purchase.
ache1: Am I losing him, do you think? Is that
tipping her head to one side to look at the little doll as if after all these years she is only really seeing him for the first time.
ache1: “He is afraid. He is totally alone. He is 3 million light years from home.”
and then remembering
ache1: “You wanna call somebody?"
pause
ache1: Jesus I do.
remembering now as she speaks to finally release from her grip the telephone, her stiffened fingers offering resistance as their forced unfurling reveals deep in her palm the imprint of the handset’s moulded plastic.
ache1: I do.
She understands how selfish to welcome this fresh sense of relief, even if just for herself, even if only physically comprising too the absence of her hair’s weight in the wake of its recent cutting for the funeral, within which inherent the suggestion of a new beginning, his perhaps having to momentarily piggyback upon her own. She suffers sudden embarrassment to have forgotten albeit momentarily the presence of that new life she is gestating, and of whose gender they remain as yet unaware.
Brother Skunk, exhausted by his grief, she has left asleep upstairs, and she is damn near halfway through her first coffee, remembering something he had said yesterday
Skunk: I held my face up to the sun for the prayer. Maybe the only time you can face God directly for whatever reason is following the burial of your mother.
when the telephone’s ring makes her jump within herself, now crashing across the room to nullify the possibility of his being woken.
cog: Hello, will you accept a call from [...] who is deaf?
finding herself so wrong-footed by the query’s strangeness she fails to catch the profferred name, the attendant upset over-riding her any inclination to ask or have it confirmed.
ache1: Excuse me?
cog: This is a deaf relay telephone call; I will relay the caller’s words to you, and if you could let me know how you would like to respond I can then type those words out for them to read, and then read their response back to you.
She struggles to comprehend these words’ meaning, already finding herself in the middle of her reply before even fully aware of whatever it is she has just been told.
ache1: Uh, yes? Uh yeah yeah okay, yes, yes go ahead.
pause
ache1: Proceed.
the whole scenario’s seeming absurdity so removing her from the context of her being in this particular house at this particular time she cannot even begin to conjure any possible reason for the call itself.
cog (reading): “Hi it’s only me again, how are you? Are you feeling any better? Sorry I have left it for so long this time.”
pause
ache1, suddenly realising this to be indeed a call for Skunk’s mother, experiences a chill descend and curdle the coffee loose and pooled in her gut.
ache1: I eh, I I I, I don’t know what ah, she eh, she she she... she died on Saturday, the funeral was just yesterday, what do I, what do I say?
cog: I’m sorry, I’m only able to type what you tell me to, I can’t ehm, I can’t tell you what to actually say.
ache1 (bluntly): Well, she’s dead, I don’t,
and then almost immediately speaking as if she too is reading off the words
ache1: “I’m so sorry, I’m her son’s girlfriend. She died on Saturday and the funeral was yesterday. I’m so sorry.”
embarrassed at her lack of that maturity demanded by the moment.
pause
cog (reading): “I am burst into tears at this news.”
pause
cog (reading): “Oh my God.”
pause
cog (reading): “Oh God.”
pause
cog (reading): “Oh my God.”
pause
cog (reading): “I am so sad.”
pause
cog (reading): “I am so, so sad."
pause
cog (reading): “I have to go."
cog: She has now left the call.
prompting ache1 herself to hang up quickly before having to deal further with any subsequent fallout, the gesture’s inherent violence causing the telephone’s bell to vibrate a high and persistent ringing that only seems to increase in volume; she tightens her grip on the handset, holding it fast to the cradle as if in so doing she might prevent escaping whatever she now perceives it to contain.
She feels herself suffering the flood of minutes, and in the call’s ongoing aftermath, in her subsequent attempt at any comprehension of its entirety, she actively fights her body’s understandable desire to embrace convulsion, still clutching hard to hold the telephone together and too suppress that tremor she can sense erupting amongst her fingerbones.
Unaware of his having risen or his any subsequent movement, the voice startles
Skunk (from the top of the stairs): Who was that?
ache1: It was...
shaking her head as if waking from a dream
ache1: It was a deaf woman wanting to speak with your mum.
Skunk (descending rapidly): A, what, a deaf woman on the phone, how does that
ache1: It’s a, there’s an eh, an interpreter who, they, the deaf woman typed her words and then a middle-person reads them off, then I spoke and she typed my words out for them.
Skunk: Who was it though? Who’d be calling to speak to my mum?
ache1 (upset): God, Skunk I’m so sorry, I didn’t get the name, it was
Skunk: What, what d’you mean, this, what d’you mean you didn’t get the
ache1: It was, I was, I was completely... thrown, I’ve never had a call like that before, I didn’t
Skunk: Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.
ache1: I
Skunk: Seriously? Jesus Christ.
disappearing off-kilter back up the stairs to leave her standing tearful, aware now as she is of the separate elements of the telephone’s plastic shell audibly compacting in the ever-tightening grip of her fist.
She knows the coffee will be cold before retrieving it with her free hand, still she tries it even if just to have this confirmed. Setting down the mug, the inflated pulse booming through her other arm, she takes up one of her E.T. doll’s flaking vinyl hands in her own, saying
ache1: It’s all happening, this is all happening way too fast.
her pregnancy, this death and its funeral, her own “mother” replaced by his “cowboy”, the spoiled Christmas cake, the attempted comfort of fellatio failed at his bait and switch, and now this consolidate mass of upset and worry tugging at whatever rug upon which she felt her feet to have had at least some little purchase.
ache1: Am I losing him, do you think? Is that
tipping her head to one side to look at the little doll as if after all these years she is only really seeing him for the first time.
ache1: “He is afraid. He is totally alone. He is 3 million light years from home.”
and then remembering
ache1: “You wanna call somebody?"
pause
ache1: Jesus I do.
remembering now as she speaks to finally release from her grip the telephone, her stiffened fingers offering resistance as their forced unfurling reveals deep in her palm the imprint of the handset’s moulded plastic.
ache1: I do.
