ASBESTOS CLEARING
They demolished the family home late last year. I think it happened in December, maybe earlier. I couldn’t say when exactly. My family didn’t think to call me on the day that it happened, which hurt at the time. But I don’t hurt anymore. I’m used to it now. I see things for what they really are.
In order to survive, my family have decided to live a lie, rather than face the truth. They act like nothing ever happened, like our home never existed; like me and my brother never lived in that home. And how can you trust people like that? You can’t. If they’re lying to themselves, then they’re lying to you. And they will stop at nothing to try and believe those lies. They will let the council bulldoze the property and leave nothing but a giant hole in the ground. A grave without a tombstone. A reminder that they would rather believe in desperate sayings like: ‘Some things are for the best,’ and, ‘Nothing is forever.’ But everything is forever, and nothing should be forgotten.
It had been a last minute decision. Melbourne to Canberra; nine hours on the overnight bus. Not my idea of time well spent, but I had to get home. Something in me had to see it all first-hand. I just couldn’t take their word for it.
I didn’t pack much, simply because I didn’t plan on staying long. I had only the one bag: a change of underwear, another pair of socks, and my toothbrush and phone charger. Despite the heat, I chose to keep my jacket on for the entire trip. It used to belong to my brother, and I doubt I’d ever be able to live with myself if I lost it.
At around four in the morning the driver pulled off the highway and parked at a twenty-four hour petrol station. The other passengers got off for tea and coffee and biscuits, some for cigarettes. They all seemed to know one another, or at least they acted as though they did. They smiled and laughed and said things like: ‘Isn’t the road lovely this time of night?’ and, ‘So, why are you going to Canberra?’ That really depressed me. None of them were alive, not really. Somewhere along the way they had lost themselves. They had taken the easy way out by giving into the great lie that most people turn to, the idea that everything is okay! They force their eyes towards a make-believe sun and blind themselves from reality. They unknowingly cremate what life they had and turn it to dust; dead, fairy-tale fluff. SMILE! HA! HA!
For the remainder of the journey I kept to the back of the bus and did my best to sleep. When I couldn’t sleep, I took to leaning against the window, watching as the dark countryside rolled away beneath the morning moon. There were no clouds, no towns, no passing cars. Just emptiness and lifelessness, the road’s white dividing line working as a ghostly guide towards home.
As we arrived into town, the familiarity of Canberra brought on what first felt like a sense of relief. The streets were quiet. The buildings hadn’t changed, and neither had the people. Everything looked just how I remembered. It was pleasant; pleasant like the inside of a coma. If I wasn’t careful, there was the chance it could win me over and then make me numb to reality, just like the rest of them.
I cautiously took the first cab I could find and directed the driver to 21 Cradle Street: my home. I sat in the back and kept my eyes to the outer world, as to avoid talking, but the driver didn’t seem to notice.
‘You know is sin,’ he said, as soon as we took off. ‘Is sin how they do this. No. Is the work of the Devil! I tell you this, this country is the best. One of the best, maybe. But you do this. How you do this? How you let this happen?’
I reluctantly made eye-contact with him in the rear-view mirror and asked him what he meant exactly.
‘This letting this people choose to die in the hospitals. Is no good. Is no- Is no God’s wish! You go straight to Hell for this! Where I come from – me! – this is very bad place, but they no do this. They no let this happen.’
In an attempt to change the subject, I asked him where he was from.
‘This no matter,’ he said, slapping a hand down upon the steering wheel. ‘Is no- is no importance!’
I went to tell him that he was right, but he cut me off before I could get the words out
‘But I can guess you is from here. This is true, yes?’
I told him that where I came from didn’t really exist anymore, not physically, so it didn’t matter either. I was only trying to be honest with him, but he didn’t seem to appreciate it. We didn’t talk for the rest of the journey.
At the bottom of Cradle Street, I asked to get out. I paid the thirty-three dollars on card and thanked him. He didn’t look at me as I opened the door to leave, but I sensed him eyeballing me in the rear-view as he drove away.
Cradle street looked nothing like how I remembered. The houses seemed further from the road, their blinds closed and the front yards overgrown. Scattered between the homes were vacant lots where families once lived. Only mud and debris remained, barricaded in by wired fencing.
The only thing that hadn’t changed were the street signs. They still read the same. One even had mine and my brother’s names scrawled across the bottom in permanent marker. I could still remember the day we did it, clear as the present. We had been walking home from the movies. He had taken me on my birthday to see the latest Pokémon film. He was too old to like Pokémon, but he didn’t seem to mind. He told me that he was happy as long as I was enjoying myself, and I believed him when he said that.
As I reached the family home, I got a horrible sick feeling in my stomach. My throat dried. It was hard to see it in the state it was in. Like the others, the council had fenced off what was left of the property. The warning signs read:
DANGER!
ABESTOS CLEARING
DO NOT ENTER
I gripped the steel fencing and gazed across the lot. They had cleared absolutely everything: the rose bushes, the vegetable patch, the plum trees, the apple trees, the lemon trees, the loquat trees, the gumtrees. Not even the slope in the landscape remained. Nothing but mud and great pools of stagnant rainwater. I tried to picture where mine and my brother’s room used to be, but I couldn’t. All I saw was the dirt; a dead landscape littered with betrayal.
I don’t know how long I stood there, but after a while it started to rain. I pulled my brother’s jacket tight about my shoulders and watched as the muddied pools on the property rippled beneath the shower. Then I left.
It took about an hour to walk to their new residence. It didn’t look good. Not a single tree stood in the front yard. They had painted the place grey and laid the lawn with strips of fake grass.
I walked in without knocking and surprised Mum in her new living room. She acted ecstatic to see me. She hugged me and kissed me hello and called out to the others upstairs. They all appeared one by one and came down to greet me. Everyone smiled and laughed and worked really hard to seem glad about me being there. They even told me how healthy I looked. I thanked them, but I didn’t believe a word of it.
We all sat down in the new living room, me in the centre of the couch, surrounded by the others. They asked me questions about how great! Melbourne must be, and how happy! it must make me to be living in such a place. These were the kind of questions that emptied me; questions where the answer had already been shaped for you. They didn’t want the truth, they only wanted things to remain stable. They wanted the edges soft, and for death to remain a dream, detached from life.
It upset me to see my family like that, but there was nothing I could do. There was no hope in trying to rattle them from their sleep. They wouldn’t have understood anyway. They were already lost. The past was gone from them. It no longer had anything to do with the present. But I didn’t believe that. I couldn’t. It wasn’t fair on my brother. A body could be buried; a home could be demolished; a memory could be ignored; but nothing could ever change the past. And as long as I lived, so would the dead. The fact that I couldn’t see or touch or talk to my brother anymore didn’t mean he was no longer with me. His voice continued to exist within my memory, his touch within the pangs of my heart. His life lived on, glowing like the morning moon over a darkened land. And just as the moon still hangs when the clouds envelope it, I know my brother is there when the liars of the world try to obscure him. But no lie will ever smother my brother. I won’t allow it.
Life is what we choose. But if we choose to lie about it, life dies. Without the truth, we are already dead; we become ghosts within the clouds. I honestly believe that, and I know my brother agrees with me. I truly do.
