A green kitchen and a static TV
A childhood recollection of conflict, and the TV that became our greatest escape.
My body is a conflict. I can say that because I feel it. In every bone, in every muscle, pumping through my veins, the feeling of upheaval. I can pinpoint when it started. When my body began to betray. The very moment I felt lost, the very moment I felt alone. But it’s taken twenty-five and half years to understand my pain. The betrayal of my body, the one that was sworn to protect me at all costs.
I’ve locked away deep inside, my memories of when it all began. A hazy, blackhole of emotions, that continued to wreak havoc in my mind.
My first memory is upheaval, my life torn in two. The age of four I could barely comprehend the idea of ever feeling alone.
I was born into conflict, my parents fighting tooth and nail. I would watch behind the tall wooden hallway wall, with my brother, not knowing who I was meant to be rooting for.
When I was a child my brother and I would spend hours in front of our static TV.
I can’t remember all of what we would watch, but one sticks out the most. WWE would scream from our TV, a conflict I could never understand. I’d tense for an hour, my tiny hands squeezing the plush couch. “Is it real?” I would ask, my brother glued. Responses were limited at these times so I’d usually get a simple “shhh!” I guess that was how he coped, my big brother was only 11.
I’d replay the fight scenes over and over in my brain, comparing what I could see on the TV to what was happening in the room beside me. “Which one do I root for?” I’d exclaim. “Shhh!” My brother would insist, only this time we weren’t watching through a screen.
The lime green kitchen is one thing that sticks out in my mind the most. A room just for a kitchen, fit for a pink table from the 50s, one Mum said was what she had as a child. That’s where they’d fight, Mum and Dad. Taking their positions in that obnoxiously bright ring. Their words would bounce off the timber walls, and echo through the house. I was confused. The fights on the TV were never won with words, but the sheer physical strength of their bodies, crashing down on their opponents. “Who’s side are we on?” I would whisper desperately to my brother, as we hid behind the dividing walls. But I would never get an answer. Not even a “Shhhh!” I remember looking up at my brother, wide eyed through his glasses. Fixated on the conflict, gripping my shoulders tight. He was only 11.
I could never remember what they were fighting about, but I soon learned that strength doesn’t just come from the muscle. Strength can be just as dangerous as words when spat with rage. I remember understanding that to I had to tread carefully. On the eggshells that were placed around us, as 4 and 11 year old's. I learned that words can come with poison, and that venom doesn’t just come from a snake. But I never quite understood what they meant when they said, “a leopard never changes its spots.”
The Old Queenslander I remember so clearly, always cold and always dark. The house was in this kind of circle. A merry-go-round of shadows held up on stilts.
It revolved around my brother’s pitch black room, with the green kitchen to the left and Mum and Dad’s room to the right. When you walked in the front door, there was a foyer, a feature of an old house. To the left a tiny coat room, filled with coats not suitable for the Queensland heat. Stepping out of the foyer was the lounge room, a 3 seater couch and 2 matching recliners, with a square analogue TV fixed in its own cabinet. Mum and Dad’s room backed onto this, as did my brother’s. Dad would spend hours there. Sometimes I thought he was stuck in his chair.
Walking through the lounge room through the dividing walls, was the dining room, or the room where we weren’t allowed to touch things. In the middle was a large wooden table, built by Grandad. Oval shaped with upright matching chairs, it smelt like home. Except home wasn’t what home should be. There was a huge window, the lightest room in the house. A cabinet with the good china, and trinkets Mum had collected throughout her 39 years. Then there was the record player, a fully fledged sound system. But it never played “The Grateful Dead”, only classical and Andrew Lloyd Weber.
The kitchen adjoined to this, separated again by a dividing wall. If you walked through the kitchen you’d end up on the side of the house where the wood floors stopped. Into what was a connecting room. In this strange room was where my brother and I would find solace. The sagging futon and an ancient TV, with the bathroom right next door.
The ‘office’ was in this same strange connecting room, the clunky old desktop computer always displaying the Windows 99 aquarium screensaver. Walking past the ‘office’ was where I lived. My room, not really a room. With a makeshift door placed to attempt to divide the two. Inside was my bed, but my baby furniture was still there. I had too many dolls and teddies to count, but I’d sleep with them all regardless. Maybe this was my way of coping. I was only 4.
My room wasn’t really my sanctuary, for there was another door. The one that opened into Mum and Dad’s, the biggest conflict room of them all.
This must have happened when I was 4, although I could have been 3. It’s as clear as if it happened yesterday, a moment cemented in time. It was late, and the strange room was only lit by screens. It was dark, and I felt cold, and Mum was crying at the desk. Mountains of paper were stacked high around her. She looked tired, drained and done. The memory only lasts for four seconds, which is ironic since that’s probably how old I was. After that I can remember only one thing, Mum in hospital saying she’s ok. My brother and I kept getting told she was just tired, and needed a place to rest. I was worried I’d broken one of those eggshells, and that’s when the fear began. The internal conflict that began to rule me. Don’t put a single toe out of line.
I remember my 4th birthday, what a time to be alive! We had a party at the beach, all my friends, just faces but no names. I wore a party hat, and I smiled so hard. It might have been the happiest I’d ever been. My parents were together, they weren’t fighting and were having a good time. did they really get better? Did they finally have a truce?
It wasn’t being showered by presents, or that I was having more sugar than I could handle. It was that something felt normal on that day. I felt safe, I felt wanted.
The one present that I remember was a fairy book, and Mum hated it. For some reason I loved it, and for years I’d take it out to just escape. To that moment on my birthday, to that real feeling of home.
After that, it must have gone downhill, because my only memory after is Dad in that green kitchen picking me up and whispering. Through his tears I heard the words “I love you. Daddy has to stay somewhere else for a while.” I didn’t understand what this meant, or why his cheeks were wet, but I kissed him regardless and whispered back “I love you too.”
Turmoil ensued quickly after. Fragmented memories that I still try to make sense of. There is a time where I remember seeing Dad at a friend’s place, a property on the outskirts of town. A huge Old Queenslander, only this time, it was warm. The house was surrounded by rose bushes, and they had horses.
I went to stay for a night. I still loved seeing Dad. Although, the eggshells I had placed stretched further now. He took me with his friends through the rose gardens, and I was allowed to pick the best ones. I remember waiting for Mum to pick me up late at night, I must have missed her too much. Dad was livid, but his friends’ cooled his rage.
I sat with a woman, one of the friend’s who lived in the Queenslander. We were curled up on a sunbed looking up at the sky from the window. The stars were spectacular out there, but one caught my eye. “Look! That one’s moving!” excitedly pointing at a blue and red flashing star moving slowly across the night sky. “That’s a fairy Han,” the woman said, soothing my tiny mind and holding my hand tight. She must have known what home was actually like for me.
Maybe that was what incited the rage, because I didn’t want to be away from Mum. I was scared. I thought this was all my fault.
At some point, Mum had to move out and Dad came back to our Old Queenslander, pumping with what I now can recognise as adrenaline. He had picked us up from where Mum had moved to, although where she was living then I can’t remember now. When we got back to our old house, stepping into the green kitchen felt funny. Like I was in someone else’s house, not the one that I had lived in all my life.
“I want to take you to get some toys!” Dad exclaimed to my brother and I. A determination that swelled in his eyes, one I now recognise in myself.
We went to a shop in the main street of town, the only shop with toys open at 6pm. Crazy Clarke’s was a 2 dollar shop, the bright fluorescent lights blinding our tired eyes. “You’ve got $10 to spend on whatever you like, go nuts!” our eyes widened, we had never gotten this attention from Dad. Toys? $10? Anything we liked?
I felt the eggshells lifting, Dad’s energy was infectious. I got a lot of things that night, $10 went a long way in regional QLD in 2000. But my favourite was the plush Winnie the Pooh toy I would later rely on to stifle my tears.
I don’t think I slept that night, in our house without Mum. I felt this coldness wash over me, was I always going to feel alone? When morning came, the eggshells lifting, I confided in Dad how much I was missing Mum.
“I miss Mummy, Daddy.”
The glee in his eyes faded, replaced with rage. His pupils were big and black with hate. It wasn’t yelling that I was met with. It was a poisonous hushed tone, venom striking my very core.
“Your mother is not here, you are staying at mine for another night.”
I was wary, my wall struggling to rebuild in time for the impact. I felt the hot pressure enclosing around my vocal chords. The tears in my eyes ready to break. But somewhere I had learned how to compromise.
“Can I come to the movies with you and then go back to Mummy’s, please Daddy?”
His rage bubbled, I was determined to not let him see. How scared I was of Him, how scared I was for me. Finally he spat through gritted teeth,
“If you want to see the movie, then you have to stay with me another night. Otherwise, no movie…”
I was trying to comprehend and kickstart my critical thinking, but I was only 4.
“…you know we are going to have so much fun seeing this movie….”
He was taunting me and I didn’t know how to get out. But I knew I wasn’t safe here, I needed to go home.
To say he was angry would have been an understatement. For hours he didn’t speak a word. The silent treatment he had perfected. I did everything I could to try and break a smile, or an acknowledgement of my existence.
When he dropped me to Mum’s, I was flooded with the euphoric feeling of relief.
