She didn’t look at me as she bent over slowly to pull out a drawer and take out a pale blue soft wool jersey. She flinched as she lifted it over her head and smoothed it down over that white bandage, over her slim bare tummy.
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“I tripped and fell against that door handle, and I’ve given myself a nasty bump and some bruises.”
Mum walked over to her wardrobe, took out a pair of brown corduroy trousers and tugged them on. Still, she hadn’t looked at me.
I wanted to believe her, but I was not sure how a person could bump against a door handle and cause damage in two different places.
I watched Mum as she sat down on the bed to put on her socks. Pain crossed her face as she bent. I could see her expression through the curtain of her hair. I knew something was very wrong, but I could not ask for the truth. I could not say the words out loud. I knew she wanted me to not ask any more.
My scalp itched, and I felt pins and needles in my legs and arms. I didn’t know what to say or do.
Mum picked up the coffee from where I had placed it on the bedside table. She drank it down slowly.
“Thank you, dear.”
She stood and started to walk out of the room past me, still not looking at me at all.
“Mum, where’s Dad?” I asked.
“Oh, don’t worry about him,” she said and walked down the stairs, slower than usual, one hand on the bannister.
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I must have heard that fight. I must have known about it. But it is completely eradicated from my conscious memory. How does that happen? When my sisters and I have talked about this incident over the years, my younger sister Morag has the clearest memories of the actual fight.
“I was sitting at the top of the stairs and I saw it from up there. They were fighting in the hall at the bottom of the staircase. Mum was on her hands and knees screaming for Kirsty to help her. Dad was sitting on her back, thumping her really hard.”
And Kirsty told me that she gathered myself, Morag and Callum and hid us in bed with her while they kept fighting. She heard Mum screaming to her for help, but she did not go. No wonder Kirsty’s urge to help, influence, save others, has been so strong for all of her life. She tried so hard to help us and save us back then, but she was just a little girl and she could not. She tried her hardest, she did her best.
Edited extract from Going Under (Simon & Schuster) by Seana Smith, out now.
1800 RESPECT; respect.org.au
