short thing #6

washing

It was in the back room of the house that the ranting began. She’d been home from work for five minutes, probably less, but she had found a fault. She had found something wrong. I had turned down my music when I heard her come in. It couldn’t be that. She was ranting, though.

Seriously.

I could hear her tone even if I could not hear her words. My room was on the other side of the house. I can’t say I was surprised, honestly, but I guess a part of me had been hoping for a little more time. A little more quiet.

It was probably something to do with the washing. My sister and I had folded the laundry. We’d taken it off the line when we got home from school. I remembered on the way home. I knew if we’d forgotten about it, the ranting would have started earlier. We had taken it off the line. We had put the basket back on the hook above the washing machine. We had put our own clothes away. We had put them away neatly, in the right drawers, hanging our pants up. Our shirts. We’d put our parents’ clothes in a neat pile on their bed. Socks and underwear, folded neatly, alongside. We’d put the towels in the cupboard.

The towels.

I knew what the ranting was for. I knew why it had started so quickly. In less than five minutes. My mother had gotten a towel out of the cupboard to have her shower, straight after work. As she always did.

The towels.

We’d folded the towels wrong. I’d forgotten my mother had changed the way she liked the towels folded.

When I heard the pipes groan in the wall behind my bed, I got up and went to the back room. The laundry. The towels had already been pulled out of the cupboard. They were in a pile on top of the washing machine. With some fallen on the floor. I folded them quickly. Hurriedly, to make sure I’d finished before the pipes groaned again. I folded them right. I put them away.

My little sister had come out of her room. She was standing at the sink in the kitchen, having a drink of water. I went and stood next to her. She didn’t look at me. I drank some water from the tap, too.

Our mother wailed from the bathroom. I turned the tap off quickly. I’d forgotten about the taps. About the scalding hot water in the bathroom when the tap in the kitchen was turned on.

I’d forgotten something else.

At dinner, my sister and I didn’t talk. My father was doing the late shift at the psychiatric hospital. It was just me and my sister and my mother. My mother had said she’d seen our father when she left the nurse’s station. When he’d arrived at the nurse’s station. She said that he’d said he hadn’t slept a wink last night. She said he’d said that my ‘god awful’ music had been too loud. My father would never say that. My father could sleep through an air strike.

I rolled my eyes.

I didn’t mean to roll my eyes. I certainly didn’t mean for her to see me roll my eyes.

The ranting began again. Higher pitched than before. More screaming than ranting. More direct than before. The ranting from before was a mere mumbling compared to now. A harmless mumbly, grumbling.

This ranting was at me. Directly at me, into my recently rolled eyes. This ranting was terrifying. This time I could I hear it, perfectly and with clarity. I could hear the words about teenage boys. About worthless, ungrateful sons who failed to lift fingers to help. About listening to horrible music. Playing horrible music. Scratchy, loud, pointless music. About grades that weren’t going to be good enough. For any university. For any university, anywhere.

But this time I could see it, too. I could see her eyes, bulging, bursting from her head. I could see that vein standing out at the side of her right eye, dark blue in comparison to her light, coffee coloured skin. I could see the ligaments straining in her neck.

And I could see her hand. I could see the fork held firmly in her hand.

And then I could see the fork. I could see it sticking straight up out of my hand. And I could hear, perfectly, with clarity, my sister’s screaming sobs.

And my mother slamming the door behind her.

(c) Samantha Florence, 2011.