Lorena's Secret

CHAPTER ONE

She was going to rule the world. Well, perhaps not ‘rule’ the world in the typical superman sense of the word. She was going to conquer it, with train tickets and her imagination. They worked in harmony, these two forces. First, she would dream up some far away town, and then that flimsy piece of cardboard would help her find it. Of course, these far off lands weren’t accessible by trains, or buses, or cars. They existed in the outmost corners of her mind, these tiny little places which offered alternate colours and people and music. Nevertheless, as she dwelled into the cities surrounding Sydney, with her chestnut eyes scanning each passer-byers face, she would unconsciously match the lands in her head with the cityscape around her. She realised that she could dream up any person, any building, any shop or emotion, and correlate it quite easily. In short, the characters in her head were moulded around her. If it was the natural richness of human diversity, or simply her projections, she was not sure. Lorena was strange like that. She didn’t talk much, and when she did, it seemed painful. Instead, she preferred to create situations and conversations with the figures in her head. Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t crazy. In fact, far from it. She just enjoyed the notion of the idea, the daydream, and preferred not to shatter these beautiful ideologies by chasing them too far into reality. She would sit on the train, always in the middle carriage, around the back, and always near the window. She noted the people around her without fail, every time. She remembered the carriage numbers, the number of people on the carriage, the particular time, and the particular route. When she desired to converse with one of them, she flicked through her mind as though it was a filing cabinet, and the snapshot returned to her. From there, she could reengage. She wouldn’t even need to close her eyes. Some rely on sleep for these images, these bizarre fragments of memory and illusion, but not Lorena. Her friends had slipped from her, one by one, until she could count the remaining relations on the fingers of her left hand. Her right was always fiddling with the hair behind her ear, so she was glad the numbers remained at this comfortable low. It would be an inconvenience, after all, to have to use both hands.

It is perfectly clear, at this stage in our story, that you do not fully comprehend the importance of her gift or curse, call it what you may. It is also certain that you feel her as odd, perhaps reclusive, and a downright weirdo. Take, for example, the simple question asked by most amidst the Monday morning humdrum at the office; ‘what did you do on the weekend?’ Most would glance up for their desk, mumble about the family, and sip at their coffee while the look on their faces resembled stone. Not Lorena. She could recall any weekend, from and including the last Sunday of January, 1996. She could tell you weather outside her western Sydney home (31 degrees Celsius, if you must know,) and recite to you the days events with details down to the minute. She would tell you she had enjoyed a lemonade icy pop at 12.43pm, when spice girls played on the radio outside. She would describe the frilly pink bathing suit with tiny fairies embroided on the collar – a hand made piece which felt heavy, and was sure to sink her were it not for the floaties and baby fat. She would remember nanna’s face lighting up the Christmas prior, offering her this woolen costume, smiling through teeth thick with tartar. And Lorena would tell you that this was the moment her uncle fell to the floor, to the right of the barbeque, while chewing on a pork sausage and surrounded by the warm smell of cooking fat.

For some reason, it was at this moment that she stopped speaking, and started inventing. The three doves flying from the _ tree out back stopped mid air. One of them smiled and greeted Lorena, the other gasped and cried “the fat man!” and the other just squawked incessantly. After a moment, they flew off towards the roof, dropping shit behind them and flapping their wings so loudly that the thud-thud-thud of their flight played like a bongo in her ears. She was dressed head to toe in a midnight-black dress a few days later, but as you would have already guessed, she wasn’t concentrating on the sombre tones of the organ, or the incense, or the ghastly wooden casket, (6 feet long, 3 feet thick) which stood before the alter. Rather, she again scanned the room with her darting eyes. Within a moment she had focused on a dove, realising that today only one of them had returned. It was the one who screamed, rather rudely, that snide comment insulting the weight of the fat dead man before them. “Get this damn fire off my head” it cried, stretching itself from the cloth. Lorena stuck her finger up at the tapestry. Her mother was dabbing the corner of her eye with a fraying tissue, and her father was choking his way through the eulogy. “What you looking at, bucky girl!” Lorena noticed her crude smile, and then simultaneously felt her lips pressed against her teeth, which jolted from her mouth at all angles. “Screw you!” she cussed loudly. Her teeth were exposed in a snarl, her pudgy nose crumpled in the middle of her face, which gave her the appearance that she was sniffing something repulsive. These two short, but undoubtedly moving words, combined with the finger she had forgotten to put down, resounded across the church, echoing from the back door towards the front, from the coffin to her mother, and off the crucifix before then seeming to hit the Priest smack-bang in the middle of the head. He stumbled backwards a bit, “good God!” he gasped. The microphone pegged on his gown shared his shock with the congregation before him. Even Jesus, high up on his painful throne, seemed to eye the strange little girl who was being dragged out of the church by her collar. Her mother’s whole face now adopted the same reddish tinge shared previously only by her blotchy nose and eyes.

Most parents would be expected to drag their child to counseling. To a psychologist, therapist, or any practioner who could prescribe Ritalin. Clearly, this was a behavioural disorder. The child craves attention, and will become both spoilt and uncontrollable were these drugs denied. True? Perhaps. But not in this case. Lorena’s mother was a simple woman, from a small town in Sweden called Ekebo. She baked and cleaned, sewed and washed, but rarely engaged in any amorous behaviour with her husband, nor did she show affection towards the children which scattered about the house. In fact, her cold mannerisms were often the subject of various jokes enjoyed by Tomislav’s work mates and cousins. After a few too many, they dubbed her “Virgin Marissa” and would sway in their chairs with cheesy grins plastered across their ragged faces. While Tomislav was a good husband, he clearly lacked the mental capacity needed to assess his daughter’s situation, in much the same way as he failed to comprehend the insult behind these jokes. He laid bricks in the midday sun, and upon returning, stinking of sweat and concrete, he desired only a v.b and a few of his wife’s pastries. These two parents, some may say, were cause for Lorena’s growing obsession. The belt seemed to instill no fear in the child, who cried momentarily before resuming whatever conversation or activity which had engaged her previously. The family grew accustomed to her antics, kept occupied by the younger sibling who had already swallowed three Lego pieces and half a toy soldier. Young Marcus was now keen on proving that five plastic monopoly icons, not only a mere two, could be shoved up his nose. So this is how Lorena spent the summer of 1996. Every morning, the dove sat on her windowsill, screeching some obscenity and tapping endlessly at the glass. She would pull on her rainbow cardigan and wander into school. She cared only for story time, and the lessons on mathematics and english often played to deaf ears. Instead, Larissa eyed the cartoons on the wall, tilting her head sideways as she watched the figures come to life. She would smile, laugh, cringe and giggle while the teacher looked on with impatience and the boy next to her began to cry. Lorena, promptly seated in the corner (with the images now closer than ever,) hence did not succumb to the teacher’s desires and the punishment was in fact enjoyed immensely.

This is perhaps where we should introduce Johnny, a morose, stiff old man whose physical slowness often convinced people of his senility. His wife, Margery, he lost many decades prior, to the menace of lung cancer which had gnawed its ugly head through her chest and then ravaged her throat. He lived in the house next door, and remained seated on his veranda almost from the time Lorena’s parents moved in, to the moment Lorena moved out some 28 years later. He was what was known as a ‘true blue’ – patriarchal in every sense of the word. His front lawn was simply a mass of grass, with a pole and Australian flag smack bang in the centre. It evidently looked like a very stupid household. His only company was a mutt named Harry, who was as good a watchdog as a goldfish. He slumped by the corner of the fence, wheezing and panting, and when he could be bothered, would raise his leg over his head and lick his balls. Johnny always caught the elder child racing through his property. She was agile, and had no trouble scaling the fence with her bony joints positioned at awkward angles. When he was younger, he had chased her with the broom, but as his back became stiffer and his muscles weaker, he simply yelled from his position outside his front door. “Aye! Kid! Get outta’ me yard!” Lorena would continue to hide under his patio, slithering through the dirt and often concealed by the shrubbery bordering his driveway. She loved the coolness of the mud pressed on her cheek, and savoured the mouldy smell which perfumed this almost underground world. The spiders and insects which crawled on her back filled her with a pleasant, tingling sensation and she spent most of her childhood years collecting these creatures in tiny old onion jars gathered from the recycling. She would puncture air holes into the lid, and sit still in Johnny’s garden until out of the corner of her eye she saw a flicker of movement. Sometimes she caught cockroaches, slaters and bull ants, but she cherished most the praying mantises and stick insects which camoflaouged perfectly with the shrubbery around them. She watched in awe as they would sit frozen, with elongated limbs seemingly perched in salutation.

So you see, Lorena grew up from the feeble age of 6 with her head crammed full of stories and characters. It isn’t surprising then, that by the age of 21 her friend count was dwindling. She had a few boyfriends, all of which found her initially enchanting, and then somewhat of a disappointment. She would lay in bed with them firmly on top of her and gaze towards the ceiling, remembering tiny details of previous encounters; the woman at the chicken shop with her yellow apron which matched the jaundice on her fingertips, the small children on the train playing hand games, the lone man walking through Hyde park with rain closing in on him, attempting to gain an ounce of human interaction with someone, anyone. So when the heat turned to sleep and the energy into sweat, she often rolled over and pictured herself in a far off country, still playing with the hair behind her ear.

CHAPTER TWO

Lorena left home at the age of 21, yet didn’t leave her childish fascinations behind her. She moved into an apartment near the city, with some uni student she had literally run into at the cafeteria. She had knocked the milkshake right from his hands as she flicked through a magazine while walking past the small donut shop. She looked up, startled, as the milk ran down her legs and formed a puddle of foamy whiteness around her. “Sorry” she whispered, fretting, as her hands began to shake. She didn’t look him in the eye, but rather rushed towards the counter, where the Chinese woman was looking on in amusement. “Gimme another one of what he had” Lorena demanded, pulling out a handful of coins from her small beaded purse. She shoved the money into the woman’s hands, and after a torturous few minutes pulled the cup towards her. “Here” she huffed, almost lunging forward towards the boy who stood quietly with his hands in his pockets, knowing not what to expect. Lorena grabbed a handful of serviettes and raced down the corridor, dabbing her coloured leggings frantically and beginning to feel sticky and unclean. “You change? Girl!” the Chinese woman called. Lorena didn’t look over her shoulder, yet could hear footsteps catching up. “Don’t want the change, don’t wor-” Lorena began. She felt someone firmly grab her right hand and swing her around. “What’s your name?” he asked.

From then on, they caught the train together, and without fail brought two cinnamon donuts and a pineapple delight to share between the two of them. He carried a notepad in his pocket, and scrawled cartoons in it as he spoke, the train chugging along as they stuck to the plastic with sweat. Lorena knew that this was why she was with him. It wasn’t his conversation or strength or intellect that kept her seated by his side every afternoon. It was the pictures which adorned these fragments of paper which enticed her, made her believe that he too nurtured some fantasy realm within him. As you can tell, Lorena was, to a fair degree, detached from reality. She walked as though half asleep and always spoke with detachment in her tone. Her voice was deep and velvety, like a low hum of a motor or the deep purple tones from a clarinet. As she watched Orion draw, she would bite down on her lip, her eyes wide and alive against her mocha skin. It was the only time that he saw freshness about her. Her features were small and contoured, her cheekbones flushed with colours; from sunset orange to rose-hot pink, so that she resembled a doll of sorts. In her spare time, she would wander into Newtown and sift through the op-shops which hid themselves in stale darkness. She would browse through racks and pull out old cardigans or blouses, and sniff them, as though attempting to decipher their origin. She would wonder where and by whom they were worn, what their owners had felt as they slipped these fabrics on. She would creep towards the change rooms, and pull closed the sticky curtains. She would unbutton her own blouse and slip out of her skirt, pulling on these pastiches of colour and texture. In front of the mirror, she would adjust the buttons and run her hands across her body, lifting her arms and observing the fit. Her face began to morph, even her gestures changed, as she imagined the people before her slowly coming to life once more.....

[to be continued]