Chapter 22
I stopped off at the florist’s on my way to the funeral. Mum and Miss Alcock had asked to drive me, but I needed to walk there, for a reason that even I didn’t know.
It was a stiflingly hot day, so hot it wasn’t even pleasantly so. It was the kind of heat that makes your lungs wither up and make it really hard I was sweating heavily through the nylon of my thick, uncomfortable dress. I had decided to wear the 1960’s tartan atrocity that I’d worn to the birthday. Despite the fact that it wasn’t black, it wasn’t appropriate and it looked a sight, I needed to wear it. It seemed important to me somehow.
Droplets of sweat were running down the sides of my faces and neck, and every minute I had to swipe away at them with my hand. It was the wrong weather. Funerals should be on a thundery, rainy day, on a lonesome hill, with women dressed in black veils, wiping away tears with lace handkerchiefs.
I entered the church and edged into a pew, next to Mum. She smiled at me and squeezed my hand. I returned the smile and a few minutes after, the service started.
It was all blurred, the edges of a dream, and I couldn’t focus on anything but the mahogany casket up in the front. The priest was speaking in a monotone voice, droning on and on in his nasal tone and it was all such a facade. “Mrs Brown was a friendly, sociable member of the community, loved by everyone who knew her.”
His words appeared to be contradicted by the amount of people gathered in the place. I glanced around the church and noticed for the first time how empty it was. Including us, there were only about twenty people attending the funeral. The only mourners I could recognize were the two women I had heard that day, talking about Mrs Brown’s birthday. One of them was crying openly into a soggy tissue, clutching the collar of her dress. The other had dry eyes, looking ahead with her lips curling, wryness painted on her face.
The hot, rigid atmosphere was choking me and I could feel my head spinning. In a shadowy daze, I rose from my seat, and made my way out of the pew. The few people that were in the church turned to frown at me disapprovingly, a taut ripple of speech moving along the pews.
Embarrassed, Miss Alcock tutted and Mum stared at me, surprised. The priest brushed away sweat on his upper lip nervously, adjusting his dog collar, and made an attempt to talk. All that came out of his lips was a shrill, anxious squeak.
Oblivious to the censorious eyes fixated upon me, I stumbled up the aisle towards the altar, clutching a plastic bag in my hand.
I bent over the glass casket and looked at Mrs Brown.
I took it all in – her beautiful long silver hair spread across her shoulders, her thin body dressed in her silk wedding gown, her green-grey eyes closed. I kissed my fingers and pressed it to the glass. I felt a twinge of unease. Something was wrong.
It was the flowers. The flowers on top of the casket were not right. It was awful.
There were freesias, violets, marigolds, pansies, tulips, lilies, morning glories.
But no roses. It was all wrong, wrong, wrong.
I raised an arm and swept it all along the smooth glass surface . Dozens of bouquets and posies scattered across the floor, a fragrant tarn of petals. Agitated, the priest descended from the lectern and attempted to restrain me, but I was strengthened by fury. I lashed out at him viciously and he recoiled, startled and confused. The rest of the congregation were stunned into silence, unable to make a move.
I opened the plastic bag I had been carrying, containing the purchase I had made from the florist’s.
Roses. Twenty large bouquets of roses.
I reached into the bag and freed each vibrant blossom from its twine, laying each one individually on the casket until the glass was covered with hundreds of roses.
Suddenly, standing with gaudy flowers up to my ankles as I gazed at the rose-encrusted casket, I finally managed it. The one thing I had not been able to do for Mrs Brown. I began to cry.
Finally. Finally I could shed tears for her when I’d thought there were none left to cry. My emotions came spilling out and I stood there, helpless to stop them, relieved that they were not bottled up any more.
“Goodbye,” I whispered to Mrs Brown, looking at her for the very last time.
And then I turned around and walked back down the aisle.
***
“Hi, Melia,” grinned Douglas.
It was morning registration, as usual, the next day, and I was standing by Douglas Atkinson’s desk, smiling at him.
I took a deep breath. “Hey Doug,” I said. “Come on, sit down. You won’t believe how much I have to tell you.”
And I began on an extremely long, detailed account of everything that had happened.
Looking up once, for a deep breath before I continued, I saw Kirsty staring at us. I was bewildered when she left her Mini-K’s and walked up to me. “Hi,” she said uncertainly.
“Uh...yeah...I mean...hi.” was my mumbled response, as I gawked at her.
“Um...bye,” she said, and walked back off.
Not much. But a start.
***
At morning break, I avoided Douglas. I didn’t want to be with him because I wanted time on my own to
think, so I walked into the quad and sat on a bench.
Fifteen minutes into break time, I heard someone crying, so I looked up to see who it was.
It was a little Year Seven, a pretty little black girl, on the nearest bench, with hundreds of plaits on her delicate little head. I noticed she had mud all over her uniform and a scratch on her nose.
“Are you okay?” I asked, walking over to the bench and looking down at her. As she didn’t reply, I squashed onto the bench beside her, and put an arm around her. Reluctantly, she pointed to a scrum of other Year Sevens, their backs to us, laughing. I thought I might know what their joke was about. I looked back at the girl. She was sobbing something over and over again.
“What is this place?” she wept.
I leant against her, half smiling, half crying, and remembered.
