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First published by Clan Destine Press in 2019
PO Box 121, Bittern Victoria 3918 Australia
Copyright © Narrelle M Harris 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including internet search engines and retailers, electronic or mechanical, photocopying (except under the statuary exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-In-Publication data:
Harris, Narrelle M.
SCAR TISSUE: and other stories
ISBN: 978-0-6482937-8-1
Cover Design © Willsin Rowe Photos: © Narrelle M. Harris
Design & Typesetting: Clan Destine Press
Clan Destine Press
Introduction
This collection is inspired by two ideas: hidden histories (both real and imagined) and scars. Those ideas can be separate or intertwined.
Walking around any town, any village, any city, I’m always aware of its small-picture unknown history. Who has walked this way before me? What worker, thousands of years ago, paused at the foot of this same pyramid, when it was still being piled stone upon stone? What Roman soldier took a breath as he stood by this wall when this great city was Londinium?
Hidden histories aren’t just separated from me by time. People walk past every day, and I wonder who they are and what their story is. That woman who is smiling as she talks on the phone; that lost looking man, that anxious teenage boy: what everyday histories are unfolding for them?
And sometimes, the world at large leaves unexplained artefacts behind: articles of clothing, jewellery, buttons, books, locks and keys. Signs of some other story of which I can only see a single sentence, or perhaps only a punctuation mark in what could be a comedy, a tragedy, or a bizarre adventure.
Found objects lack context, allowing the finder to imbue them with any number of meanings.
I always wonder how these items were parted from their owners, and whether the separation was amicable. I wonder, too, whether the separation left scars.
Almost everyone has scars. Some are physical and some are emotional or psychological. Some are deep and hurt every day. Others only ache when the weather changes or something reminds us of the wounds when they were fresh.
But scars are also a sign of survival. The dead don’t heal. If we have scars, and carry that pain and the memory of suffering, we also carry our survival with it. Precarious as that sometimes feels, here we are.
Here are some stories, old and new, about secret histories, invented stories, and the scars that show that we survived.
Narrelle M Harris
2019
SCAR TISSUE
Lachlan knocks on the door. He means to sound confident, bold, like he has a right to be here, but the sound is diffident. He’s not sure he’s welcome. He doesn’t feel like he should be.
Clara opens the door and her expression flickers before she smiles. ‘Lachie!’ She reaches out to kiss him on one cheek. He shoves flowers into her hands, and it’s awkward, but she manages to rescue the bouquet – gerberas and baby’s breath and delicate fern fronds – and put it right side up. She has grace, does Clara. ‘That’s lovely, Lachie, you shouldn’t have.’
It’s what people say, “you shouldn’t have”, but Lachlan knows it was the right thing to do. He’s relieved. It doesn’t make up for much, but it shows willing. He wants to make amends. He’s six months clean, and he intends to make it six months more. Six years more. Six decades more, and six lifetimes at least, if the Buddhists are right. His time with the needle is done. Whether the needle is done with him may be another matter, but he’s worked hard – is still working hard – to build a new life.
‘Jayden’s giving Amelia her bath,’ says Clara, leading Lachlan into the living room. ‘He won’t be long.’
This is when Jayden comes into the living room, dressed only in his pyjama pants, barefoot and bare-chested, though his torso is mainly obscured by the little bundle wrapped in a soft blanket. Jayden’s infant daughter, held across his body, hides the scar.
For the briefest second, Lachlan can pretend it doesn’t exist. Only, of course, he can’t. Not even for the briefest second.
‘Who soaked Daddy’s shirt through with bathwater, hmm?’ Jayden asks the infant, who claims responsibility by squealing happily and wriggling in her swaddling. ‘Who’s my little mermaid?’ Amelia’s gummy mouth opens and with a shout of ‘YAH!’ claims that title as well.
Jayden rubs Amelia’s tiny button nose with his own, and he makes ridiculous ‘ooop-PAH, ooop-PAH’ sounds at her, while she waves her hands and squeals at the game.
Then Jayden shifts his baby in his arms and the scar is on display. Jayden is unselfconscious about the puckered lines where plate glass had become embedded in his shoulder. He’d nearly bled to death, and he still doesn’t have full mobility. For a long time, he’d felt awkward about the damage. He made up stories to explain it when he couldn’t hide it. But here, in his home, with his family, he acts as though it’s not important. It’s become assimilated with all the other, smaller, insignificant scars he’s accumulated: the one from gashing his knee falling out of a tree while at a school camp, the triangular mark on his wrist from when he tried to iron his own shirt when he was eight and slipped with the iron; the dent from when he and his best mate played swordfights with steak knives and they managed to actually stab each other.
Lachlan stares at Jayden’s scar while trying not to stare at it, hoping, as always, that somehow the ruined and lined skin will disappear and shift. Lachlan could easily take another scar on his own body. He has a map of them, all significant. The one in his scalp from when Dad clobbered him with the beer bottle for interfering with his little brother’s punishment. The one on his mouth from being pushed face first into garage wall for getting lippy in Jayden’s defence. The long line across his ribs from the knife, the day they finally got someone to do something about the old bastard.
Those tiny puckers in his inner elbow, a memento of how, after the brutality stopped, it really hadn’t.
Lachlan’s scars, large and small, are part of the landscape of who he is, now. Whatever regrets and sorrow they came with, they have other meanings too. They comfort him, sometimes. Once upon a time, he’d done better.
Jayden was never meant to be marked. Lachlan
