Being Here by Barry Jonsberg Page A

like pale memories.
    Mother stooped, picked up the book and shredded more pages. There was wild fire in her eyes. In her frenzy she gripped too many and did not have the strength to rip the paper free. She was forced to take a thinner hold. Within minutes the book was reduced to a drift of patterned pages. Some caught in the building wind and danced the air to darkness. Most carpeted the verandah.
    Mother panted. Her chest rose and fell. When all the pages had been freed, she tried to split the leather shell, but it was too sturdy. She grunted with the effort. So she cast it from the verandah, a maimed bird that flapped briefly and fell to earth. We gazed at each other. The silence broken only by the wailing of the wind. I dropped to my knees yet again, spread my fingers through the creamy drift of paper.
    â€˜Leave it, Leah,’ said mother. ‘Leave it, as surely as you leave your sin behind.’
    I tried to obey, but once more my body rebelled against the commands of the will. I was paralysed. My fingers clenched around a sheaf of paper and I could not prise them loose. Mother grabbed me by the arm and pulled me upright. She tore at the battered prize scrunched in my hands. I cried as her nails tore at my skin, though it was not the physical pain I responded to. Mother screamed into my ear, though the individual words were lost beneath the tide of her anger. I didn’t hear the growl until she suddenly stopped and wrenched her eyes from mine.
    Pagan was at my feet. Teeth bared, legs tensed, tail tucked between his legs. A small trail of drool hung from his lower lip. He rumbled at my mother. She let go her grip on me and backed away a pace or two. Pagan was rigid with intent.
    I do not know if he would have attacked her.
    I suspect not.
    But in the end it didn’t matter. Mother turned to the door, disappeared into the house, returned a minute later with the gun nestled in her arms. Then she took my dog to the barn and put a bullet in his head.
    It is strange.
    I look back through the pages of my life and some are etched indelibly. I see everything in minute detail, hear sounds that are pitch perfect, smell rain in the air and touch once more the bark of a tree, the rough cast of a dog’s coat. But the minutes that preceded the gunshot are cracked and scattered. I know the sequence of events. I understand what happened. But all is fragmented.
    Perhaps my mother did not take my dog to the barn at all. Perhaps she made me loop the rope around Pagan’s neck, and drag him to the barn. I think I screamed and begged. I think I did not look away when she brought the barrel down. I remember the look in my dog’s eyes. I remember the glint of lightning against gun-metal grey. I remember the explosion of sound. I smell still the burning. I remember his legs twitching, stilling with dreadful finality. And I remember the blood staining my dress as I cradled his shattered head in my arms. I looked up once. Adam knelt on the other side of my dog. His face was twisted in pain and love and hatred. He kissed my tears away as quickly as they fell. I held on to my dog and Adam held me.
    Outside the sky finally ripped. Rain whipped the ground without mercy.

CHAPTER 8

    F OR A MOMENT I have difficulty breaking the chains of history. I am there, piecing together the fragments of the past. Then I am here and my body aches. The residents’ lounge welcomes with bland familiarity.
    â€˜Oh my God,’ says Carly. Shock is stamped on her face. It is naked now there is no make-up to clothe it. I say nothing.
    â€˜Your mother … well, hey, Mrs C, no offence. But she was a real bitch.’
    â€˜Was she?’ I reply. ‘I suppose it must sound like that. But she wasn’t, you know. She was just … flawed. As we all are. Some flaws, though, are especially dramatic. They demand their own spotlight.’
    â€˜She killed your dog …’
    â€˜And I am the author of this narrative. In its