Preface
This is an oldie, I wrote a first draft of this in 2017. I was living on the 18th floor of a building that housed very fancy corporate apartments in the Rocks, a suburb in Sydney. One of the things I enjoyed while living in this apartment was the view at sunset. As the sun did her farewell dance, she beckoned all the high rise buildings of the CBD to light up in response to her exit. This scene was always a transcendent experience for me and one late evening, Beatrice and her story came to me as the CBD’s light orchestra peaked.
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She sat at the top of the hill. In the same spot that she always had. It was her little haven. Her secret place to be and to become. In this little sacred space her thoughts could roam. It is here that she had learnt to be comfortable with the voices in her head. They would carry on in conversation without her. She sometimes felt like an eavesdropper listening in on private discussion.
The sky grew darker, losing the golden hues of the evening sun. She watched the lights in the distant houses come on, one at a time. She liked to pretend that she was a conductor and the windows in the distant houses were her orchestra. One by one, the conductor would instruct the windows to light up. creating beautiful harmonies that only her eyes could see.
For 15 year old Beatrice, the ears served more than sound and the eyes served more than sight. She could see the emotion released in every musical note when her favourite singer took the pew in Sunday mass. She could hear the harmonies in every ray of light and in every colour released by the sun at dusk.
In her little haven on top of the hill, she could be and she could become;
She could become the courage her mother needed to leave a man that gave heavy gifts. Bruised faces and broken ribs were gifts Beatrice’s father showered his wife with most drunken nights.
She could become the hands that would heal her mothers pain. She saw her mothers broken heart the same way she saw complex lego puzzles. With enough practice, she could put it back together.
In this secret place, Beatrice would wrestle with the voices in her head. The voices that were trying hard to reconcile her love for her father with his actions. Her love for him was strong because it was as ever present as her heart beat.
The priest in Sunday mass had talked about hating the sin but loving the sinner. But like the darkness that consumed the evening’s sky, the sin consumed her father. Merging the sinner and the sin into one.
As the last rays of daylight bid their farewell. Beatrice sat and watched a little longer as her orchestra of lights expanded and littered across all the hills and valley below. In all those little windows lives different from her own continued to play on.
Standing up to leave, She could not help but wonder if all the lives that existed in those distant lights were as broken as her own.
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A version of this story was first published on my sister Mayase’s blog, the art of otherness , forever grateful to her for the platform and for the push, check out her space, I especially love the podcasts :-).
I'll name this later 