pdf download - Westerly Magazine

ANNE SEYMOURThe Woman Next DoorShe moved in two weeks ago, the woman next door. When I saw the furniture van,I sent my two girls in to see if she needed anything. But she said no thank you,that's kind, but everything is under control. I haven't felt like getting dressed upand going in to say hello so I haven't met her yet. But I've seen her.She looks about my age: forty-seven. I saw her in the garden the day after shemoved in. She looked neat and tidy even when she was gardening, with her hairtied up in a pretty scarf. And she wore gardening gloves to protect her hands.My hands were shaking as I held the curtains apart ever so slightly to peep ather. Not because I was nervous: I've been rather tired and depressed lately and myhands shake a lot. They disgust me. Look at them! Worn and old, brown blotcheson the back. Veins sticking up like miniature fig-tree roots spreading over dry ground.The other day, I stroked one vein with my finger and watched the blood surge backand the tiny root thicken up again. It fascinated me. I did it again and again. I didit about thirteen times altogether.My finger nails are cracked and broken. It can't be because of house work; I can'tbe bothered doing more than the bare essentials these days.Just look around this kitchen! Breakfast dishes are still on the sink and a fly iswiping its feet on someone's soggy cornflake. The frying-pan smells of the greasyleft-overs of bacon and eggs. A half-biscuit lies in the dust between the refrigeratorand the cupboards. I tried to get it out with a broom handle the other day but Ionly succeeded in pushing it farther out of reach. I really need to pull the refrigeratorout and clean around it. Perhaps next week. I might have more energy then.The woman next door seems to have plenty of energy. In the garden the otherday, she worked fast, pulling out weeds and placing them in neat piles on the lawn.When she finished, she stood up and arched her back. She untied her scarf andshook out her curls.I felt my own hair. Thick like straw and sticking out. Like a birch broom in afit, my mother used to say when I was fourteen. That was a long time ago and mymother has been dead for years but my hair is just the same. Wild, like dry grassin the wind but grey now instead of gold. I always wanted to let my hair grow longwhen I was a girl but my parents wouldn't allow me to. They thought long hairwas untidy and my father used to cut it very short. Sometimes he made me lookso terrible that I didn't want to go to school. We had frightful rows about my hair.The next time I saw the woman next door was on Saturday morning. She rushedout to meet her son who had come to visit. (I had heard a car drive up and hadsneaked a look through the lounge-room curtains.) 1 could tell it was her son; helooked so much like her.I had a son. He would have been twenty-three yesterday. He died last year. Ofa form of cancer which gnawed away at him for four years. Everlasting years.Relentlessly sucking out his vitality, tearing him from me.WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989 69