Writings / Fiction: Collette Burjack

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Whitewash

 

Everything was cold and unfamiliar and I hated it immediately. I thought, this house is dead. Of course, that’s why you chose it. This was your “fresh start,” as though we could peel off our old lives like layers of dead skin. Even the few boxes we’d salvaged you hid away in the garage.

Still, I tried, John, I really did. You’d worn me down with your deafening silences and your rigid refusal of my touch. I knew you wanted this non-existence. But you made it so hard. You held on so tightly to the emptiness I couldn’t breathe. You painted the walls white, John, white! As though the barest splash of colour would be some kind of capitulation.

You had your refuge, of course. School started in September, two weeks after we moved in, and every day you escaped to the local high school to lecture listless students. But not me. You left me behind, swallowed by blank walls and stiff carpets. Did you know that I used to lie awake at night straining to hear creaks or sighs, the familiar sounds of a house settling in its foundations? But the house was silent. And it was hungry. I don’t know how you didn’t feel it; I could feel it all the time, yearning to be filled with something more than our emptiness. A house can’t survive without any ghosts, John.

I tried feeding it just a little. I dug out that photograph you kept buried in your dresser–our first Christmas together, both of us kneeling stiffly in front of the tree–and placed it on the mantle above the fireplace. I picked some scilla siberica from our garden and arranged them in a vase on the kitchen table, remembering how we used to watch for their bright blue heads every spring. But you destroyed every attempt I made at bringing life into our house. You tore up the photo and you threw the flowers in the trash. Silently. Unfeeling.

So we continued with our non-living, but for a fleeting moment the house had tasted life, and it wanted more. Every day I felt its impatience grow, and every day I watched you recede further and further away. I was starting to realize that maybe I wasn’t a part of your fresh start.

Finally, the house tired of waiting. You had retired to bed early after another silent dinner, and I was sitting alone in the living room pretending to read. I was restless, like a cat sensing an approaching storm.

“Now,” the house whispered, “now.”

Somehow I was on my feet, compelled by a feeling I couldn’t name. I let the house lead me. I followed its whispers upstairs, creeping silently down the bare hallway until I came to the door of the second bedroom. We hadn’t opened that door since you first inspected the house last June. You were always careful to call it the extra storage space or the study if you were forced to refer to it at all. You didn’t want to think about who might have lived in that room, if our lives had turned out differently.

“Hurry,” the house urged. Hesitantly, I pushed the door open and at first I just saw more white walls and empty space. But then, the sun’s fading rays caught our house and all at once the white walls and white floors were bathed in a shimmering sea of reds and oranges. The room burned with colour. I couldn’t breathe, dazzled by this transformation. It was just a moment, then the sun set and the walls returned to their barren state, but I knew then what the house wanted me to do.

“I will,” I promised, laying my hand on the wall. “I’ll do it.”

I got started as soon as you left for work the next day. The cold cement floor chilly against my bare feet, I rummaged through the boxes you had stashed in the garage until I found what I was looking for: the painting supplies from my old workshop. It took several trips to carry everything from the garage to the second bedroom, but by the time I was done I had a workable pile of brushes, paints, stencils, and pencils. It had been a long time since I had held a paintbrush in my hand; the last thing I had painted was the nursery. We had chosen a deep yellow, like sunrise.

I began with the walls. I painted them in deep swirling shades of red. Auburn, rust, and crimson: like flames licking around the edges of a campfire. I wanted to engulf the whole room in colour; I didn’t want a single speck of white. I could feel the house spurring me on, desperate to satiate its appetite, and I thrived on its hunger. We were strange allies now, the house and I.

Over the next few weeks, that room became my escape from the sterility of the rest of the house. Walking into that room and seeing the fiery reds and oranges dancing on the walls I would feel my heart quicken, as though some part of me was flickering alive. But it still wasn’t enough. The house wanted more than colours: it wanted life.

Did you sense a change, John? I think you did, though I was careful to keep my work hidden from you. I didn’t try to bring in any more flowers or decorations now that I had my room. Still, you started to get a wary look in your eyes and your muscles were always tensed, as though you could feel the house fighting back against your numbing coldness.

I started to paint pictures overtop the walls. Scenes. Memories from our life. Our wedding, our first car (the one that kept breaking down), the streets of our old neighbourhood, even the pattern of our old bedspread. It had been years since I had painted so freely. Do you remember when we first met you told me you liked to watch me paint because it was like watching worlds come alive? Now, dipping my paintbrush into the colours on my palette, mixing the reds and yellows and blues, I felt like my breath was finally escaping from rasping, tortured lungs.

At first I just painted during the day. But before long I started sneaking out of our bedroom to paint feverishly through the night, compelled by the house’s insistent need. We never discussed my nightly absences even though I knew you weren’t sleeping well. Dark circles started to form under your eyes, and you performed your daily routines mechanically.

Still the house was not sated; dead memories weren’t enough. So I didn’t stop with the past: I kept moving into the future. I painted our lives as we had dreamt they would unfold. I painted her, in her crib, then riding a bike, then reading a book. I even painted him. I ran out of room: I started to paint over older drawings; I covered the ceiling and the back of the closets. Nothing went untouched.

I gave the house everything, and the house reciprocated.

The first time it happened I was sure I was dreaming. It was the middle of the night and I was on my knees adding some finishing touches to a drawing near the baseboards when I felt the whisper of a breath on my cheek. Just a touch of warmth, then nothing. It happened again the following night: I felt the rush of heat from another body brushing by. “Who’s there?” I asked out loud. The house didn’t answer, but from then on I was no longer alone in that room.

Do you understand, John? I had provided the house with ghosts, and now they were coming back to haunt us.

Was it your turn to lie awake at night, John? Did you hear the faint scampering of feet? The sudden escaped giggle? Did you put your hands over your ears to block out the creaks and groans that couldn’t quite be explained? I wish I could have told you that there was no need to be frightened. I wish I could have shown that you couldn’t block out the past, no matter how hard you tried. I wanted to tell you that your insistence on leaving everything behind was killing me. But you kept building that wall between us higher and higher. So all I could do was keep returning to that room, adding ghosts.

You fought back. To tell the truth, I was impressed with your tenacity. The more the house wakened, the more you tried to clamp down. You started to clean obsessively, scrubbing the white countertops and white tiles in the kitchen until they were scratched and your knuckles were bleeding. It was as though you thought you could scrub away your memories.

Pages: 1 2

One Response to “Writings / Fiction: Collette Burjack”

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  1. Jeannette Jackson says:

    Wow! This caught me by surprise….i did not anticipate the ending at all. i was captivated by the build up of tension and felt the mourning sorrow of the couple without expecting the ghostly twist. Fabulous!

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