The Unforgiven

NB: My rewrite takes Metallica’s song ‘Unforgiven’ and transports the male main character into a completely different time and situation, however he is now dealing with internal conflict and post-colonial topics such as loss of identity and culture, and displacement. This proves that post-colonial themes are a present and ongoing topic.

HIM
In complete contradiction to the perfectly bright and clear morning of December 5th 1992, Room 602 of Auckland Hospital was loud, messy and full of tension. Mrs Humphrey had been in labour for 13 hours and was swearing this at the baby boy she had just given birth to. The first words to fall upon this baby’s ears were curses and damnation.

Thrown from his cocoon: soft, safe, content. He looked up at the people staring down at him, the first was a man wearing a mask who was pulling at a protrusion from the baby’s stomach. The second, a lady. She was also wearing a mask and was wiping the baby’s face, cleaning away the cool, coloured film that covered him head to toe. There were two other people in the room. They were talking amongst themselves, unaware or unwilling to acknowledge the new blood in the room. The baby looked around inquisitively, taking in all that was new and strange about this occurrence. He had a strong desire for one of these people to look at him, to see him, to possibly even come close to him, close enough to envelope him. And yet, in his sterile, small and lonely plastic bed he lay, untouched by any of the hands that should have been embracing him. After much time had passed, years even, with no more interaction, a hollow sunk into his eyes – a void which would have been seen by someone who took the time to look. Though no one ever did. No one ever bothered. Sixteen years had passed and this hollow grew more and more ingrained, and more and more illusive to fill.

Today, the boy woke to the familiar sounds of knuckles rapping against a door, a lighter flicking open followed by a heavy wheeze and a woman shouting. Yet today, he was having a dream that was hard to leave. In his dream, he was lying on a beach, burying his toes deeper and deeper into the sand, while the fading sun was just enough to keep him warm in just his t-shirt and shorts. The tide had receded and left the patch of sand where he lay slightly damp. There was a group of people sitting at a nearby table, talking loudly. A few of them were smoking and one lady sits taping her hand animatedly against the wooden table top. “Must they be so loud, when it is clear someone close by is relaxing,” he thought to himself. He breathed a great sigh and hoped that they might take the hint to quieten down. And yet, it only seemed to make them shout louder and make the woman tap harder on the table. He went to dig his toes into the sand again, possibly even bury himself fully, and yet he found his feet pushing up against something hard. All too soon, the sandy beach began to fade from his view and his foot pressed against his solid bed frame. The rowdy group had disappeared and been replaced by a woman banging heavily on his open door, as she stood leaning against it smoking.

“Get the fuck out of bed, you lazy shit. School... And clean this fucking place up.”

He knows better than to even let the final seconds of another sigh escape before pushing himself up and off the edge of the bed. The bed, not his bed. Nothing in this house was his. He despised having nothing to call his own, that his parents wouldn’t forfeit for themselves. He was even surprised they let him have his bed in their house actually. Leaning over, he found a clean t-shirt and jeans from a neatly folded pile on the floor underneath the window. He grabbed his towel from its place hanging on the back of the door and headed towards the bathroom. He knew he had about ten minutes to clean up and get out before his father woke up and there was no good to come from him still being anywhere near the house once his father was out of bed. After a very quick, cold shower, he stole one minute to assess his appearance in the crooked mirror. His brown hair was starting to get long, hanging almost past the bottom of his ears. He immediately made a plan to get it cut, and cut short. His dark eyes were slightly bloodshot as they disagreed with the budget soap he had scrubbed his face with. Some people described him as scrawny or gangly, which was understandable, as his baggy clothes hid whatever muscle he had managed to gain recently. He gently slid the shirt over his bruised chest and winced at how the scratchy polyester rubbed against the fresh scrapes on his shoulders. He finished brushing his teeth with two minutes to spare. Just enough time to place his textbooks into his rucksack and fold his clothes from yesterday, before making very sure not to slam the front door as he hastily fled from the house and ran a sufficient distance away.

He was leaving a place that represented all of the suffering and torment he faced on a daily basis, and had an entire 11 hours before he had to return. With all of that relative freedom stretched out in front of him, this was his favourite time of day. He saw a face he recognised up ahead and attempted to quicken his pace, but his twisting abdomen was already aching with each step.

“Morning sunshine,” the new boy called in his loud, deep voice, with a wry smirk on his dirty-looking face, his eyes shifting momentarily to his friend’s awkward and clearly painful walk before averting his glance back to the skateboard he had in his left hand.

“’Sup Matt?” he replied, taking in his friend’s red and black Swanndri.

“Not much, I see you’re going for the ‘Fight Club’ look today though huh?” the new boy observed.

“I see you’re going for the lumberjack look today” he retorted, with a half smile.

The boys walked in the silence that they tended to resort to for the 17 blocks towards their high school. He wished he were like his friend in so many ways. The fact that he had a skateboard, and a brand new iPod made him jealous. But he wished he were like Matt in many other more simple ways too. Even that he was allowed to have his hair long, or wear a baseball cap, or the fact that people knew and remembered Matt’s name. It had taken him years to even realise that his life was different to others. He had learned to live the way they taught him and never knew any different. It was only when they were forced to let him out of their sight and into a different world – the real world – at school, did he realise that he wasn’t like the other kids. In his mind he pictured himself trapped inside a box, just big enough for him to lie down in but no matter how hard he forced it, or how passive he became, there was no way out. As a child, he had had dreams of being trapped in a box. In his dreams, he pictured two people piling things on top of the lid so it was impossible to open, from the inside or the outside. Even to this day, he remembered keeping his eye on the corner of the box closest to his face, where he could only just make out a sliver of light. He kept his eye on this light.
At school, he tried to keep mainly to himself. He kept his head down and spent most of his time, when not in class, in the library. It was the place he was least likely to get picked on, as the people that made his life harder didn’t tend to be of the literary persuasion. He also used the author’s imaginary worlds as an escape from the world he was forced to inhabit. In his world, there was always someone else he was trying to please: his mother, his Father, his teachers; but no matter how hard he tried, how hard he battled, it seemed it was a fight he could not win.

*

He had been forced to hide his notebook inside a back pocket of his rucksack. He had sown the pocket there himself only days after he had saved enough money to purchase the bag from a charity shop years ago. It was an average, black backpack, but, as he grew, it started to feel too small and he was uncomfortable wearing it. The contents inside the makeshift pocket were the only pieces of himself he had. Inside the zip, next to his notebook, was a small rock he had collected from the beach they visited once when he was 8, a key he had found in the back of his wardrobe not too long ago (he had no idea what the key fit, but preferred it that way) and a photo strip from a photo booth in town he had taken one day when his school was let out early and he had decided not to go straight home.
These were not just things to him, they were signs of a struggle. They were the only expression he had. In his notebook, he wrote stories of people, some very similar to himself, some lifetimes away; he wrote songs and lyrics, drew pictures and kept a journal (although there were few moments in his life that he wished to put down on paper for all eternity).

It seemed to him that his parents had dedicated their lives to running his, and even knowing these things hid in his rucksack made each and every day easier.
Today, he went to his homeroom early and found his regular seat at the back, next to the window. He pulled out an old copy of ‘Oliver’s Twist’ that he had borrowed from the library for the eighth time. After some time, the other kids started filing into the classroom, not as lively as they would be later, once they had all found their friends. They would ignore him as usual. It seemed like a long time before the class was full and Mrs Marsh arrived. He had been sitting by himself reading for nearly 45 minutes now – the nicest 45 minutes of his day. He had only just closed his book and swapped it for his textbook, when she walked in.

HER

She had been born on the warm, sunny morning of December 5th 1992. Mrs Carter gripped her husband’s hand tightly as a final push gave life to her baby girl. She squeezed open her tiny eyes just enough to take in Room 604 of Auckland Hospital. It hurt her eyes to fall upon the bright colours that filled the room: the sunlight pouring in the window, the intensely vivid flowers sitting on the bedside table in front of a floating mass of balloons. She saw a woman beam up at the man hovering over her head – they did not speak. That same love and respect continued to be passed with just a look within the family for years. The look began to set itself permanently on the baby’s face, and consequently, after sixteen years, she had grown into a very pretty young woman.

Today, she wakes to the familiar smells of eggs and tofu bacon cooking, of freshly cut grass, and of the perfume bottle she kept next to her bed. She had been dreaming – she couldn’t remember about what – but she woke with a smile on her face. After pushing the snooze button twice, she forced herself up and out of bed, brushing the hair out of her face as she did so. Her room was clean and organised, not the way she would have it though, if it were up to her. She shuffled towards her bathroom and showered, with no real sense of urgency. Twenty minutes later, after wiping down the completely fogged up mirror, she dressed in a pair of dark denim jeans and a loose white t-shirt. It was a routine she was so familiar with she almost did it without thinking at all, almost as if still asleep. Picking up her backpack and converse trainers up from where they had been left in a pile on the floor of her bedroom, she made her way downstairs. It was only 7:30am, which left plenty of time for her to sit down and enjoy her breakfast before she had to catch her bus to school. She enjoyed her peaceful mornings, which led to sombre afternoons and dull evenings. Despite the luxury that surrounded her, there was something stifled about her life. She felt her days were lived in slow motion, with everything at arm’s reach, and yet feeling so far away.

Her dad had already left for the gym at 6:00am, as he did every morning, and her mum was the one fixing her a delicious, and yet not entirely nutritious breakfast. Her mother plastered a smile on her face as she placed the plate of food in front of her and began a sentence about the benefits of eating eggs, but then gave up halfway through. She and her mother were close, but not best friends. She actually had a better relationship with her dad, which she put down to the fact that she hardly got to see him.

This morning, she sat staring at her mother as she fussed around with the alignment of the spice containers which lay in their rack on the bench. Her mother was humming quietly to herself as she went about her business, her song choice today seemed more gloomy than usual. It wasn’t that she didn’t try to get along with her mother, but they were just such different people – her mother went to church every Sunday, said grace before she sat down to any meal and never swore. Her mother’s strict appetite was also hard to live up to: she only ate whole, natural foods and had been a vegetarian for as long as her daughter could remember. She sat this morning, taking in her mother’s appearance – clean, purposeful and monotonous (the same as every morning), just as her mother turned to assess her appearance, “You couldn’t tidy yourself up a little bit before heading to school, darling? Just look how messy your hair is!”

As she went into the bathroom to re-tie her hair, she took comfort in knowing that on the weekend, her father would take her to McDonalds and they would have a Big Mac each, with fries – their little secret.

*

She watched as her mother blew her a kiss through the window of the car. She had to try to not flinch and squirm away in case its trajectory was spot on and it managed to hit her, instead choosing to pretend to trip on the curb and give an awkward wave as she regained her footing. She waited until her mother had pulled away from the school and turned the corner, she then waited several more minutes until she was sure her mother wasn’t going to return. The elastic snapped in her hand as she tugged at it with immense force to let her long, brown hair curtain around her face. She pulled her iPod out of her coat pocket, weaving it through her hair to disguise the cable, and placed her favourite Damien Rice album in her ear. She stood, staring over the yard, almost wishing something to swallow her up from underneath to save her from having to descend into another day of academic torture. After waiting for her reprieve for far too long, she finally gave in and headed towards her homeroom, late.

The look on Mrs Marsh’s face was the same one that greeted her every morning as the heavy classroom door slammed shut announcing her tardy arrival. She returned the teacher’s glare with a regretful, and yet slightly sarcastic look and walked obediently towards her seat at the back of the room. Despite her efforts, she could never be outright defiant. As she pulled her backpack off her shoulder and took her seat, she noticed the boy sitting at the desk next to hers. He always seemed to be wearing the same shirt. Her thoughts didn’t usually remain on this boy much longer than to take in his similar daily appearance, but, for some reason, this morning she continued to wonder how long she had been in the same homeroom as him, why he so loved the blue t-shirt and if this was the first time he had read ‘Oliver’s Twist’. She also made a point of noting his baggy jeans and muddy shoes. His hair was scruffy and he wore a look of resigned contempt – he was actually slightly scary looking. There was no doubt about it; he wouldn’t want to talk to someone like her.

HIM

He watched her as she rolled her eyes at Mrs Marsh. The teacher had given up trying to educate her about punctuality now, and just pointed to her desk at the end of the row next to him. You could see the cord that ran from her pocket to her ear, poorly woven through her chestnut hair in an attempt to disguise its existence. She hunched a little as she walked, and it didn’t suit her. He had been in the same homeroom as her for years now – he had noticed her on their first day, but they had never spoken more than five words to each other. He had seen the labels on her clothes, the car her mother dropped her off in and the brand new iPod she kept in her pocket, and he knew she was one of those girls who would snigger and laugh if he even attempted to talk to her.

Today, he noticed her eyes linger on him and his breathing shortened. She sat down and placed her bag on the desk, riffling through it to find her books. As she did so, her iPod fell from her coat pocket and bounced across the floor towards his desk and settled between his feet.