Dramatic Monologue

I wandered slowly into the sun room, sliding my fingers over mantelpieces and collapsing with a big sigh, face down onto a conveniently placed floral couch. My mother looked up from her sewing with an amused smile, her short black hair shining in the misty sunlight drifting lazily through a permanently open window. A few overly ambitious green vines had already crept onto the sill and nature’s presence leaned in like a curious gardener. Mum mildly commented that a bit of dusting usually helps to alleviate her boredom and a muffled groan escaped from the pillow in which I had buried my face, immediately followed by a spluttering cough and my concession that perhaps the room was a little dusty. I picked up a tissue and the antique, simply-carved
wooden buffalo from the mantelpiece, leaving a little clean circle amidst the dust and old golden photo frames. I was careful in handling it, aware that it was the only object that had survived Mum’s boat trip. Chipped and faded, it lay heavily in my hands like a small, silent guardian of the house, emanating strength and comfort.

Mum looked up from her sewing to closer observe me attempting to blow dirt out from between its ears and shook her head, tsk-ing.
I gave her a look. In silent protest against her judgement, I threw away the tissue and pushed my face back into the pillow.

“You know when I was your age in…”

She stubbornly continued over the loudly groaning couch, her accent becoming more pronounced with nostalgia. The familiar “first time I killed a goose” story went on longer every time she told it.

“…rain washing the blood all down the driveway…”

I made a louder, pointed groan in her direction. She stopped mid-sentence, gave me an exasperated look, and went off on a different
tangent

“I never complained when I did my chores. At least you didn’t have to farm the rice paddies. That was the worst. Sometimes there’d be bodies in the water.”

Wait, what? The pillow fell off my face as I sat up. Suddenly, I was missing the blood and feathers. She noticed my reaction with mild amusement and nodded at me with the self-satisfied air of someone containing laughter as a small child discovers that the real Little Mermaid did not in fact end up with her handsome prince.

“Oh yes. Of course, if there was too much blood in the water, it was impossible and we’d have to go hungry for a while, but we made do with hard work. You will eat anything when you’re hungry enough and wet enough and you’ll be surprised at what you can achieve with enough drive. I taught a stray dog to find food for me. Unlike me, he was perfectly happy to run out into dark and humid thunderstorms. I hate rain. Of course, he wasn’t always reliable. Once he brought me a piece of meat that I got way too excited for before realising that it was a human ear!”

She gave a small shudder at the memory but disgust was the only emotion I could gauge from her face.
No horror, no sadness. Not even a mild bitterness at her misfortune. She told me horrifying stories: bodies cleared away from the streets; unfortunate landmine victims; the severe consequences of famine and disease; detailed descriptions of gruesome injuries; children marching, saluting enthusiastically to their red-robed leaders under the yellow star; the boat crammed with coughing throats and calloused hands; blood washed away by the rains. She talked about things I had only ever heard about from the kind of tragic monologues that hot-shot actors won Oscars for and only shed real tears for at the podium. But unlike the performers’ melodramatic shouts of magniloquent misdirected emotion and the onion tears I associated with this kind of language, she seemed perfectly comfortable with relating her worst experiences as if recounting the events of a recently-watched Midsomer Murders episode. She had never talked about the
war.
Maybe that was just because I had never asked.

Her life lessons were interrupted by a falling sewing needle hitting the floor like a sword triumphant at drawing blood. A drop of red welled up on her index finger before it was quickly covered by a tissue. I began to ask her if she was alright but she interrupted, telling me not to worry and that this was why she always carried emergency band aids in her sewing kit. Wrapping up her finger with surprising dexterity, she gave me a wink and smoothed out her new little golden thimble.

She looked back at her pillowcase for a moment, then turned her face to the cool breeze wafting through the window, bringing with it the enticing scent of oranges, sunlight and the green of pine trees. Golden rays glinted in her hair and she breathed deeply, dust swirling in and out of sunlit visibility around her face.

“It’s such a nice day.”

She turned and smiled at me. I fidgeted uncomfortably, attempting to think of an appropriate response to this sudden interest in the weather. Suddenly, she suggested taking Charlie for a walk and stood up decisively. I nodded, relieved, and rose to search for his leash, almost dropping the wooden buffalo that I had forgotten was on my lap. Reassuring Mum that it was unharmed and yes I was sorry and no I wasn’t going to do it again, I placed him carefully back at his post. He still wasn’t quite clean but the mantelpiece looked strangely empty without him occupying his special place among the family photos. I made sure he was perfectly positioned back in his dust circle before leaving him to sit complacently amidst his fellow mementos and running out the door into the green and golden garden. My mother was already waiting, relaxed and content, eyes closed up to the sun.