Sounds of the house

It haunts me. It hurts — when I think about it. And somehow I always find a way to think about it.

You always know when it’s raining from beneath a tin roof. That’s what I grew up under. A tin roof perched on top of weatherboards that my dad would repaint every 5 years or so. Not a single raindrop could go undetected in our house; a cue to snatch clothes from the line and cover the barbecue. We listened to gentle patters turn into frantic downpours hitting the roof like bullets falling overhead. I could close my eyes and know when a storm was getting stronger, or when it was letting up and passing over.

All around our house stood great big gum trees. I could hear the wind before I felt it. The trees quivered and quaked, and their hard leaves clicked together as the air pushed its way through them. 

If the wind was strong enough, we would hear brittle branches snapping off and landing with a clang on the roof. When the wind died down, Dad and I would assess the debris and get to work collecting the branches and sticks that covered the ground. Then we’d burn them in the fire pit. 

But the new house was a silent house. I couldn’t hear the wind or the rain from inside.

I had to learn to feel the rain. And if I wanted to know about the wind I had to go outside. 

They build houses differently in the city. Soundproof and full of stuffing to cushion every noise and rumble that dares come too close.

It was only three months after living in the new house that a big crack of lightning arrived in the middle of the night. It startled me so greatly I jumped out of bed momentarily forgetting where I was, screaming “Help!”

My husband told me to calm down, that it was “just lightning,” but I didn’t believe him and went to check if a car had driven into the house by accident, like I’d see happen on the news. My husband followed me around the house while I walked around shell-shocked until he got tired of it and said, “you’re acting crazy! Come to bed and close your eyes!” I lay wide awake, trying to understand this sound of heavy rain which sounded like a distant air conditioner blowing. 

I learned to check the weather report and take the washing off the line before it got dark. I learned to stay prepared. 

My husband didn’t share my problem. He refused to understand. It was his family home. He grew up under that roof, conditioned to it from birth, as his mother told me. The roof was covered in thick tiles and insulated and it overhung the double-brick walls so rain could barely touch the windows. There were no trees or vegetation around. His father believed plants made a mess and had laid a monopoly board of concrete around the home. Only small ferns in pots  were approved to line the entryway and a pair of scissors was kept at the front door to trim any browning leaves. Things didn’t change after his father died. It’s hard to change the way you were raised. That’s what my brother-in-law told me. 

One year, the neighbour’s jacaranda tree grew out of control and stretched its limbs over to our side of the fence. 

“If I see one single purple flower on my driveway there’s going to be hell to pay,” he said, staring at it through the kitchen window. 

For the next few days every time he passed the kitchen, he would double back to the window just to keep an eye on it. “Fucking trees,” he would mutter.

The purple flowers fell, of course. He was at work when the wind came and blew hundreds of them across  our driveway. Delicate little purple things made the bleak concrete look happy. I sat on the front step staring at them, smiling. I wasn’t worried about there being ‘hell to pay’ because he was always so lovely to the neighbour. He was lovely to most people he barely knew. 

He didn’t notice the flowers straight away when he pulled into the driveway because he was looking at me smiling. He loved seeing me waiting for him at the end of his day and smiled back. When he got out of the car his smile grew bigger as he walked towards me with open arms but before he could get to me he noticed the flowers, many of them crushed into brown paste from his tyres. 

“What the fuck!” He yelled, “why didn’t you do something?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. 

“The flowers! Look at the driveway it’s a mess!” 

“What could I have done?” 

“Why didn’t you say something to them?” 

He was frantic backing his car out of the driveway and wheeling the pressure hose up from the backyard. I turned to go inside but he said, “aren’t you going to help?” 

“There’s only one pressure hose. What do you want me to do?”

He stared at me, lips pursed into a tight line, don’t worry about it,” he grunted. 

I watched him from the kitchen window blasting away any evidence of the flowers from the concrete. Finally when he finished he marched in to find me. “In the morning you’re going to go next door and tell them to cut their tree down!” He didn’t speak to me for the rest of the evening. The hell was being paid. 

After the first lighting crack I dont think I slept properly for the next 15 years. It was as if my body was on constant alert of the potential of a storm. These things happen when you can’t hear them creeping up slowing; when you can’t hear a single rain drop. I woke with the feeling of the rain. I learned to do that; the gut and soul do magic things for you if you learn to listen to them and it was all I had back then, trust in my unseen senses. That’s what my therapist told me. 

After 16 long years I moved out of the new house and out of the city. Back to the country in a house like the one I grew up in. 

He had begged me to stay. We had been through the conversation a few times before. He told me I was being dramatic and that it was just a house that I should just had to learn to live with it like he had. He told me I was throwing away 16 years of happiness over a house and that he mustn’t mean very much to me if that was the case. Deep down he knew that wasn’t true. He could see the tired shell of a person I’d become over the years. Lack of sleep does that to you. 

After being gone a month he called me. 

“I c-c-can’t live without you,” he stuttered into the phone, “it’s just a house, I can leave it and we can start somewhere new —w-w- wherever you want.” 

I’d never heard him cry before. I knew he loved me but I knew it was too late. 

“I guess you never know a good thing until it’s gone.” 

That phone call still haunts me. It hurts. And I can’t stop thinking about it.