My Good Aunt

My Good Aunt

Trigger warning: Mental Health / Children's death

Rooms full of medical equipment, are the only things left in the labyrinth of decaying structures. The faint smell of hospital food lingers in the kitchens where 100,000s of meals were prepared over the decades…

The hospital where my mother resided throughout my childhood is under demolition. I learn this from a website article and it includes a virtual tour of the old hospital. I double dare myself to double click. But that mention of the smell of hospital food, lightly beaten with antiseptic and decay is enough. I close the article.

When my mother first became ill, my father entrusted my care to an Aunt. My mother’s younger sister Judy might have leapt from the pages of a particularly nasty Roald Dahl story. My father refused to see my mother but Aunt Judy thinking I would be missing her took me to the hospital frequently. She had a preference for a route across a narrow, rickety swing bridge by foot.

Shivering, I took a step onto the bridge. The hospital gateway, tall gothic constructed out of uninviting concrete loomed ahead. In sympathy the bridge swayed and shuddered. By the middle, the bridge shook so hard, I had to catch the railing to stand upright. I willed my aunt to see my discomfort. She saw but instead of comforting me, she leaned down and whispered, “Do you know what’s making the bridge shake so badly?”

I shook my head, sombre and scared.

“Clip clop clip clop,” she said inscrutably. She waited but I could not puzzle it out. “A troll,” she announced as the bridge shuddered and tipped violently. I took to my heels and ran, my aunt’s high-pitched cackle behind me.

“Run little billy goat, run…”

I didn’t dare look back hearing planks break free, I ran past screws popping out like jack in the boxes, nails flying like bullets whistling over my head. The creature below tore at the bridge. Eels in the river below circled like sharks in a feeding frenzy. A silvery watery finger reached for me, scratching my back as I reached the other side of the bridge.

From there it was a short walk to the hospital where my mother lay sedated, but I knew I would be no safer running to her.

I looked behind me to see the bridge was intact swaying like a love seat on a porch on a warm day. I was standing on grass that was just a shade too green, smothered with daisies. This was a quiet small town, where nothing very unusual happened. With the one exception of what my mother had done.

I clung to my aunt during the visit, a ghost of a child with wide scared eyes. Finally, I turned to her and whispered, “Please may I go home now, Mummy?”

My mother’s lament wrapped around me as we left, her sobs clinging to us like the hospital food odours in the hallways.

“You’re my little girl now,” said my Aunt in a satisfied whisper.

My mother was obsessed with the movement of water. Before the day at Castle Rock, she would stand in front of our washing tub. It was a mix of mechanical and motor, an antique even then, agitating the clothes clean, swirling them left and right. There was no spin cycle, only two rollers to squeeze clothes dry.

My Aunt spun a story about a woman who caught her breasts in the wringers of the old-style washing machine and warned me to pay heed as my bust was developing.

My mother stared into the tub hypnotised, drawn in.

That day on the cliff top, staring down into the sea she saw the same pattern. She was drawn to the whirlpool just as she was to the miniature version swirling in the washing machine.

While my mother was hypnotised by the swirling water of the tub, I was preoccupied by the threat of the rollers.

I developed a phobia of things that lurked underneath such as trolls. My Aunt of course did everything possible to reinforce that fear.

“Do you remember when I tried to drown you?” My Aunt giggled as if remembering a hilarious prank from girlhood. She had waited more than a decade to say this.

The waves propelled me to the shore with a violence and exhilarating speed I hadn’t experienced before. My fear of water evaporated at the feeling of being carried at speed to shore.

“The tide is turning. It’s dangerous. Come back in,” my aunt warned as I waded out again. “The waves will drag you under.”

I still dream of the shock of being forced under the water. Pushed to the sandy floor, my face ground into the sand. Struggling to stand, I was forced down again and again.

My Aunt explained the waves punished me for becoming complacent at what was, in retrospect, quite a dangerous beach. No lifeguards, sudden drops and a rip tide. It was more plausible the energy of a wave would hold a child under water till they nearly passed out, rather than contemplate that an adult might punish a child for disobedience in such away.

I was less horrified than you might expect at her casual admission now that she had indeed tried to drown me. My Aunt, as the English say, had form. She relished just a little bit of child abuse now and again. Nothing too deviant, just a sliver of psychological mayhem.

In fact, I felt a sense of relief to have that cleared up at last. Not many of my memories are so easily validated.

Her expression was affectionate. I never doubted she was fond of me. She was never resentful of the demands I made on her time, as my father was. But she possessed an odd sense of fun and played mean and rough.

“What a strange silent child you were,” she said. “I had to explain to a teacher once why you always looked so sad.” She chuckled. “Stupid woman, it was just your face.”

Or was it?

“I thought you would run straight to your father and tell him your old aunt had tried to drown you,” she cackled to herself. “I thought your father would never speak to me again, but you didn’t say a word, did you? You strange, lovely little girl.”

I automatically recited the lines I learned as a child when we were a double act.

“You’re not my old aunt, You’re my good aunt.”

Not really true, but neither is her assumption that I had not told my father.

My father had said: “You should be an actress. Everything is high drama with you. You are just like your Aunty Judy and equally exhausting.”

That wounded me more than his refusal to believe me.

My Aunt moved into town from Castle Rock at the start of my mother’s hospitalisation. My father never visited her and I was glad to have the same option. I never wanted to go back to that hospital again and with Aunt Judy around, I didn’t really miss my mother at all.

“Do you live with us now?” I asked. “You don’t need to. I can look after Daddy. I can do everything Mummy did.”

“You can’t do everything your mother did for your father,” said my Aunt mysteriously and when I opened my mouth to argue she cut me off. “Has your daddy asked you to do anything that your mother used to do for him?”

At the time I had no idea what she was getting at and her tone frightened me. It was as if she was thinking of something very dreadful and was afraid to say it out loud.

It dawned on me years later that my aunt was wondering if the dour unhappy man that was my father had incestuous urges. My father was cold, distant and I had no physical contact with him whatsoever so she was quite wrong. When I understood her questions much, much later, I wondered if my Aunt was hinting at an awful secret about my mother rather than questioning the complicated but quite distant relationship I had with my father.

Was she offering an obscure clue as to why my mother did the terrible thing she did? Was it an explanation for my aunt’s callous sense of humour? What kind of girlhood had these two deranged women led?

Although it occurred to me it was more likely my Aunt’s amateur dramatic society was staging Ibsen at the time and she was in character and liked to screw with my head.

 “Would you like to come and live with your old aunt then?” she asked brightly. “Daddy is quite capable of taking care of himself and I would like to have some company. I refuse to be a spinster with a cat, but an orphaned niece would be quite acceptable.”

I was eager to escape my house and the gulf my mother and brothers left by their absence. Although I noted she had ignored my surplus parents conferring orphan status upon me. But my favourite friends were orphans. Pollyanna. Anne Shirley. Jane Eyre. I did not object, I rather liked the role she cast me into.

“You’re not my old aunt,” I said perhaps for the first time. “You’re my good Aunt.”

The article reporting the demolition of my mother’s hospital did not mention where the patients were being moved to. Eventually I asked my Aunt if my mother was being sent away.

“They wanted your father to take her,” my Aunt giggled down the phone at that notion. “That was very much a nonstarter, so they have no choice but to scrape the bottom of the barrel of options available.”

“Oh dear God,” I breathed. “They’re not sending her to me, are they?”

My Aunt laughed even harder. “No, Christ no. They’re sending her to me. They made it very clear nobody at the asylum thought it wise, but they had no other choice.”

“That can only be a temporary solution,” I start because I too did not think it a wise arrangement.

“One hopes it will be temporary,” said my aunt. Her tone was not hopeful, her words felt ominous. It was exceedingly irresponsible to release my mother to my Aunt’s care – based on my upbringing with her at least. I arranged to visit them after she was released.

Castle Rock is a seaside town that has never converted to tourism. Fisherman still go out each day. There is one shop and a bus from town brings supplies each week. Time is slow here and to the outsider it appears to be a wonderful place to spend your childhood.

Over many years the best and prettiest seashells were cemented along the front facing wall of my Aunt’s cottage. The other local fishermen’s abodes are uniformly dull and functional. My aunt’s house is adorned with fairy lights and rainbow flags, carved sea birds stand alert like sentries along her driveway, and she has painted the house the colour of a sunrise. She made it a magical palace worthy of a township called Castle Rock.

The house has an excellent view of the rock shaped like a castle that rises above the light house with a steep drop from the cliff into the water below.

The same cliff my mother threw my brothers off and intended to jump herself. She would have thrown me into the churning surf too if I had not, like a little billy goat, run for my life bleating for help.

I see two silhouettes on the cliff. Baby Jody waving his fat little arms like a fledgling pushed out of a nest too soon. Rex punching the air and shouting with rage as he falls. Every time I look in the direction of the rock I see them.

My Aunt agreed to take my mother in so she is faced with the evidence of what she did each day.

Exactly the kind of cruelty I expect of my Aunt. I chide myself for being bad and unforgiving. Just like my Aunty Judy, I am a bad girl and lack remorse.

The locals claim the whirlpool at the bottom of the cliff was created by a beast residing in a deep cave below the lighthouse. They call it a taniwha, a dragon like water beast with a hunger for human flesh. It feeds well. A review of drowning statistics at Castle Rock are well over any national average.

The steepest point, directly above the taniwha’s lair is infamous. No plaque is necessary. The locals know this place is evil and visitors sense the tragedies that have taken place over so many years. My mother was not the first who was drawn to the cliffs edge and tried to jump.

Evil is not static, it spreads malignantly and even when I was landbound I would on occasion feel a tickling on the back of my neck, fear clutched my heart, a smell of seaweed tingled my nostrils. Ghosts of drowned fisherman whispered to me. The sounds of the water crashing against the cliffs reverberated in my ears…

I experience all these sensations again, amplified like a tsunami of panic because I am back in the shadow of the rock. I force myself to push open my Aunt’s door fighting the urge to run to the car to get as far away as possible from my childhood, away from my mother and escape my other mother.

Aunt Judy has entered her I Love Lucy phase in her many transformations. She wears a polka dot bandana and canary yellow pedal pushers. Her lips are bright red the same colour as her dyed fire engine red hair.

“Is mother here?” I ask nervously.

My aunt nods. “Somewhere around the place. Probably down on the beach. She’s always wandering off.” She shrugs her classic, what more is a girl to do, shrug.

I go look for her. I find my mother on the beach skipping in the shallow waves lapping the shore. Like a careless young girl rather than a double murderer who has spent years in an institution.

“I’m home,” she says happily.

It seems all three of us lack the capacity for remorse .

Mother wades out further to the first set of breakers. I resolve I will have to retrieve her if she goes any further.

My aunt joins us, but her only contribution is to shout, “I hope you have rocks in your pockets, lady.”

The waves batter my mother. She is weak and this is a bad place. Tapu the locals say. We should leave. Leave while there is no harm done.

“Can you hear her song?” Mother calls to me. She is radiantly happy, gesturing wildly.

Fear grips me. Of course, the song. That day at the cliff, I heard the song. I didn’t see the hypnotic patterns in the water but I heard the song. The high whispery notes, the pleading tone, the desire, the need to join the taniwha…

A wave wraps around my mother and drags her down to the ocean floor. When she rises up from the ocean, seaweed is entwined in her hair like a bridal head dress.

I take a faltering step towards her. I can feel how close my brothers are. I miss them so much, especially Jody.

“Why did you run?” Rex demands, hands on hips, he carries a trident like a warrior. He is filled with indignation and rage and he’s pointing it at me! “Why didn’t you help me stop her?”

I know it’s not Rex because Rex died when he was eleven trying to rescue his little brother. It is my overactive imagination again. Imagination is a much nicer word than psychosis so I will stick with that.

“She was never your family,” a familiar voice rasps in my ear. “I was the mummy you called for when you had nightmares. Go back to the house. Put the kettle on.”

“We can’t just leave her in the water…” I start as another wave batters my mother and knocks her to the ground.

“No,” says my Aunt. “We can’t but your old aunt will take care of her.”

One step, two step. My heart is beating fast. My Aunt is not capable of hurting anyone, least of all her own sister. I am paranoid as well as delusional now.

Well, that was only a matter of time given my family history.

“The tide is turning. It’s dangerous. Get out now!”

The same warning I received before my aunt tried to drown me for defying her.

When I look back my brothers are gone. My mother too, is out of sight. I only pause for a few seconds then I turn back and walk into my aunt’s house and close the door to wait.

Unsurprisingly my aunt returns without my mother. There is a commotion down on the beach. Men are dragging boats out to sea. I know she is lost. I let the sea take her just as it stole my brothers .

However, my aunt is unconcerned and demands to know where her tea is. I serve it to her in best bone china and she sticks her little finger out as if we are having a tea party and takes a genteel sip.

“Your mother’s happy. You be happy now. Do it for your old aunt.”

“You’re not my old aunt,” I say automatically. “You’re my good aunt.”

ENDS