Squeak

In Squeak, Lilly Griffith explores the trauma that follows violence, from the Diversity in Australian Literature class.

That creeping sense of dread beneath dulled pain. (Image: Supplied)

I keep my gaze on the ceiling. There is a large, empty space in my mind that I toy with. I try to hold it in my hands, try to feel how dense it is, whether it is sticky or soft. I want to squeeze it and see if I can wring it like a sponge. The emptiness is large, and it feels confounding. There’s something there, I know it. It shifts when I touch it. Too soft to be solid, but too heavy to ignore. Like something left out in the sun too long. But all I can do is look at the world, which has been reduced to the patch of ceiling above me.

I trace my eyes along the square panels that cover the ceiling, following the long, rectangular shape of the overhead lights. The lights are as long as two panels, travelling vertically parallel to each other. At the end, each light has a circle, which makes them look like big, glowing exclamation marks. What a funny shape for a light, shining down on me like a spotlight, as if I am the only thing that exists.

That’s right. The man has asked me a question, and I am supposed to answer it. The empty space in my head nags at me. I close my eyes, try to get away from the lights, but their shape is now stamped onto the back of my eyelids. Big, white exclamation marks. What had the man asked? And where is the answer? It’s somewhere, floating around in the empty space inside my head. I try to grab at the emptiness again, but it evades me. My movements are slow, as if I’m moving through a pot of honey.

There it is again. Squeak, squeak, squeak.

It’s undoubtedly shoes with rubber soles. The soft kind, that’s light on your feet. If the footsteps were quicker, a bit more erratic, they would sound just like the ones from that night. The sound had echoed, just like that. Sharp and high-pitched against the tiles. I’d heard it before I’d seen anything. I had been turning the key in the lock, balancing a plastic bag on my wrist. I remember the way the bag twisted, the handle tightening around my skin.

I remember a voice, low and rough, saying something. But I can’t remember what. Or maybe I can. A hand on my shoulder. A pull. The plastic bag falling. A thud. Keys skittering across the floor. Everything blurs after that. Colours. Angles. The door, ajar. Cold air rushing in. I think I screamed. Had I screamed?

Something presses into the space in my head. The edges shift, then hold, as if taking form. A trembling mass, solid in places, sagging in others. It has a weight now, and it hurts.

Squeak, squeak, squeak.

I turn my head on the pillow, watching as the nurse comes back into the room. The pillow is soft on my ear and the side of my face. My hair rustles against the linen and tickles my skin where it bunches up around my neck and shoulders. The nurse is kind, fluffing up the pillows and smoothing the sheets around my legs. The memory, as brief as it was, seems far away now.

Everything is comfortable in this bed. If the ceiling is my world, this bed is my home. Warm, enveloping me entirely. Safe. That’s what she keeps saying. That I’m safe now. I’m not sure what she means by that, but it feels good.

The voices continue, they muffle, as though coming from somewhere far off. The nurse, her words soft and comforting, and the man, his tone low and measured, he is asking another question. But I can’t grasp the meaning. He is close, yet distant, like a shadow of something I can’t fully see. I shift slightly, the bed creaking beneath me, trying to listen, to understand, but the words float past me without settling. I can’t hold onto them. I can’t hold onto anything. And the emptiness inside me stretches, wide and endless.

The man sits there for a long time, despite time feeling meaningless to me. It passes by me like water around a stone.  I find a hairline crack in the wall behind the man’s head. Dust gathers there, and I can picture it beginning to ooze, dripping slowly and dark like molasses.

What happened last night? The space refuses to allow reprieve, but the longer I lie like this, the more the left side of my face aches. The dull throb stretches from my temple all the way across my cheek, seeping into my jaw. I gently bite down on nothing, scraping back and forth. Pain gnaws at me each time my teeth touch. A slow grind.

Squeak, squeak, squeak.

Enough now. I will it to stop, and it does. Enough, enough, enough now. I stop scraping. A hand is placed on my head. It feels cool on my skin, it wills away the pain. The nurse looks down on me, or I look up at her. She has a lot of wrinkles. She looks tired, as if she has been here for years. How long have I been here? Her eyes have dark bags that seem to weigh them down. Has she been here, stuck, for as long as I have? She addresses me by name. She tells me everything will be okay, and my arm becomes cold, colder than her hand that still lies on my head. It is the only thing below my neck that I can feel, I realise, before my whole body is dunked into the honey pot and everything becomes slow again.

The shape inside me slumps. It doesn’t vanish, but I feel it slipping lower, muddier, softer. It wants to sleep. So do I. Some kind of pain medication. Morphine, maybe. The hospital. Who was paying for all of this? My private healthcare had expired, I was no longer a part of the family plan. Medicare didn’t cover all this, that I was sure of. How much debt would be waiting for me on the other side?

The man is speaking again. Little things, leaving his mouth, fluttering into the space between me and the ceiling. He is a detective, he says, he is here to help me. How can I know he isn’t here to hurt me? He speaks low and soft, his words like stones dropped into a pond, each one sinking, disappearing, rippling on the way down.

He works with Victoria Police. He has been a detective for 10 years. He is involved with family-related violence, domestic incidents. I can trust him, he says. He has a son in Year 3. He has two dogs, a Schnauzer and a Greyhound. They’re called Lion and Bear. He likes that their names are confusing and contradictory; he says it expresses their characters in the most simple of ways.

I can trust him.

The stones sink, lower, lower, until they reach the bottom and collide with the pond bed. How can I trust him, when I couldn’t trust him? He knows things about me. He addresses me by name, he knows where I live, asks me about what I was doing last night.

Squeak, squeak, squeak.

I went to Coles. I bought ingredients for dinner, avocados for breakfast. Back home, I waved the fob to get into the building, up the stairs, to my door. I put the key into the lock, turned, opened the door, and he was there. He still hadn’t given me my spare key back. I should have gotten it back. He smacked me across the face, and I fell. The grainy texture of the doormat beneath my cheek. My avocados rolled away down the hallway. I could see into my apartment, but he dragged me back out. He started kicking me. His sneakers, into my ribs, out of my ribs, into my belly, my arms, my legs, stomping down. I screamed. I had screamed for him to stop, for someone to help me, please, someone help me. Stomping down, and down, and down.

Then he was running, sideways in my vision, back down the hallway, back to the street. Those sneakers.

Squeak, squeak, squeak.

The man’s face is clearer now, solidified in my vision. I hear his voice like a bell. He asks me if I want to see my reflection. When he holds up the mirror, I move my gaze from his face to my own.

I used to have clear skin. People would tell me I had the skin of a baby. I see now that my face, which was once familiar to me, is now a misshapen thing I barely recognise. Black, blue, purple, colours like paint smeared across the side of my face. My eyes; swollen, puffy and red. My jawline; almost invisible. He did this to me, after all of that, after everything.

He takes away the mirror and asks me again. What happened last night? And the shape inside me sharpens. It grows corners. It presses back. It knows exactly who gave it form.

Squeak, squeak, squeak.

There it is again. The man barely looks up at the nurse as she moves over to the bed, but my focus shifts entirely to her. She leaves for a while, but she always comes back. I move my face towards her, and she responds in turn, meeting my gaze with something akin to hope in her eyes.

I feel the space inside of me melt. I can no longer feel where it ends, and where I begin. The man had asked me a question. And I was supposed to answer it. But instead, I have a question only for the nurse. She leans in closer.

As if they are the first words to ever leave my mouth. 

I ask if she can change her shoes.