Storymania - Aunt Rose's Revenge by Louise Dunn

Aunt Rose's Revenge
Louise Dunn

I know Aunt Rose hates me and that’s why she did what she did.

"She’s not very happy, your Aunt Rose," Mum often said to me. And when I was in hospital she said, "Aunt Rose is so upset. What a terrible accident."

But I knew it was no accident. I knew she blamed me for what had happened that night with Brad when she could have blamed Mum or the bus company or just bad luck. And I knew she looked around at her life now and blamed me for that.

When I was a kid my mother owned a launderette. I spent a lot of time there curled up on an old couch out the back reading or doing my homework or talking to Mum while she ironed. I loved the launderette, the soft hum of the machines, the spinning colours of other people’s clothes and the gossip that floated around in the warm air. When my mother decided to order five new regular washers and two jumbo ones, she bought the building next door and applied for planning permission to knock a hole in the wall.

My mother was so excited that day when we walked up the hill to Aunt Rose’s.

"I have to go into the city next Friday and sign some papers," she told me. "I’ll leave you with Rose."

I tugged at her hand. "Can’t I come with you?"

Aunt Rose answered Mum’s request with the same pleading tone. "Can’t she go with you?" She stared at Mum in horror.

"Please, Rose, I’ve tried everyone else."

" I know. I know I promised any time you need me. But not next Friday. Brad’s asked me out." She was suddenly smiling. "Can you believe it? I’ve waited so long."

Aunt Rose had been in love with Brad since she was sixteen. In love with his handsome good looks, his wealthy family, and the beautiful house he would one day inherit. Brad wore nice clothes, drove the latest car, and everyone jumped when Brad clicked his fingers. Aunt Rose’s one ambition in life was to become Mrs. Brad.

Mum was happy for her. "That’s wonderful. But I’ll be back by three. Plenty of time for you to get ready for the big date."

On Friday morning I was left at Rose’s along with lots of promises not to be a minute late. I watched Mum’s small figure retreating down the hill and then Aunt Rose and I regarded each other warily. It wasn’t that she didn’t like me, she just didn’t know what to say to an eight year old child. She gave me books to read that I’d left there when I was three, and she’d bought me a colouring in book and crayons and was amazed when I didn’t go over the lines. At lunch time she asked if I would like my food cut up

"I’m eight," I answered haughtily.

"No need to be cheeky," she said, and I could see her looking in the kitchen mirror to check her make-up. There were mirrors all over that house and she couldn’t pass one without at least a glance. I hoped I wouldn’t be like that when I was twenty-one. I once asked Mum if she had been and she laughed and said with a two year old daughter she didn’t even have time to wear make-up.

After lunch Aunt Rose gave me a big bowl of ice cream and disappeared upstairs. I ate the ice cream and then helped myself to some more and wondered about going on dates and why you would have to start getting ready at lunch time.

She eventually reappeared. "Your Mum will be here soon."

Big blue rollers clung to her head with her wispy hair wrapped around them. Two circles of skin around her eyes and a strip around her mouth were all that was not covered by the mudpack. Her eyes looked smaller stripped of the make-up that usually covered them, and I noticed how thin and mean her lips were.

"What are you staring at?"

I didn’t want to say that I was thinking how much prettier Mum was so I asked, "What’s that on your face?"

And she said, "A mud pack. Start tidying up."

Of course there was nothing to tidy up. Aunt Rose had the cleanest house I had ever been in. Nothing was allowed to be out of place for more than a minute. Anytime we visited she was dusting or vacuuming or washing floors. Mum said it was because she was sexually frustrated but that was much later on when I understood what she meant.

Aunt Rose and I sat on the sofa and watched the clock creep around to three and then past three, and cracks began to appear in her face so she went upstairs and washed the mud off. Then we sat there some more and after a while she began to tap her foot angrily against the leg of the coffee table. She tapped and the clock ticked and when it was four thirty she went upstairs for a bath, and I had some more ice cream and wondered where Mum was.

She was in that bath for so long I thought I should go and see if she was all right. The bathroom door was open just enough for me to feel the steamy warm air drifting out and I thought of the launderette and wished I was there. Aunt Rose was singing some song about endless love and so I went into her bedroom and sat down at the dressing table on a pink stool with a pink furry cushion. There was a huge mirror and all her make-up was tidied away in lots of tiny drawers. I took out a lipstick and drew a huge, plum coloured clown’s smile on my face. "Not quite my colour." I mimicked Aunt Rose, and drew another smile on top with a very bright red. I pulled out powders and rouges and eyeshadows, throwing each one down in a frenzy of excitement, leaving lids open and tops off. My artists palette face shouted at Aunt Rose from the mirror as she appeared in the doorway. "Look! Look at me!" My voice trailed away at the expression on her face and I frantically tried to wipe my face clean on my sleeve.

"What have you done? That’s my favourite lipstick. You’ve ruined it. And I only bought that powder yesterday. It’s all over the floor. Get out of here."

In the bathroom I desperately scrubbed at my face covering the fresh towels in smudged colours. Mum still wasn’t there and it was six o’clock. I went into the kitchen and took some more ice cream. Aunt Rose was so quiet coming down the stairs that when she snapped, "What do you think you’re doing?" I dropped the bowl in fright. Melting ice cream and broken china covered the kitchen floor and she made a sort of moaning noise and I felt tears in my eyes but I wasn’t going to cry in front of her.

"Where’s Mum?"

"She’ll be here any minute. She knows Brad’s coming for me at seven." Aunt Rose said, but she was talking to herself not me. She handed me the ice cream carton. "Here. You might as well finish this. Go and sit down while I clean up this mess." She looked in the kitchen mirror and pouted at herself with full red lips. She had taken the rollers out and her hair bounced around her head in big floppy curls.

"You look nice," I ventured, but she glared at me as if to say, ‘What would you know?’ so I went and sat down.

We were sitting at either end of the sofa when, at seven o’clock, there was a knock on the door. We both jumped up.

"Mum," I said happily.

"Sit down," hissed Aunt Rose, pushing me down with her arm.

"Come on, Rosie babe, I know you’re in there," Brad shouted through the letter box.

"You look wonderful. Delicious. I could eat you," he continued when she opened the door. And then he saw me.

"You didn’t tell me we were babysitting," he joked, with a faint note of irritation.

"Hello," I said politely.

"We’re not. She’s getting picked up any minute."

"Good." Brad put an arm around her waist and she giggled. "You know I can’t stand kids."

"See if your mum’s coming," Aunt Rose said to me, so I went to the window and it was nearly dark and it was raining so I could see nothing except Brad’s big expensive car. I sat down on a chair because the two of them were on the sofa. I noticed that Aunt Rose had make-up on her dress where she had pushed me onto the sofa, and I noticed that Brad had noticed too. After a while she began to tap her foot and he began to look at his watch every two minutes and raise his eyebrows.

"Dinner reservations are for seven thirty, Rosie," he sighed.

"Aunt Rose, I feel sick." I looked at her anxiously.

She jumped up and asked "Do you want a glass of water?"

I tried to answer her but instead I threw up all over her, the chair, the sofa, the floor, everywhere except on Brad. People didn’t throw up on Brad. He stood up and carefully stepped over the mess.

"Some other time, Aunt Rose," he said.

As he went out the front door my mum came in, wet and exhausted. I ran to her sobbing, "She gave me too much ice cream."

Mum hugged me while explaining about a broken down bus and waiting hours for another one to arrive and the traffic accident just as they reached the city, which had caused a huge traffic jam, and how sorry she was. But Aunt Rose just stood and cried with her dress all covered in vomit because she knew that there would never be another time with Brad.

Three years later Aunt Rose married Bill and became a farmer’s wife. They lived a hundred miles from anywhere and Aunt Rose came for visits with Mum as often as she could.

"I wish I could come more often," I overheard her moan to Mum one day.

"Aren’t you happy with your life, Rose?" Mum asked.

"It’s not my life. My life was with Brad. This is someone else’s life I’m living. Someone who likes red dust and sweat and always coming second to a cow."

I was sixteen when Mum and I went to the city to see one of Bill’s prize bulls that was entered in a show. We walked through the mud, past rows of wooden pens to where Bill stood waving a rosette at us.

"We won, you little beauty," he shouted, his hair and cheeks as red as the animal that stood behind him. He handed me the rosette. "Stick it up there for me, love."

I saw Aunt Rose walking towards us. She was wearing wellington boots and a dirty raincoat. Her hair looked flat and lifeless and even from that distance I could tell she had no make-up on. I climbed onto the bottom bar of the cubicle to pin the rosette beside the other two which were already there. I couldn’t quite reach so I climbed onto the next bar, eyeing the huge animal inside the pen which was eyeing me just as suspiciously. I could hear Mum talking to Bill and I stretched up and suddenly I slipped, except I knew I didn’t slip because I felt the hands on my back. I tried to grab hold of something, but all I felt was the hairy back of that bull and the warmth of his breath on my face. And I somewhere in the distance I could hear Mum screaming and Bill shouting, "Don’t move, love," and I wondered if he was talking to me or the bull. But most of all I noticed the silence of Aunt Rose and the meanness in those huge brown eyes which were inches away from my own. And the excruciating pain when two thousand pounds of prime beef decided he didn’t want to share his pen.

They told me in the hospital that I was lucky. Bruising and a fractured rib. And a leg that was broken in several places. That was when I was sixteen. Aunt Rose is still married to a cow farmer and I still walk with a limp. I guess she thinks she’s had her revenge.