JUNE - THE ISSUE - Coming Home
Bringing new voices and interesting work for your attention
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Is coming home a place? A person? A feeling? How do you know? How do people know who have never had a home? Or have never known what one felt like, housed or not?
And what do you do if you can’t go home – either back to what is home to you or at all?
There are so many paths to so many different kinds of homes; follow our authors as they wend their way back to where they at least once belonged. And make yourself quite at home, thank you kindly. Maya
FRAGMENT 2022 by Dee Allen
I've seen this show
Too many goddamn times.
The prodigal son
Returns home from estrangement
Twenty years worth
And his folks are so glad
He's at the dinner table with them again
Or on the living room couch
Discussing “the good old days”
He's forgotten half of
Then the elderly female, age 83,
Pushes the Christian Bible on him
Like a swung, blunt object
Upside his bald head.
This show ended
With a holy roller twist. No laugh track.
Some things about my family never change.
The Loo: surely there are drugs in there -- a true story by Sandra Joy
(illustrated by Pam Garfoot)
We were ahead of time, but the carriages were already quite full. It was a relief to find two seats together, and to finally be on the train from Sydney Central to Newcastle Interchange, the one that would take us home. Pam to Morisset and me to Broadmeadow. The two and a half hours stretching ahead of us didn’t seem that long. Not yet anyway.
Our immediate view was less than ideal: three steps to the departure vestibule area and the loo. If I leaned towards Pam’s shoulder, I too could see the aisle between the external door and toilet door, and through the glass doors into the next carriage.
Pam and I chatted about writing and the events of the day, the morning train delays, some upcoming meetings, and the weather. We looked through her incredible sketchbook and watched passengers as they approached and left. Seems we were both people watchers.
Recorded messages play frequently on our local trains. We listened to the one that included the notice: “A reminder that smoking is not allowed on trains.” Hearing this was not a new thing. Hearing it three times within a few minutes was. Before long the message was delivered by a human speaker: “Smoking on trains is not allowed, this includes vapes. The smoke alarm has gone off again so whoever is smoking needs to stop.”
Pam and I started sniffing the air – she could smell it more than I could. As we were sniffing like hunting hounds, a security guard arrived at the top of the stairs and caught my eye (or nose).
“Smoke?” he mimed to me. I shrugged and shook my head and hands to indicate the possibility. He walked down the steps and approached, asking if we knew who was smoking. We were shocked to hear from the opposite side of the aisle, a man (let’s call him Neighbouring Male) who could identify the culprit.
“She was wearing black tights and a pink top. She went up that way.”
I think he was referring to a stick-thin woman we had noticed earlier (we called her Anorexic Junkie), but it could easily have been someone else.
Now we were really alert, looking for a smoker. Then the frequency of use of the toilet caught our attention too. The open/shut button outside the door was getting a good workout. Putting the two together I concluded, “Perhaps there are drugs in there”. We started giggling.
The first repeat customer for the toilet was a couple with a pram. Baby Daddy had been into the toilet alone, and now he was going in with the Baby Mummy and Baby in the pram. Three in a toilet - how unhygienic and cosy. Perhaps Baby’s nappy is difficult to change, we reflected. On their third return as a little family, Baby Mummy was carrying an open bag of Honey Soy chips. Yum!
“If I am chewing even a lolly and my lips are sealed,” I told Pam. “I won’t enter a toilet until I have swallowed it. There are germs in there. And she’s got an open bag of chips!”
Baby Mummy carried them into the toilet vestibule and then, with full view as the door opened and she walked out, Pam added, “She’s still eating the chips.” Yuk!
This same female was seen later doing her hair in the reflection of the train window. Out of view of her child, her baby cried out to her. The not-so-loving snappy response was, “I’m busy, I’m doing something!”
The only other time I heard Baby Mummy was when I was leaning over and watching Anorexic Junkie’s departure from the loo. She had staggered her way to press the button, falling into the rail on the wall. Perhaps it was the train’s swaying causing her to be unsteady on her feet though I doubt it. After her visit, she returned to the next carriage and tried to make her way around Baby Mummy’s pram that was parked across the aisle.
“F--- off!” one yelled.
“No, you F--- off!” the other replied.
Pam and I watched as the voices raised, expecting to see some violence erupt. But it seemed that Baby Mummy and Anorexic Junkie were friends. Strange friends.
Tall Male approached from the next carriage, around the curved wall of the loo, and pressed the big green button, ignoring the bright red neon ENGAGED sign. The door didn’t open. Impatiently, he hit it again. And again. And again. By this stage, Pam and I were enjoying the entertainment of the vestibule visitors and were acting like young teenage girls in our assessment of each one. We were both feeling a little hysterical.
“Maybe, because he’s so tall and standing close to the button, he can’t see it. You know, looking down on that angle, maybe he only sees the plastic sign cover, not the bright red neon ENGAGED sign,” I offered as an excuse for his apparent stupidity.
Red Jumper Guy was the next regular visitor. His bladder must have been very small, or perhaps it was due to the increasing amount of liquid his swaggering body was consuming.
“Ew! Germs Lady. She didn’t wash her hands.” We discussed the creepiness and number of women who don’t wash their hands. There were some loo-users who could have washed their hands before opening the door – we could hear the water flow. I’d consider that normal. But there were some whose final moments could be viewed: by opening the door before toilet flush, they were walking towards the button from the direction of the toilet, not from the hand basin. Busted.
Soon Pam made an observation. “Have you noticed that the toilet is constantly occupied?”
Yes. It was true. There was no break in the stream of traffic. This realisation had us chuckling and made us vigilant observers of the vestibule and loo.
“Smoke and frequent use. Maybe there really are drugs in there,” I suggested. I pictured a secret stash behind a loose tile where, with the secret code and cash, the location was revealed, and you could enter the loo on carriage OLY532 for a hit.
So, apart from watching the people come and go, I was now seeing inside the room they were all so interested in. Well, part of it. To the left of the entry was the hand basin and buttons. Directly opposite the door was the toilet, out of sight completely from my seat. Thankfully. To the right, I assume by the size of the room and the visiting pram, was a change table. And now I could see the smears on the wall between the buttons and the toilet. Smears that could be either blood or … worse. Best not think about that.
Red Jumper Guy returned to visit the loo, yet again.
Miss Torn Jeans, an interesting visual diversion from the mystery of the loo, arrived at the top of the steps a couple of times – when she embarked and when she disembarked. The gaping holes in her jeans were huge, exposing her entire legs from thighs to shins. It was a wonder the bottom portion of her jeans remained connected.
After all our criticisms and observations of bogans and drunks, we were pleasantly surprised to see four well-dressed normal females disembark the train. They may have been going out to a formal event, they looked lovely – especially when comparing to some others.
“Purple and red aren’t colours I would normally wear together,” I whispered as one woman placed a purple shawl around the lady with the purple pantsuit, red shoes and matching purple and red handbag. “The gold shopping bag really adds to the royal appearance.”
“Oh, they’re the Purple Ladies,” Pam explained.
“The what?” I wondered as I stared at the outfit of the lady waiting to depart. I hadn’t heard of them, but Pam had seen them elsewhere and showed me the photographic evidence. They are a group of ladies, actually called the Red Hat Society, who wear purple and meet up regularly.
No sooner had we commented on the purple ladies than we noticed that Neighbouring Male was leaving. He stood and stepped into the aisle. He then turned to his seat, bent over and collected his things. His butt, wrapped in black shorts, was about a hand’s width from Pam’s face. Laughing, and to avoid contact, she turned away from him for the long time he took to pack up and leave.
Consequently we weren’t looking when the mechanical noise sounded. The toilet door, perhaps? Was it breaking from overuse?
With each stop, another person or persons stood in the vestibule outside the toilet, waiting for their destination to arrive and the doors to open. Around his bags of luggage, stood one male, back to us and spread-eagled as if peeing. We came to the conclusion that Spread-eagled Man was looking at the mobile phone that he chosen to hold at arms’ length, as low as possible. His left hand was holding the handrail. The look was so classic that I, for one, was watching the bags below to see if they were getting wet.
Pam departed at Morisset at 6:16pm, looking a little shell-shocked. The spectator fun continued, though viewing it solo wasn’t nearly as much fun.
Red Jumper Guy returned to visit the loo. It was probably his third visit. He hit the button to open the door and it closed after he entered. As in some shopping mall toilets, I assumed, there were two buttons on the inside, Close and Lock. If so, he must have been hitting the first. Or perhaps the passengers were getting drunker. Or perhaps the door was overworked. Whatever the cause, the door wasn’t staying closed. I am glad that the wall restricted some of my view. The door opened to reveal the back of a man who was obviously standing at the toilet. The door opened and he leaned back and pressed the Close button. The door closed. Then opened. And he leaned back again. This happened four times while he was relieving himself and after he left, it stayed open.
I wondered if perhaps there weren’t two buttons after all. Maybe this was the beginning of the end for the overused loo door.
Four boys in their early teens loudly arrived, looking for the perfect place to sit. Seeing people upstairs and down, one intelligently suggested, “I say we just camp up here.”
Who the heck camps on a train? And why next to the toilet? Especially this one.
Not only was the door closure now fickle, but the door had been used so much that the ENGAGED sign no longer lit up - leaving potential users to push the button and wait, even knock and wait, before manually opening the door with no way of knowing if there was anyone exposed on the other side.
A few more boring toilet users went in and out via the manual knock-open system before a horrific, loud, mechanical scraping noise – presumably the door – was heard. The door was well and truly broken now.
Oh, this was too funny. At 6:31pm I sent a text to Pam, “The fun continues”.
Things started getting desperate for some people on the train. Nothing stops a full bladder. Travellers continued to learn that the ENGAGED sign didn’t light up, that the button didn’t work, and that they had to manually open the door themselves. I thought about the germs on everything, the smears on the wall, and the risk of being seen by another passenger opening the door during private time. This was absurd. Yet they persisted. I would have found another toilet after realising the light was out. No experimenting with toilets for me.
One male left the toilet holding a mobile phone up high. He looked up the stairs and then down, asking without words if any of the few in sight had left it in the loo. None of us had. So, Silent Man told us that he would return it to the loo and leave it there.
Another male entered the toilet and was still in there when Red Jumper Guy returned to visit the loo again. This time he didn’t hit the button, he just knocked. Without waiting for an answer, he manually opened the door before realising there was someone in there using the toilet. “Sorry mate. I left my stuff in here.” Most people would have apologised and withdrawn, but this guy was not like most people. He continued walking in, leaving the door wide open, to retrieve his drink bottle and mobile phone. He left and closed the door, at least halfway.
A woman tried to open the door, but the button wasn’t working, and the light wasn’t working. There was no way to know if there was anyone in there. This spectator sport had begun to offer a new game – who would wait, who would pry, and who would walk away. Some did all three. Persistent Woman kept trying, even after I told her the situation. She pushed, knocked, waited, walked away, and returned. Repeated it all. I suggested there may be another loo and she nodded. But still she returned before deciding to pry open the door. She was another germy no-hand-washer.
The train was due to arrive at Broadmeadow at 6:56 pm and Ron was early to pick me up. Sadly, like all other trains that day, this one was running late. Five minutes doesn’t seem much, unless you are the one sitting in a running car in a No Standing zone. Poor Ron. His was a lonely duty, and not half as humorous as ours had been.
After two and a half hours on this train of entertainment, I disembarked and left the station. Passing a police officer, I wondered if he was simply a presence or if he was after one of the crazies on board.
I swiped my Opal card for the sixth time that day and headed home, in a quiet small boring car. To use my loo.
Social Worker Questions by Whitnee Coy
The night I was dying
my eyes were swollen shut as
the hospital bed’s sheets
were changed repeatedly
from being soaked
in my urine & vomit.
The night I was dying
my nurse cradled my body
& held me, rocking me
in her chest as I cupped
my pregnant belly.
I didn’t die that night.
Although white lab coats
scampered around my limp
frame like field mice.
Low voices hummed as if it were a secret
my body was shutting down.
Turning off the lights in each room
one at a time.
A month & a half later
in the NICU while holding my 3.5-pound
baby, a woman with a rusted-clamp clipboard
nattered about the weather, specifically the wind & gloom
as I had spent 4 hours in a room with no windows
holding the shell that was my baby.
Finally, she fumbled about what she was there to ask:
How was I processing my near-death
experience & traumatic birth?
I didn’t know.
Just like I didn’t know how many
ounces I had pumped alone, & baby-less
being told to look at a photo of my daughter
in an incubator to try to squeeze
out more drops of milk.
I didn’t know the last time I had brushed
my teeth or if my stitches had dissolved.
I didn’t know when my baby would
or could ever breathe on her own.
I didn’t know how I had spent days
in sterile hospital sheets & was expected to go home
without my baby & act as if the story were the same
because we had both lived.
How do I explain, all I did was spin
around the idea that the only thing I had ever grown
had stopped moving the day I was dying?
The Truth Behind Returning Home by Danielle Wong
Coming home
after all these years
is a hug
from an estranged spouse
who lives with you still:
suspicious,
awkward,
and filled
with inescapable
emptiness.
Every moment passes
and alters who we are
until the day
we see home is not
where we were,
but where we are.
Coming Home by Maya Stiles Parsons Spier
I open the door to home – my first real one, ever. Sixty-eight years of housed homelessness, solved at last. I scan mentally – smells are all okay? Yup. No smoke. Sounds? It’s quiet. Emily Roo, five pounds, almost 18 years old – her tiny chihuahua body is curled up in blissful sleep. Sunny the friendly assassin of a conure is hanging upside down in her barred abode; if I try to take her out, she will attempt to end me, but she loves a good schmooze. All is well in birdy’s world.
Something is missing. The other dogs are in the fenced yard. It’s a jungle out there by intent. The grass is just right for burrowing or making a nest. There are smells to sample and much to grace with the gift of pee. I peer out to check. One, two, three, four – good. No. Wait. Four? Where is Jackson Gotwhiskers?
OMG, there is no Jackson. And then I remember. I know where he is. He’s tucked in the cradle of earth, in my garden, so he will always be near. Tucked in to sleep after passing right beside me on his soft bed when it became obvious that my holding him, weeping, was prolonging his goodbye. There is no teeny boy, huge eyes wide with adoration, little whippy tail almost a blur with the sheer joy of being loved. Yes, Mama, tuck me in your shirt and I will sleep there and sleep there and the world will be splendid and wonderful and in all ways perfect. Now all I have is that memory to play over and over; is this a joy to remember? Not yet. It’s still all agony and the countless regrets we all have over things that are only inadequate in hindsight.
OMG, no Jackson. Well, then, where is Genny? Is she in one of her multiplicity of hidey-holes? Is she parallel sleeping with Athena Plumytail, my sister cat, arbiter of all things? Lurking invisibly like a wisp that materializes to demand love? Genny Purrybody, my daughter cat, over whom I folded myself no more than a few weeks ago as I pleaded with her not to die for years and years and years because she was my ride-or-die kitty and OMG, where is she? Not by the shower where she lay in wait for me to emerge so she could lick my legs. I look everywhere for her because my heart searches for what my mind knows cannot be there. I know where Genny is. She died in my arms at the vet’s office. I have the paper urn that I will plant next to Jackson in that sweet, dark, quiet earth.
Am I lucky? Could they be gracious enough to haunt me? Might I be fortunate enough to get a glimpse? A glimmer? A heart and soul’s memory visible for even one precious second? It hasn’t even been a month yet on this 8th of June – oh god, a month already for Jackson but nine days less than that for Genny. This is raw as a fatal wound but I have other furfamily – I cannot founder. I cannot sink into grief for my lost ones when I have living ones who need me as much. As long as they are here, this is still home.
And when they pass, I will get other furbeings to live with me. To make this house a home. To be the best imaginable legacy of Jackson and Genny and all the little beings who have come before them until I go to whatever final home there may be for the furless and join them once again. Because even when the body is gone, the love remains.
The House of Loneliness by Ellen Cantor
the house on peacock lane still stands
although you are no longer here
large spaces void of your presence
because you are no longer here
rooms no longer needed
since you are no longer here
chairs no one sits in
as you are no longer here
clothes hang in the closet
not needed for you are no longer here
the garage sits half empty
for your car is no longer here
the house on peacock lane
feels empty, lonely, sad and not quite right
you are no longer here
Next to the Penny Left in the Ashtray[1] by Jonathan Yungkans
A penny drops into a still pond whenever I think of family. Ripples widen. My sister-in-law, Rachel, said just before she died that she’d send pennies by which to remember her. After that, there were many pennies. One glinted in a supermarket parking lot, after I’d turned to talk to someone and looked back toward where I was going. Another, which is still in my car’s ashtray, next to the driver’s door when I opened it, gleaming on fresh blacktop. My wife and I save the rest in a glass jelly jar. Family remains,
saved just as Mom had a white dog coin bank, life-sized, just for pennies. The bank was ceramic and heavy and gave a deep roar when I turned or tipped it, a copper wave crashing inside. I was wandering through the market just after Christmas, thinking about Mom. The second anniversary of her death was coming up. Found a stuffed toy tiger for sale at the discount table, similar to the one I had when practically a toddler, through elementary school and almost to college. After I paid for it, there was a penny—one that hadn’t been there before—alongside it at the check stand. Family remains,
regardless of what I do with or what happens to it. I can still feel the pennies’ impact against my palms through white painted pottery that seemed thin as skin. An alternate heartbeat. The presence and loss of family, clattering in a metallic tide as it collides against the edge of my waking. A coin’s flash next to a sign-up sheet at the gym, where none had been earlier and no one had near in the meantime. A penny’s clank from a folded handkerchief, from a pocket with no change. A hairline crack travelled down the bank’s left side. A triangle-shaped piece fell out, leaving a gap. I suspect my brother kept rocking the bank to get inside and the weight of copper did the rest. Family remains,
surely as a penny is a penny. Place it on a railroad track, like Dad said he did as a kid, and wait for a train. Can’t spend it once it’s flattened into a papery copper-colored oval, but it’s still something tangible. A heft when I wake before dawn. The accumulated weight of presences and absences. A penny on the carpet where I’d just passed, going in the opposite direction, and seen nothing. One in the groove of the dryer drum—not there when I’d taken out the clothes. I walk to the dresser, atop which my stuffed tiger is perched, and hug the tiger tight.
[1] Title taken from the poem “Sticker Shock” by John Ashbery, in the collection Plainsphere.
Leavings by Lynn White
Once it was a house,
a family house,
a home
with living and bed rooms
and painted walls,
not empty of all
but dry cement and dust.
They’ve left now
that family.
Moved away
to thrive or
become as derelict as the house,
begging for handouts
in the dirty streets.
No trace of them now,
nothing left.
Just rubble and dust,
no longer a home.
Then another couple moved in.
They were pleased to find
somewhere so dry and cosy,
an inheritance of a kind.
They cooed and twittered
and they made their home,
built a nest,
raised their young.
They’ve left, left now
that family.
Flown away
to thrive or
become as derelict as the house,
begging for handouts
in the dirty streets.
But they’ve left something
behind,
a flight feather
to mark their passing
leaving a trace,
an inheritance
for the next inhabitants
to find.
First published in Free Lit, Immortality Issue, July 2018
Undelivered by C. J. Anderson-Wu
The first time I encountered my daughter was when she was excavating the earth burying me. My daughter was born after my death sixty years ago, which means she was sixty years old, almost double my age when I was killed.
I had christened her Alyssa while my wife was pregnant. Following my passing, my wife remarried, and Alyssa's name was changed to Amaryllis.
Amaryllis didn't discover much of me—just the bone of a finger and a fragment of my skull. Without a headstone, she couldn't even be certain that they were my remains.
Over the past six decades, my body has naturally decomposed. Beside me, a banyan sapling has matured into a large tree, but was uprooted by a tropical cyclone several years ago. Though its roots were unearthed, its aerial roots continued to grow from the slanting trunk, reaching out toward the soil with less rocky terrain.
That's how my existence unfolded over the years—the tree roots enveloped me, sharing the air and the raindrops that soaked into the soil. My body gradually vanished, merging with the tree roots and the earth below.
My daughter gathered the scant remains of me and reinterred them in the hometown of our ancestors. Though unnecessary for me, I am grateful for her efforts, as well as those who endeavour to uncover our history.
On the same site, there were still many of us unrecognized or unclaimed. I hope they have rested in peace. At night, our spirits became poetry recited by the chorus of cicadas, rustling tree leaves, and rippling streams under starlight. The justice we had pursued wasn’t delivered until now, in our wordless last will.
Author’s Note:
The mass grave of Liuzhangli, Taipei City, was where more than two hundred political dissidents were found executed and buried during the early 1950s. At that time, the names of the executed were posted on billboards at the Taipei Main Station, and their families had only three days to reclaim their bodies. Due to fear or poverty, many of the victims' families were unable to claim them, so they were hastily buried by the authorities. It wasn't until the 1990s, following the abolition of Martial Law, that this mass grave became known to society.
Coming home always poses a problem for my psyche. Although born in England, having been raised partly in Africa, and spending more of my adult life as an expat rather than in England, I travel back to the UK and I sometimes say I’m going home. But it couldn’t be further from the truth. Home in the UK is actually Scotland, where the majority of my family live and yet it’s never been my permanent residence. When I’m in Scotland, home is Australia where my husband and dog reside with me. When I think of a childhood home, I am taken back to Zambia and South Africa. So where is home? When I was a teenager, I’d say ‘home is where the books are’ and I meant it. If that’s the case now, then Australia is my home because I have so many books they pile up on the floor from full shelves.
Is home inside a book? Of course, I am transported as any cliché on the matter will indicate, into a new set of feelings or sense of belonging each time I dive into a story or poem but this rings true for any work of art too. Perhaps it’s not a book. Perhaps it’s when I am swamped by emotion other than the regular feelings of the day to day routines and interactions that I am led home, like a bridled horse after a fall, or a dog on a piece of string held by a small grubby boy. I am both the rider and the horse; I am both the dog and the boy. That’s what makes going home so complex. I inhabit so many parts it’s confusing to know who I am.
Home defines me and if home is so many different things, then I am representative of all those individual parts. In as much as it confuses me, it reassures me. I sleep better on those nights.
As we have seen from the work above, home is so many different things to all of us. I hope you have enjoyed this issue of THE ISSUE and look forward to your comments and feedback. Look out for our next issue and if you subscribe (pick the free option) you’ll get a copy of this into your email as soon as it’s published so you don’t have to go searching for it.
Thanks for reading and may all of you feel safe at home. - Jane