Janita Lawrence - The Memory of Water

In Chuck Palahniuk’s Diary , an art student pours cement into a blender and switches it on. Of course it eventually, with a bit of noise and smoke, burns out, her unequivocal statement about her feelings regarding housework.

The Juicerator is shaking and overflowing.

My varsity shirt is covered in fruity offal. It looks like my organs have exploded onto my shirt: pawpaw seeds and blueberry juice. I let go of the Juicerator button and the silence hurts my ears. As if shot, I hold my fruit salad innards in and sink down onto the floor. I cry.

Iwake up with my face glued to the kitchen floor. It’s dark. My initial shock has given way to a duller kind of grief. I leave the mess I have made and go for a hot shower (Monsoon™). My mind has gone from a machine gun assault of thoughts to an unruly queue, one that I can just about control. Once clean, I set out to do what I should have done the second I saw a uniform at the door.

I retrieve my mind map with its awful dates and descriptions and creative scribblings and I tear it up into small pieces, cursing myself as I ransack my study. I cut up the photos with the kitchen scissors. I want to flush the GHB down the toilet but it has fallen off the map. I get down on my hands and knees and look for it. Breathe in floor-dust. I check the laundry basket. I shift my desk, my bookshelf, lift my couch, can’t see the pills anywhere. I will look again in daylight.

I start a hungry fire in my BraaiMaster 1000 and when it’s really hot I start adding the scraps and shreds, one fistful at a time. The photos bubble and melt over the hot coals. Note-ashes levitate above the fire and catch the wind. Soon every trace I have of Eve will be gone.

When the plans have been turned to cinders I pick up my beloved Moleskine and hold it for a while. All those words! Precious, priceless words: letters and punctuation and sentences and paragraphs and pages of irreplaceable markings.

I feel like Abraham in Genesis, offering up my child to be burnt as a sacrifice. Or an island savage, keen to appease the gods, strong-arming a virgin into the liquid blaze of a volcano. Not wanting to, God knows, but knowing what has to be done.

I strip the cover off the book and throw it in, then tear the pages in half down the spine and throw those in too. Then I add extra lighter fluid and there is a woof of flames. Unable to stand there and watch it burn, I walk away.

I recheck my study for anything else that could possibly tie me to Eve’s murder but think I found everything the first time round. I switch on my laptop, find my word document that I started yesterday (ten thousand really good words) and trash it. Then I empty my trash. The crumple sound-effect hurts.

The last thing I have to do is make the knife disappear. I look in the drawer of neglected kitchen utensils, but it’s not there. I think I must have moved it when I was planning and writing. Caught in a thought, I could have absent-mindedly put it somewhere else. Methodically, I start going through one drawer at a time, until I know for certain it’s not in any drawer then I start on the cupboards. Nothing. I start on the drawers again but this time I empty all their contents onto the floor. I switch on every light in the house. I go from room to room. After an hour of frantic searching I feel acid rising in my throat. It has disappeared: the knife is no longer in my house.

In a flash of crimson dread I remember the day I had lunch with Eve in her studio and how I went into her room and touched her things. My fingerprints must be all over the place. Jesus Christ. My stalker episode couldn’t have had worse timing. My heart raps against my ribs. With shaking hands I pour myself a glass of water. I have to get rid of those damn prints. I’m sure that her place is overrun with cops at the moment but I’ll have to get in somehow. Without a sip I grab my car keys and head out of the door, into the dark.

There is a police guard outside Eve’s front door, as if to protect her memory because it is too late to protect her. I have to wait for almost two hours before he abandons his post for some kind of break. I move as quickly and quietly as possible and find myself standing in the lounge, gloved hands by my sides, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps.

Eve’s flat is an uproar of yellow and black crime tape.

I go straight to her bedroom. The other prints can be explained but not the ones on her headboard, mirror, perfume. I start looking around to see if they have dusted for prints already but don’t see any powder residue. Perhaps that’s why they have the guard at the door: they haven’t completed the processing of the crime scene yet. I use a bandanna I bought on the way here to wipe everything I remember touching. The whole exercise, while peculiar, is therapeutic. Eve’s room doesn’t look very different from how it looked a week ago when she was still breathing. Its sameness is haunting.

When I think I am done I begin walking to the studio kitchen, but a noise at the door startles me and I jump back behind the doorframe. The door handle turns. Surely the policeman shouldn’t be coming in? It’s a crime scene for God’s sake. Then: a woman’s voice and high heels on tiles. My mind hurtles. The hair on the back of my neck stands up. I try to control my breathing. Figure out what to do. The back window is protected with burglar bars. The bathroom window is too small for escape. I hear a handbag being dropped onto the kitchen counter, and then a heavier sound, on the floor. The kettle is switched on. A sigh as a hinge yields: a cupboard door opening. Porcelain plunked on marble. The kettle clicks off and hot water streams into the mug. Another breath and then the melody of a teaspoon stirring. A snapping sound as the crime tape is ripped down. I wonder if I am imagining the moment when Eve was killed. If it is my punishment to have to relive, second by excruciating second, what happened to her last night. I sense that she is moving towards me and I dive under the bed. She turns the light on and seems to hesitate before she walks in. I’m sure she can hear my heart beating, smell the hot sweat I feel under my clothes. She walks past the bed and into the bathroom. All I can see are her feet. Elegant black shoes. She turns on the bath taps and adds foam. I don’t dare risk edging closer to get a better look at her. She dims the lights, puts a match to candles. She goes back to the kitchen to fetch her tea and brings it to the bath, each time walking past the bed, so close to me I could reach out and touch her ankle.

I have no idea what to do except lie where I am and be as quiet as possible. I will stay here for days if it means not being caught under the bed of the woman I am suspected of killing. It would be impossible to explain. If I die here, under this bed, at least I will never have to put this trespassing into words.

My muddled brain tells me Eve’s ghost is here: come to show me my culpability in this crime. I did, after all, imagine this over and over again, in this exact sequence. As truly shocked as I was to learn that Eve had been murdered – and I was, still am, truly, completely, exhaustively shocked – there was some kind of harrowing glint, some small flash of acquaintance with the fact, as if some tucked-away part of me knew it would happen all along.

The ghost begins taking off her clothes. Heels are kicked off. A cashmere cardigan, a blouse and a pencil skirt all land next to my head. A black camisole. Wrinkled stockings, like shed snakeskin. The smell of Eve’s perfume fills my nose. There is also something else familiar, but I can’t think what it is. Bare-soled and naked she walks towards the bath, turns off the taps and steps in, facing away from me. It’s not Eve. This woman is tall and has dark hair. What is she doing drinking Eve’s tea, bathing in Eve’s bath? I can’t imagine a possible answer.