Mascara / short story

Mascara

Dressed in a light summer raincoat, her face streaked with mascara. Dina Moretti had been standing motionless in the rain soaked Salford back-street for almost fifteen minutes. The knuckles of her hands protruded as she clutched at the plastic garbage bag containing the last remnants of her previous existence. In front of her, the rusting industrial skip bin stood full to over flowing. ‘It was only fitting,' she thought, ‘that a life such as Dina Moretti’s should end in a place such as this.'  

Dina Moretti's life had begun eighteen years earlier amongst the vineyards and olive groves that were the outskirts of Perugia Italy.

         “The year of your birth was a good year,” her mother, Mejella, had told her as they picked raspberries from alongside the house wall.

There were indeed many happy memories; bicycle rides into the town, a smiling father, and her eldest brother Louie, swinging her around in the long summer sweet smelling grass in the meadow beside their house. She could still hear herself laughing with such happiness and joy. Louie had been the cement that had held the family together. Her other brother Aldo was one year older than Dina but having suffered through glandular fever and asthma he appeared the slighter and younger child.

In the year of Dina's birth, Alfonso her father graduated from the University of Perugia with a degree in veterinary medicine. It would be soon after her birth that he had left the family home and moved to Pisa to do a post graduate course in animal health and hygiene. Dina had mixed memories of her father's visits home. The strongest being the funeral. Dina could not recall the funeral itself, but she could recall the shouting and arguing, and her mother taking to her bed for what seemed like days.  

 ‘I'm the king of the castle' Louie sang out, as he had done with compulsive regularity on his return from school each day. But today not a single soul would witness his last act of bravado. A modest four feet could have reached the top of the wall from the pavement, but today Louie climbed the eight or nine feet that rose, with a slight batter, from the half acre meadow that ran out and around their house.

 

“The stone wall had stood undisturbed for over a hundred years; there would have been no good reason to believe that it could just give way like it did,” the policeman said, during what he called ‘a courtesy visit to tie up a few lose ends.'

Multiple Organ failure was the official announcement that came amidst angry embers that spat from underneath a qualified sympathy: Who was responsible..? Where were his parents..? There were further uneasy rumbling when Alfonzo returned to Pisa, and once again Mejella took to her bed, leaving Dina and Aldo to fend for them self's.

It was sometime shortly after her first holy communion, but before they had all left Perugia, to start what her father had said would be a ‘wonderful new life on a ‘farm' in Watford England,' that he had first knelt beside her bed; “el papa le adora” he'd said slipping his hand inside her clothes. Sometimes it would hurt when he touched her there, but his closeness made her feel safe and warm.  

The ‘farm in England' that he had spoken of was, in essence, a run down cottage on an acreage belonging to a private company that carried out research on animals. Alfonso had drilled the family to keep their business to themselves and not to get involved in village gossip.

“She has returned home to look after her sick sister” he replied, when asked by a co- worker where his wife was. Dina knew this to be a lie. She had found the note. There was no mention in it of herself or Aldo, it was simply directed to Alfonso, saying that ‘she found life with him unbearable and was returning to Italy.’ 

At the age of twelve Aldo was moved from the house and into an out building. “A boy needs his space” his father told him. Dina had started to dread her father's visits to her bed. The mumbled words of comfort, the feeble excuses had given way to a bestial silence. She would hum tunes inside her head as his vile breath invaded her. Later when he had returned to his room she could hear him praying, “holy Mary mother of god pray for us sinners now and at the hour of death amen.”

 

A short time after Dina's thirteenth birthday, Alfonso was drinking heavily and the house had become over run with dogs, cats, rabbits as well as the countless fleas that came with them. “I couldn't just let them suffer” he'd say.  

It was Thursday night in early November and she knew by the excitement of the dogs that he was returning down the path on his way home from the village pub. “Leave the house,” she told herself. “There is no way he wont find you if you try to hide in the house.” She had thought for a moment to take refuge with Aldo, but realized, that it would be the first place he'd come looking. As the dogs rushed to the front door, tails wagging, to greet him, she took a blanket from the bed pushed one arm into the sleeve of her jacket and snuck out through the back door.

The wind bit hard at her face as she'd stumbled blindly and in haste over and along the fresh ploughed furrows of the field that had led her to the Browns boundary fence. There was no logical answer to her direction, other than it would be the last one that he would have thought to follow.

After climbing the wire fence at the back of the Browns tractor shed, she felt her way along its walls until she reached two large corrugated iron doors that were being held closed where they met in the middle, by a large chain and padlock.

Lying on the ground she wriggled and squeezed until she was through the gap at the bottom of the doors. “You're safe now...” she told herself while waiting for her breathing to settle. There was nothing to see in the blackness. She could smell diesel oil. She could smell the new rubber tires that had been put on the tractor two days earlier. She felt comfort in the sound of the wind as it tested and rattled the corrugated iron sheets.

Her breathing settled but she felt no inclination to move. Taking a large breath she held it fondling its freedom inside her lungs before exhaling. She took a cigarette lighter from her pocket, held it at arms length and struck it alight. It led her across a dry dirt floor to where a kerosene lamp sat on a wooden bench.

She had lit the kerosene lamp when she saw the hessian potato sacks that were stacked where the wooden bench top met the wall. One by one she held them up to the light of the kerosene lamp, checking first one side, and then the other, before methodically layering them on the dirt floor between the tractor and the work bench.

She wrapped her self in the blanket and lay down on the sacks. She had first seen the shotgun and cartridges on the narrow shelf underneath the work bench as she'd put the bags on the ground. The gun, she had thought, looked somehow casual, as it lay with its cold black steel barrel broken at an angle and a handful of cartridges scattered loosely alongside. She had also felt the urge straight away to touch it... and at first that was all she did but as the urge grew stronger she took it from the shelf. It felt heavy. It felt powerful. She closed the barrel and slowly squeezed at the trigger. ‘Click...’ It was only a click but it caused a rush that touched her whole body. She broke the barrel and then closed it again. Click... and then again, click... and again, click...  

Her father looked peaceful, his face half buried in the pillow. It was almost six a.m. and in less that one minutes the radio alarm would click to wake him for another day. She could feel her heart beating through the wall of her breast as she put the cold black steel barrel to the side of his face. ‘It was only a dream' she told herself. She closed her eyes, squeezed at the trigger, and waited for the click...   

After spending eight days in the hospital wing of Holloway women's prison Dina was moved to a medium secure hospital in Manchester. The original charge of adult murder had been dropped after a neighbor told police how she had seen marks and bruises on Dina that would corroborate Dina's and her mothers claims of abuse by her father. The case was transferred to the jurisdiction of the juvenile system where she was ordered to under go a psychiatric assessment.

An application by Mejella Moretti for the custody of Aldo was granted and after a short time in care he returned with her to Perugia.

Dina remained in England where she was made a ward of the state and would spend the next five years in various juvenile institutions, of which her last six months had been spent with the Thompsons, a foster family in Salford Manchester.  

 As the rain streaked down the window panes, thirteen year old Sally Thompson stared out from the upstairs bedroom window towards the industrial skip bin.

  "Did you really kill someone?" she asked. 

  "Your hair is as beautiful as your name Sally…" said Dina pulling the brush gently through the fine golden strands of Sally's hair.

  "You didn't answer my question," Sally persisted.

"Some questions are better left unanswered."  Dina said firmly.

"I will miss you Dina" said Sally reaching for a hug. Dina pulled away sharply. "We did our goodbyes yesterday. Now be off to school with you and not another word.” Dina turned took several strands of hair from the brush and wrapped them in a handkerchief. Her eyes started to well. "Don't forget your school bag" she called out, hiding her tears in the mirror under the pretexts of applying mascara.

This had been no ordinary goodbye. This had been a goodbye that could never be followed. Today on her eighteenth birthday after walking the short distance that took her to the industrial skip bin Dina Moretti was neither seen nor heard from again.

THE END