Open Writing

I don't believe for a moment that my grandfather had a sadistic streak. He was an incurable tease, and I was just one of his unfortunate victims. He probably would have been horrified to find that I believed literally everything that he said.

My mother, father, my sister Joy and I were living with our grandparents, in the house attached to their combined milkbar/grocery store, in Geelong, Victoria. Whenever we sat down to a meal, I dreaded being asked to go and get a bottle of milk from the cooler in the storeroom. This had become my job, which I tried to get out of every time.

I prayed for the milk not to run out, but it invariably did.

'Go and get a bottle of milk from the cooler please, Shirley,' came the expected request from my grandmother.

'Please don't make me go,' I'd cry. 'Can't Joy go?'

'No, she might drop the bottle, and she can't reach the handle, you know that,' my grandmother said.

'Mummy, can you go?'

'What's the matter with you?' she asked.

'Just get going,' my father, if he was home, would growl at me.

With my heart beating flippety-flop in my chest, I would get up reluctantly.

'Please let me put the light on,' I begged.

'No. You're not to waste electricity, you know that. There's enough light from the night-light in the shop. When you open the storeroom door, that light comes on,' my grandmother said patiently.

'Watch out for the lion in the cupboard,' my grandfather said.

'Oh Ezra,' said my grandmother.

My heart rate zoomed. I opened the door leading into the shop, and slowly made my way along the back wall behind the counter, to the storeroom door. I stood in front of it, breathing fast. When I opened it as quietly as possible, the light came on. The cool store was at the far end of the room on the left-hand side. The same side where the lion's cupboard was, higher than my head. I had to pass this to get to the milk. With my back to the cupboards on the right hand side, I sidled along, keeping my eyes on the lion's cupboard.

When I was opposite the cool store, I quickly walked the short space over to it, trying to keep the lion's cupboard in view. But when I opened the door, I couldn't see it. It was hidden by the open door. I went in and grabbed a bottle of milk from a shelf, ran out, slammed that door, dashed out of the storeroom, without looking at the lion's cupboard, slammed that door shut, and ran back to the dining room, arriving breathless and panting.

'Where's the fire?' asked my grandfather.

I stared at him. Wasn't he worried about me at all?

'How many times have you been told not to run with the milk bottle in your hand,' said my mother. 'You could trip over and get a nasty cut if the bottle broke.'

'Did you see the lion?' asked my grandfather.

'No,' I said.

They all laughed.

'Must have been asleep,' he said.

I wondered why they always sent me into a room with a lion in the cupboard. Did they want it to eat me up?

© Shirley Henwood