ANGEL FACE

Greg looked into Becky eye’s as she passed him the eggs and bacon. They were red – like the dessert, no rain, no moisture for months now. All bled out, no tears, love, no emotion left to show. Silently he ate the breakfast. He ate in a daze of memories – Shelly would have been smiling and singing happily along to the early morning children’s T.V by now. Now she would never go to school, ride a bike or know her grandparents from the black and white photographs… His parents had passed years ago, Becky’s mother had died last year and her Dad was nowhere to be found – dead too for all they knew, she hardly remembered him. They were all alone now, their family slowly shrinking and leaving just them. No one else was left to care about or to care for them, no-one else, nothing.

The fork scraped against the ceramic making a harsh sound like fingers down a blackboard. Startled he looked up. Becky made an effort to smile at him and failed as he rose to leave, bereft of all ability to show anything anymore. Time for the rest of the days work – a few more hours in the cold air would get his mind off what should have been past events – events that kept haunting him. His little girl’s happy face – cut it off, stop the thoughts right there, no need to go over scenes that were past and unchangeable, set in stone like the writing at her grave….

The truck, the banter. Fat Kevin was always boasting the best load, competing with the other crews for the best of the pick from other peoples junk. The different teams they had never even met, but worked the same part of the city a few blocks to the east or west. How would anyone know who had ‘won’ that day?

To him every bag now showed a different profile of her face – laughing, tired, mouth stuffed with sweets and cheeks distended, but never really his little girl – all gone, never to come again. There was no more excited expectation of what treasures he may find that someone had carelessly discarded in their waste. No more energy for anything other than to get through another day. And at the end of the shift, it was just rubbish - wasn’t it? No profound epiphanies, he was a garbage man after all wasn’t he? No one cared who he was, knew his face or thanked him for the work. Keep the streets kleen like the sign said – with a ‘K’. Always at the end of the day, Kevin wheezingly boastful of the ‘amazing find’ he happened along during his shift. What a lucky bugger he’d be – bit of extra cash here and there never hurt anyone.

Life was automatic these days – at the end of his shift a stop at the cemetery on the way home, kiss Becky hello, sit down for a cuppa, dinner a few hours later and then off to bed no later than 8, in time for the next day’s shift. The bright colours of the children’s toys looking lost and out of place in the dusty lounge, but neither of them had been able to bring themselves to packing them away so they sat there and probably would for a long while yet.

The alarm rang all too soon. Up again and looking into Becky’s red eyes. Like the dessert – he always thought that. Who can take the pain of a dead child away? No one can erase that kind of desolation. So the desert would remain and he would keep getting up and collecting the rubbish until…. He didn’t know.

Shelly was sunshine, she was life, vibrance, the very essence of being. EVRYTHING was fascinating, important and worth wondering about, worth raising voice to ask, to try to learn… A face like a china doll.

There was her face again – no, surely just another rubbish bag? He looked again and gently picked it up in his big hand. A face, not Shelly’s, but so close - the same dancing eyes, the curl of a smile on her lips and the apricot glow on her cheeks. No not Shelly, it couldn’t be – he visited her each day, or the tiny grave – but a doll, antique it must be; with the fine brittle plastic like they used to make before things became mass produced and cheap. The body was a rotten mass of rags but the face was in perfect condition, definitely an antique doll, probably belonging to some hoity toity rich girl from Camberwell 50 or more years ago. Who’d forgotten and discarded it – this face of an angel. It could almost have been modelled on Shelly’s face, it was so close a likeness – or maybe Becky’s as a child, mother and daughter looking so much alike, just the difference in age of course. Becky’s now beginning to sag, becoming tired and showing all the pain and loss of the last 18 months. Carefully he wrapped the doll, or the remnants of, in a cloth.

Back at the depot and there was fat Kevin boasting again, some side table with a missing leg. Antique he said, state of the art ‘A Dee-boo-see piece’ he wheezed. He knew nothing that fat, useless piece of waste, with his skiting, boastful mannerisms. He’d like to sock him right in the mouth, watch the blood bleed from his fat oily lips and hear the air hastily escape from his overworked lungs as he doubled over in agony and disgrace.

Another Kleen Streets crew he’d never seen before, looking on with mild amusement at this fat man trying to sound and look important. Except for one, and old guy hanging back carefully watching from the sidelines all that was going on, as though he too were made of some sort of fragile old plastic and was afraid he might break somehow.

Before he knew it he was standing in front of the fat man, fists clenched, jaw set, watching from a different space and time. Watching with breath held and bitten lips.
‘That’s nothing!’ The voice sounded foreign – far away. ‘Debussy never made a stick of furniture in his life you wanker. But this – this is really worth something, look at the fine work in the face, probably be able to fetch a bit for this one but I’ll be keeping it.’

He tenderly pulled the doll from his pocket and removed the cloth to reveal the angelic face and rotten rags that were once its body. Not liking to be shown up as a fool Kevin snatched it from his large hands roughly, cracking the face in the process, destroying the near perfect likeness of his dear little girl.

‘A rotten doll? With a cracked skull? You’re the wanker mate, this is shit.’ And he tossed it to the side. The doll skittered across the asphalt lot and stopped at the feet of the old man.

Before he knew it his right fist was buried in the warm folds of flesh about Kevin’s waist, his left swinging sharply and catching Kevin’s brow. He could hear the air hissing from his mouth – just as he’d imagined a few moments before. He looked down to see Kevin doubling over and staring up at him with bulging eyes as he slumped to the ground. He half wondered if he’d really done it or was at home dreaming in bed. He’d wanted to hit him for a long time, so much anger inside over things he had no power to influence; it seemed to have bubbled over and out onto Kevin.

His knuckles smarted. Shelley’s face was still on the ground in front of the old man. Slowly he bent and picked it up. He looked at it with a strange tenderness and walked slowly towards Greg.

‘I guess it’s not worth anything now’ he said. ‘But I’d give you a couple’a bucks for it, looks exactly like my little girl, though she wouldn’t be so little now. Grown up, married, moved on probably and I’ve never laid eyes on her since she was a toddler.’

Greg looked at him quizzically. Who was this old boy? What was so familiar about his face? Or was he just having one of those days?

‘I’d rather hang onto it if it’s all the same to you – it reminds me of my little one who passed some months back…’ His voice petered out. He’d surprised himself twice in one day. He never mentioned Shelly at work, everyone on his crew knew of course but it wasn’t the type of thing they’d talk about or wanted to acknowledge. No one knows what to say about the death of a child, best to leave it and say nothing at all. Less embarrassment and discomfort for all concerned.

‘Strange you say the same, it’s the image of my Becky. Ahh, still what’s gone is done and I shouldn’t be hanging onto things I can’t change.’