As Red as the Blood on the Kitchen Floor

My beautiful sunset pink plates always had to be clea and they were clean. At least I was trying to get them clean. Clean as the floor beneath my feet, clean as the floor beneath a surgeon's foot.

Blue, yes blue, blue as the sky on a sunny August morning. That was the colour of the dishes I was washing, no scrubbing? Yes scrubbing until my hands were red raw. They needed to be clean, spotless, before he came home and inspected them. I had already tipped out the water three…no four times. It had that horrid brown film growing over the top of it. I remember it because it looked like my grandma’s gravy. She never could cook very well and I always went home more starving than one of those hyenas you see on the wildlife shows.

            I was scrubbing the blue plates, or were they yellow? Yes they were yellow, yellow as the sun on a spring afternoon. The plates were yellow and I was scrubbing them so that when he came home he wouldn’t shout at me that I hadn’t cleaned up. I was trying to clean up but all I could hear in the background was the children. They were screaming, screaming so loud.

            “Mummy Mummy Mummy!”

            They were shouting and fighting and the lovely yellow plates were still dirty. I told them to shut up. They didn’t. They were screaming and crashing around the kitchen and my beautiful sunset pink plates were not getting clean, not even a little bit. They had streaks of dirt along the rims and I was sure he had done it on purpose to make me work like my mother said I would have to when I was married.

            “Mummy Mummy Mummy!”

            She said I had to be a good wife. A good wife who cooked and cleaned and looked after the children, it was my duty or so she said. Just like it was her duty to dust the house before my father came home and told her off. She was always dusting. I don’t dust now; I make the children do it so I don’t get told off when he gets home. I don’t like to dust because it reminds me of when I was younger and my father came home and my mother was still dusting and he made her pay for not finishing in time and I watched the black spots floating against the shaft of light that fell through the window into the living room. I always make sure the children dust in the living room before it catches the sunlight.

            “Mummy Mummy Mummy!”

            But my mother didn’t know the other things I could do when I was married. She didn’t know that she could have put dirty water in his tea or move his keys when he was looking for them. She didn’t know that she could have the children run through his study and lie that she hadn’t noticed when he came home and found the white rug as soiled as the  baby’s nappy.

            Only I didn’t think and had to clean it up. You would think that a man who disappeared into his study for hours on end and never let you in would want to clean it himself instead of having me go in and ruining his precious work that happened to be strewn over the room anyway. Even if I had touched it I don’t know how he would ever know.

            He never did know.

            He never knew that I would spend hours polishing the silver so it shined so brightly that it blinded me for a few seconds if I tipped it at the right angle. He never knew that I put fresh flowers in the house every week or that I changed our sheets every time he dragged me to bed half an hour early. The only thing he ever took any notice of was if I wasn’t wearing the right dress or I hadn’t put Amelia’s hair the right way or if the plates weren’t clean before I put his food on them.

            My beautiful sunset pink plates always had to be clean and they were clean. At least, I was trying to get them clean. Clean as the floor beneath my feet, clean as the floor beneath a surgeon’s foot. It just wasn’t clean enough.

            And Amelia was shouting for food and John wanted a toy to play with and baby Cate was sobbing in her chair because she needed changing and my sunset pink plates were as dirty as her nappy. I glanced at the clock still scrubbing at the dishes. He would be home soon and he would expect the dinner that bubbled on the stove to be on perfect clean plates and the children to be neat and sat at the table but still they screamed

            “Mummy Mummy Mummy!”

            They wouldn’t stop screaming and the dirt black plates were still in the bowl and he would be home any minute and I would be told off and punished in the same way that my father used to punish me when I had done something wrong. Then my skin would look just like my bruise coloured plates and my face would be hidden for two weeks while it healed and then I would start over again like my mummy used to.

            “Mummy Mummy Mummy!”

            Just like Amelia would if she wasn’t quite when he got home. A little angel with all the broken bones and bruises as the devil had after his fall from heaven. She was his favourite and he told her it was because he loved her and she had to learn to do as she was told just like her mummy did.

            “Mummy Mummy Mummy!”

            Just like her mummy learnt at the hands of her own father and just like mummy was re-taught at the hands of her husband when he came home and the plates weren’t clean. Amelia would learn. He had told me that as he held a knife to my throat. She believed him. She loved him and wasn’t scared, she wasn’t scared like I was.

            That’s why I had to get the plates clean, why they had to be white again. White like my beautiful angel’s face. White like the sheets on our bed. White like his eyes when he was inches from my face with his hands wrapped around my neck.

            “Daddy Daddy Daddy!”

            Daddy was home.

            I dropped the white plates into the water and brown sludge splattered on the front of my dress. S**t, I would have to change. S**t, I had no time. I grabbed the apron off the side and tied it around my waist. One, two, three times the string went around my waist. Just how he wanted me.

            “Daddy Daddy Daddy!”

            He was in the kitchen. I was stirring the large pot of chilli on the hob. One, two, three times I pulled the wooden spoon through the thick sauce before I turned and looked at home. I said the usual; how was his day? Did he have a good drive home? Would he want dinner at the table or in his study? It was the table this time. He didn’t answer any of my other questions. The children were still screaming, asking him questions, wanting his attention. He told them to shut up. They did.

            It was an odd sort of silence. The kind you get when something awkward has happened and no one knows if they should speak or not. I never said anything during these silences; merely nod when he told me I was chopping the tomatoes too thick. The silence would continue as I dried the dirty, ordinary, cream plates and laid them on the table. It would continue as I served the chilli and salad. It would be broke by a snide remark on his part and then it would resume as normal.

            Normal, everyone saw us as normal. Normal was so far from the truth. Is it normal for a wife to clutch her hand so tight around her knife that her knuckles go white waiting for him to provoke her? No, people would not say that was normal. People would say that she had a screw loose and lock her up in a white padded room. People wouldn’t see her four broken ribs or the bruise the size of my normal cream plates on her stomach.

            I was waiting, waiting for him to say something, anything that gave me a reason…he didn’t disappoint.

            “These plates are dirty.”

            One, two, three I stabbed my knife into his chest. Blood replaced the water stain on my dress. Children’s screams replaced the silence.

            “Mummy Mummy Mummy!”

            “Daddy Daddy Daddy!”

            It was reassuring to hear them again. To not have to endure the ear splitting silence that consumed my entire existence when he was around. My mother should have thought of the solution before he got to her. She should have killed my father. Maybe then she would have found my screams reassuring.

            I picked up Cate and led the elder two by the hand into the living room to play with their toys.

            “Mummy Mummy Mummy!”

            I closed the door and returned to the kitchen where I collected the dishes, putting them in the sink. I started to scrub the red plates, yes, that’s right I remember now, they were red, as red as the blood on the kitchen floor. 

 

 

Reviews

[Dean Kuch®]

A frightenly chaotic look into a poor woman's nervous breakdown! It held my interest throughout. I could feel her rage building as each time the dishes she was so desperately and vainly attempting to get cleaned changed colour and got filthier. The last line caused an unexpected gasp to leap from my chest and a wicked little grin to curl up the corners of my lips.
Terrifyingly delicious!

[Persona]

First of all, I love reviewing fresh writing!
I'm eager for this story and I liked that it was deeper than most (you weren't trying to hard - it felt natural).
To improve? I think there's a little too much description and the repetition of "Mummy!" Wears on me a lot. You take a long time to get to the stabbing which I knew was going to happen from the start so there's a little too much preamble. The title's a little too long. I know it's a simile and all, but maybe "Red blood" or a title to do with the children's innocence could make a big impact too?
Otherwise, I like it for the character development and the way that she's become trapped in her mother's life. You get the feel of her trying so hard to clean the place, to impress and then the resentment towards the abusive husband
I liked the oblivious children as well and how the dad tells them to shut up. That's such good development as we see him for the bad man he is. It shows how distant he is emotionally too. I like that the protagonist is questioning what's normal - and that she realises things aren't. It shows her strength and her complete grasp on reality. We don't see some crazed woman stabbing a man - we see a woman at the end of her tether. She was a real person to me, not a caricature. Therefore, the main reason for your place in the contest. Well done!