PROSES & POEMS
by Jeannette Teo* We Hate Max! (written 1993)
* Sleep Dream (written 1993)
* Nick (written 1994)
We Hate Max!
(Prose Published in "Naked Eye, Vol 1, 1994, pg 5-7", Australia)
"All I believed in was a lie!"
The TV sat spurting drama into my eyeballs. I don't blink. I yawned instead. Beside me, Martha starts to cry.
"Listen to me!" the actor said.
"Listen? To another fat lie? I've had enough!"
She threw a cup of coffee into his face and walked away. He gasped.
"You'll regret this!" he said.
She stood still, turned around slowly and cat-walked back to him. He smiled.
"Guess what i forgot?" she smiled. She reached out for the full milk jug and tilted it over his greased hair.
"Jerk!"
The man was smiling at me. I had twelve broken eggs on the floor mixed together with spilled flour, and my new leather handbag was sitting there on top of the freshly made throne. I dropped them when that man (still smiling at me) walked into me at the supermarket.
"What are you smiling at?"
"Hello, I'm Max. Do you like strawberry milk?" he asked.
Martha was the best screamer in the cheerleading team. It happened when we went for a rugby match in school and she screamed when a giant spider ran up her leg. The guy next to us slapped the spider dead on her thighs. My ears were ringing for an hour or so. Martha fainted. Our school team won the game.
It was crowded in the shopping complex.
"Mummy! Mummy!" A little girl with pigtails was crying.
I ran to her.
Max scooped her up in his arms and lifted her above his shoulders. She became silent.
"Can you see Mummy from here?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Then we'll go find her ok?" he put her down gently, like handling delicate porcelain. She nodded and held her hand out for him to hold. She was smiling as Max led her to the information desk to make an announcement. I followed behind, enchanted by Max, a natural pied piper.
I was angry with Max and I showed it. I didn't want to speak to him throughout dinner. He kept apologizing all night and that made me more irritated.
"You should have called." was all i said.
"I know I should have called but I had something very last minute to do and I couldn't get away." he said.
Max didn't turn up for my friend's wedding. I had dressed up cheerfully, day-dreaming about my wedding with Max. I was ready early and waited impatiently for Max to pick me up. He didn't show up...
He seems to take forever, so i call him. No one answers and I am excited as I think that he is on his way to my place. I get ready to leave... for the tenth time. Max is half an hour late. The wedding is about to start in an hour. I am pacing the hall. I go outside and pace the garden. I go back in the hall and pace as far as the telephone cords could take me as i call Max again and again. I am angry. I am trying not to panic. I am trying not to be hysterical. I am trying not to scream at Max IF he turns up at my door. One hour later I panic and i think something happened to Max. Still no answer on the phone. Then the wedding begins and I am still stuck at home. Ten minutes into the wedding I call a taxi. Twenty minutes into the wedding the taximan calls to say he had an accident and could I please call another taxi. One hour into the wedding I arrive. The bridegroom is kissing the bride and everyone is clapping and smiling. I am panting and hyperventilating. Martha thinks I had a heart-attack.
Martha brought me a monkey soft toy when she visited me the week after the wedding. We went through college photographs and ate ice-cream over late night movies. She hasn't visited me since. She wrote once to say she was still thinking of me even though she's busy with a very shy boyfriend who daren't meet me. She's thinking of going out on a double date with me. She wanted to arrange a blind date for me. She thought I wasn't going out with anyone. I never told her about Max. Max was too reserved and didn't like to meet new people. Maybe that's why he chickened-out on attending the wedding with me. And i never had the chance to double date with Martha.
So Max was dating Martha and me for two years now. Martha and I found out when he appeared while we were shopping (haven't met her for a while) and she ran to him to kiss him. I stood there and thought, "He loves cornflakes with strawberry milk."
Martha couldn't stop crying over him, I couldn't stop buying strawberry milk and Max can't stop calling us to explain. Martha asked if we should forgive him - she can never resist rescuing a mewing stray kitten. i suggested we force him eat 10 bowls of cornflakes with chocolate milk. We haven't done both.
"Martha, your eyes will explode one day." I said.
She breathed deeply and as she slowly let the air out through her mouth, she choked. She started crying again. I put my arms around her and later tucked her into bed.
"I'm not your mother, Martha."
She smiled and I saw the side of her mouth twitch.
"Stop it, for goodness sakes!" I said.
"I'm trying!"
i raised my voice. "That's not good enough!"
"Then what do you expect me to do?"
I looked away at the dressing table. It was a messy array of cosmetic and toiletry bottles, lipsticks, brushes, hair clips... they seemed to draw me to them. I held a hair brush in my hand. I looked back at Martha and i threw the brush out of the window. Then, with one swing, I swept every bottle, brush, lipstick, hair clip off the table onto the floor. I opened the drawers and grabbed everything in it and threw them all over the room.
Martha leaped out of bed and threw her blanket at the bedside lamp. It smashed onto the floor like a broken egg. She then jumped on the mattress as if on a trampoline and screamed. I haven't heard her scream since college when she cheered for the rugby team.
"I hate Max!" she said and laughed.
The kitchen was out next playground. Martha and I had a pot and pan fight - like two swordsmen. I challenged her thrusting pot with the pan in my hand. We screamed and giggled and cheered ourselves on. And then we broke all the mugs by throwing them onto the grey kitchen walls.
We dialed his number.
"Hello?"
I counted to three and we shouted together, "We HATE you!"
Grabbing forks and spoons, we clashed them against the pot and pan before we slammed the receiver down.
"Jerk!" I said.
Then there was silence. The shrill cry of the phone made Martha and I jump.
Martha looked at me and said "we hate Max."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sleep Dream
(Poem Published in "Naked Eye, Vol 1, 1994, pg 39", Australia)
In my sleep
i walk
Pass the honey-scented trees
Lived by a mob of itny red ants.
The wild daisies
Grin from the tickles of the wind
On their silky petals.
A star wearing a red stubby nose
Like a miniature pig's snout
Leads me along a brick path
Into my warm house where
My pet fish jumps tireless at my feet.
I pat its cold gaping head
And it somersaults into its bowl
Of fresh flowers.
The bed sits beside the window
Waiting
For me to cuddle in.
Then i wake up when
the warmed of the morning sun
Opens my eyes.
But the tiredness of my body
Has sunk deep
Into my bed
In my sleep dream home.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(more to come...)
