What I collect: Quotes from my interview data that represent major themes and trends in my study on postwar immigration.
What else I collect: Stories of damaged lives, opp-shop-stories, discarded ones that nobody cares for anymore but are still too precious to throw out with the garbage.
Today’s opp-shop-story: I was raped because it was my fault, said the woman in the opportunity shop. I ducked in, to rummage for a cheap summer blouse. It was too early to pick up my daughter from school, too late to start anything new.
I was raped by two men, she said. Her long blonde tresses of angel curls belonged to a younger woman budding with female hormones. The finest network of dry wrinkles all over her china white face cracked the false image of youth. Her eyes were the perfect colour of calmness, a pale translucent green. She came into the shop to donate her story to strangers who might still find some use for it.
My mother made me believe it was my fault because of the way I dressed, she said. I know I drank too much but I didn’t realise. I really didn’t have any idea. That’s how I dressed in the pub. They raped me and didn’t care. If they did care they wouldn’t have driven me to the cliff and left me. It was my fault.
How are you coping? The buxom middle-aged woman fixed behind the counter asked the question in a way that showed she was used to the story.
I cry every night, said the angel, whose slender body fitted neatly into the stylish, palest khaki second-hand outfit. Her figure was the envy of all fashion conscious women, maintained not by aerobics classes, but withered by street drugs.
I’m going to work with children, she dared to announce. Her voice sounded guilty, reluctantly practising self-esteem. My grief counsellor said I would be good at that. I love animals and children. I could work with children but I still cry every night. My husband died a few years ago.
A drug overdose, I thought judgingly. She's alone.
My grief counsellor said it wasn’t my fault but my mother said…. I’m doing really well. I’m getting over it. Her voice lied at the spell-bound audience in the shop.
You’re very beautiful, I told her.
The angel looked surprised, the way a child does when she hears something new for the first time.
I have to go to the hairdresser she said, shyly, checking the faces of the others to see if she was allowed such self indulgence.
It wasn’t my fault, was it? Her voice pleaded affirmation from the well-fed statues of nice suburban woman in the shop. Silence.
No, it wasn’t your fault, I said from behind the rack of old clothes.
She looked stunned that another woman dared to defy the teachings of her mother.
You’ve got a lot healing to do, I said.
Yes I have, she said without crying.
Trust the universe, I said and turned to leave the shop.
I do, she said. What’s your name? She called at me anxiously.
I turned back and said my first name. Then she said hers the way children do in the schoolyard and we hugged each other. I felt her body so fragile it could break easily like the old chipped china in the window display.
I left quickly to pick up my daughter from school.
