My Name Isn’t Actually Rosemary Spice

Following is an imaginative piece of prose composed by Advanced Year 12 student Amy Auwardt. Please note, the story does contain mature concepts.

The HSC English syllabus now requires all students to study The Craft of Writing. Students hone their skills in composition, writing imaginatively, discursively, and persuasively. The focus is on producing short, quality pieces of work, as the students may be given as little as twenty minutes to craft a piece of writing. The time given to compose can vary year to year, depending on how many marks are allocated to the composition component, and how many to the additional reflection component (where students may also have to justify the choices they made in their composition). In other words, there is not a lot of time to produce a quality piece of work. Practising, drafting, editing … and time management – these skills are paramount.

The first draft of this was well over the word limit, but clever editing meant that despite cutting 400 words, the beauty of the piece was retained. A great lesson in the value of drafting and editing.

Rosemary Spice was a thin woman with artificial red hair and skin that sagged a little. Each day she set her alarm for 7:17 in the morning. She liked the number seven. Shower 7:28, eat breakfast 7:45, and then three hours tending her garden before resigning to her knitting. Click, click, click … she was back. Her vibrant youth, a natural beauty adored by all with a vivacious laugh and zest for life. She could smell the smoke. Each inhalation was intoxicating, the lights momentarily blinding her, the music thrumming through her body. And then silence. She was all alone. Rosemary Spice destined for greatness was alone.

A detailed map was clasped in one bony hand while the other clung to the bus pole so tightly the taut skin paled. The bus thudded to a stop and she clenched every muscle to keep upright. As she exited the driver hollered gruffly, “Merry Christmas.” She ignored him and set her determined eyes forward. It was a sweltering day and her skin felt uncomfortably clammy but there was no turning back now. She hobbled past the endless spirals of barbed wire and shivered.

…

“Great,” Vi muttered as the seven o’clock alarm shattered the silence and signalled the start of a new day. Christmas day. She rolled out of the coarse sheets and staggered to the bathroom. The morning continued as it usually did but with slightly better food, fresh fruit (a once-a-year-treat) and Michael Bublé’s obnoxiously joyful Christmas album. She knew they would have a performance of some sort at lunch which she had forcefully declined involvement in. Disgusting.

The morning’s monotony was broken by her least favourite officer. Her shrill voice came out of thin lips and her tiny eyes narrowed. “You have a visitor. Follow me”. Vi got to her feet and scowled, masking her shock with the fury for which she was renowned. She shouldn’t hope but she wanted her mother’s embrace, to be wrapped in her scent of roses and sweat and booze. She longed to see her mother’s brown eyes, which melted when she showed her love. But as Vi sat down she was met with watery, diluted blue eyes and an old face from her distant past.

Rosemary looked at her granddaughter. She took a deep breath. She searched the dark brown eyes that reminded Rosemary of her own daughter, Vi’s mum, Caroline. She stared at the shaggy brown mullet, the bruises, the scrawny elbows and the hurt. “My name isn’t actually Rosemary Spice.” Her voice sounded shaky. “It’s a stage name”. She looked at the girl and wondered what in God’s name had made her start with that. She took a deep breath and revisited the past.

She dove into the murkiness of regret and remorse, searching for the right words. She painted a world of vigour and sacrifice, sweat and tears, fulfilment, and purpose. She spoke of the immense joy of dancing in the light of 1000 watching eyes and how she had thrived in an environment of structure and routine.

And then the pit.

She could never claw herself out.

The resentment and the bitterness she felt when she was burdened with a baby that cost her career, her purpose, her life’s desires. She raised the girl alone, she lived pay-check to pay-check and slowly the pit started to cave in. It began to swallow her whole, drown her. She punished the baby with every fibre of her soul because there was no one else, no one else to absorb her pain but the baby and the bottle. Caroline grew up, she had Vi and history repeated. Rosemary let the words fall out and settle between the two.

Vi didn’t say anything. She looked at the broken, withered, scrawny woman, and saw herself; saw her mother. A single tear. She stayed stoically silent for an hour and then they took her away.

Rosemary Spice stayed frozen for 30 minutes. Then she went home. Rosemary Spice saw a ladder in her pit and grabbed hold.

Rosemary Spice came back the next week. She climbed the first rung.

Then the second.

Then the third.