The Paradise Stain. Nick Glade-Wright

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СКАЧАТЬ moved by the suffering caused at the time.

      As Melinda stood up, Kevin, who had sat on the stool next to her, began to ramble into his hands. His words, like a dooms day monologue, were not directed at anyone in particular, and had no correlation to the previous conversation. Melinda held back and allowed the words to flow a torrent.

      ‘Eight million died in World War One. Nineteen million, five hundred and thirty six thousand wounded. In World War Two twenty million, eight hundred and fifty eight thousand, eight hundred soldiers died, and twenty seven million, three hundred and seventy two thousand, nine hundred civilians died. Three thousand, nine hundred and twelve kamikaze suicide pilots in the Japanese Air Force died in the Pacific region between 1944 and 1945 … ’

      ‘I wish you’d go an’ bloody join ’em,’ one of the rabbits grumbled, aggrieved by Kevin commanding so much attention.

      Kevin continued as if he was sitting by himself in the room.

      ‘Eleven hundred people died in the floods in Pakistan, eighteen died in the Queensland floods this year, one died in Cyclone Yasi, seventy one died in Cyclone Tracy in 1974, four hundred died in 1899 in Cyclone Mahina in Cape York, one hundred were Aborigines.’

      ‘Okay, thanks, Kevin. That was most informative. But I think that’s probably enough facts for now.’

      ‘Yeah, why don’t you go and clean the bloody sinks, ya dick head?’ a greasy haired female rabbit finally sneered through a lip load of piercings.

      ‘All right, all right, thanks, Tracy. How about we take a break? Ten minutes. When you come back I’ll open the kiln and you can collect your masterpieces.’

      ‘’Ooray!’ The rabbit mob chanted, scuffing their stools back, having already forgotten Kevin’s recital.

      ‘’Bout bloody time,’ one mumbled as he barged past Pammy, rudely knocking her.

      The cheers were a hollow expression of delight for Melinda, for she knew the practices of some these hooded, sneaky eyed delinquents and their real motivation. Behind a service area, on the southern end of the campus there was a tall brick wall, on the way to the rabbits’ backstreet warrens. Over the past few years there had accumulated a large pile of broken clay shards at the base of it. Brightly glazed bowls, quirky animals and masks, the occasional teapot, albeit with dribbly spouts, platters, carved boxes and sculptural forms constructed with fine white stoneware clay, and delicate crackle glazed Raku fired pots had been hurled at the brick wall with idiotic cheers. No ashtrays though. Red target rings had been sprayed about two metres off the ground. In the centre was a crudely painted penis and testicles with the words smash all poofs sprayed underneath.

      Melinda could understand the desire to create an explosion. And the sort after adrenalin rush that followed. By all accounts, while they were under the teacher’s watchful eye, they had professed a primitive pride in something they had created themselves. Melinda could see it in their eyes as they took hold of their glazed works, still warm from the belly of the fire. So it was beyond her why these boys, and girls, would want to destroy their own work that they had given so much attention to, given birth to.

      That was until a young student at the end of last year, David Such, a sensitive and unusually creative lad from a background almost completely devoid of nurture, made the most delicately carved figurine of a mother holding a child in her arms. It was a simple but profound representation of family love. It had been on display in the cabinet by the principal’s office for several weeks, admired and talked about by teachers, visiting parents and students alike. Knowing the boy’s home life Melinda was fascinated. It was so realistic and so evocative of a mother’s devotion to her child, it belied reason.

      But a fortnight later, Charlene Peters, the only girl in Melinda’s pottery class then who was quite at ease working at the same tables as the spazes, had told Melinda that David had removed the figurine from the cabinet, and had taken it to The Wall. Charlene had retrieved the mother’s decapitated head amongst the rubble and handed it dolefully to Melinda.

      ‘Why David?’ she’d asked him later, her eyes beginning to glaze like the lustre on the little figurine’s face.

      David had mumbled to the ground, ‘Me Dad reckons I’m gay if I do stuff like that.’ Then raising his heavy, sad puppy eyes to look at Melinda, the one person in his life who had given him a sense of his own worth, his potential, he’d added forlornly, ‘I’m not, ya know.’

      Melinda had smiled sympathetically at the boy, but felt utterly defeated. Why the hell do I put myself through this? she screamed inside.

      This year she would contact parents to try to encourage them to support their children’s creative efforts in pottery, but Melinda knew that the task of getting through to parents was often more daunting than classroom management. Home was usually the battleground where neglect and dissent festered.

      The kiln firing was a success. By the time the students had returned to the studio Melinda had taken their work from the kiln and placed it on their tables. She’d let them fetch their own work directly from the kiln once. It had been a disaster. After the lower shelf props were dislodged in a shoving match the whole six layers came tumbling down.

      A quiet pride existed over the next fifteen minutes as every one admired their own finished work placed carefully beside them.

      ‘Good job everyone. Now let’s spend the next ten minutes cleaning up before recess,’ Melinda called out to the chattering class.

      She began replacing the lids on the glaze buckets. Tables were wiped. Unfinished works shelved in damp cupboards. Students and carers filed out.

      As Melinda closed the studio door she noticed that Kevin had made a good job of the light switch.

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