Yellow Eyes

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I like to lie on my back on the grass with my eyes shut. I do this often on my lunch break, whenever the sun promises to peek from behind the clouds. I stare at the sun through closed lids. The heat warms my veins and the rays permeate the transparency of my flesh. When my eyes flicker open, the world has a golden hue. The grass has a luminescence, the buildings have soft ochre tones and the leaves on the trees, turning now because its autumn, have little gold rims. Everything I look at is bathed in yellow, and its somehow more magical.

I cannot help but reminisce about when I used to look through dads old sunglasses. As a child I would pick them up, ever so gently, and slide the giant metal frames over my freckled face. They sat there well, on account of my nose being quite turned up back then. He would doze on the couch, and I would make off with them, admiring the burnt yellow lenses – such was the seventies. Sometimes I would put them on and stand at the front window, marvelling at how they could change the colours of our garden, the passing cars, and the people that traversed the footpath. I would lift them away from my face, and drop them again, giggling at how I could make people go brown like the Jendayi family. Mum said they were “ethnics”, I never found out what kind, dad didn’t really like me playing near their house. They moved away after a few years, I think because they didn’t have many friends. I’d play with dad’s glasses by the window for as long as he would sleep. If he’d been to the bottle-o after his shift, then I got to play with them for longer, because he’d always sleep longer then. I’d sit patiently on the footrest, watching the afternoon news with him, until he nodded off.

Dad would always yell if he ever caught me with his glasses. They were his favourites and he’d had them as long as I could remember. One day I did not see him coming, and he had yelled with such ferocity that I’d dropped them. He snatched them off the ground and rammed them onto his face. He gripped my arm very hard and jerked me towards him. “Whaddaya think you’re doing boy!?” he boomed as he shook me. I froze up then, because I feared what he might do to me if I told him that I’d been playing with them. So I didn’t say anything. He lent down and brought his nose close to mine, digging his nails into my arm. He stared at me intently through the ochre lenses, and I remember thinking how yellow his eyes looked. He leant closer, and I could smell the dark liquor on his breath. He slapped me then, because I didn’t answer him. The handprint had glowed immediately. I should have answered him, then I wouldn’t have been hit. I tried not to cry because it was my fault, but the second time he slapped me, it whipped my head around and rogue tears had trickled down my cheek. But they didn’t wash away the red welt. They never did.

He relaxed then, and the anger subsided as quickly as it had risen. He had sighed, using me to push himself upright. He tousled my hair and walked back to the TV room, talking over his shoulder as he walked out, “I love you kid, but you fucking shit me to tears”. I always thought later on that if I had just stopped taking his glasses, he might have loved me that bit more. But I couldn’t help it, I loved how the my parents house looked through them, and I loved that with a flick of my wrist, I could distort the colours of my world.

From that day on, I’d always taken extra care when I snuck off with his glasses. I’d sneak off to the back of the horses paddock, and walk around, pretending to be dad. I’d always add a little swagger, because dad always had a beer belly. And I’d talk to our chestnut mare Bella, mimicking dad’s gravelly tone. And I’d always wear the glasses, and Bella would always glow a golden burning orange beyond them. And then I’d traipse back to the house, flicking the sunglasses up and down as I went. I was always careful to return them just as I had found them.

When dad died of liver failure in 1983, they buried him with his sunglasses. I remembered how his face was coloured behind them, that day he slapped me, and I thought to myself that now his eyes would be yellow forever. When I was much older, I realised that dads’ eyes were already yellow, and that he was probably dying for as long as I could remember. As now, as I lay on my back on this crisp autumn day, I hope to god that I will never wear yellow glasses again, and that the tingling I feel behind my eyes when I lay on my back will always fade away.
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