The House that Floats
by Palmina Vilone
We are taught not to touch art, but instead to ponder. To gaze before it with the fake curiosity of a middle-aged woman three glasses of prosecco deep. So, I am there, eyebrows creased, arms folded as if assessing, and wonder if I’ll get away with running through it before anyone sees. I don’t of course. I am self-controlled, I mimic sophistication and so I carry on to the next piece.
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We are taught not to touch art, but instead to ponder. To gaze before it with the fake curiosity of a middle-aged woman three glasses of prosecco deep. So, I am there, eyebrows creased, arms folded as if assessing, and wonder if I’ll get away with running through it before anyone sees. I don’t of course. I am self-controlled, I mimic sophistication and so I carry on to the next piece. 〰️
‘The space has been created for something to happen,’ that’s the title of the artwork. A house constructed from billowing sheets and suspended midair as if poltergeist infested. I stand before it cautious, too afraid to enter. We are taught not to touch art, but instead to ponder. To gaze before it with the fake curiosity of a middle-aged woman three glasses of prosecco deep. So, I am there, eyebrows creased, arms folded as if assessing, and wonder if I’ll get away with running through it before anyone sees. I don’t of course. I am self-controlled, I mimic sophistication and so I carry on to the next piece. But I do in fact wonder. I want to know why the artist didn’t construct a version of the White House, or the Palace of Versailles, or some three-storey Toorak mansion. I want to know why she created the very replica of every commission house I have ever lived in. Red brick, two windows and a door, akin to the architectural talent of a six-year-old. That’s the way public housing homes were built, with the simplicity of a scribble, and the durability of wet paper.
I realised very quickly that this was attunement, the feeling I had been chasing and struggling to find. It was wedged between the walls of sheets, and I hadn’t even needed to walk in to discover it. It found me. It said, ‘I know what you are, and your pretentiousness does not fool me.’ In that moment, the artwork stole me. It transported me back through time and space. It moved me from house to house, from suburb to suburb, from school to school, until all that remained unchanged was me. Now, it asked me to look at myself, to feel.
It was cruel, that the one thing I related to had brought me back to years of embarrassment and shame. I’ve lived in over fifteen houses, and I can tell you that while they differ, some colder than others, they all offer the same isolation. Fifteen houses and I can tell you that while the scenery and the neighbours changed, the feelings remained. They will stay with me forever, regardless of any growth. I was sprouted in dirt; therefore, I am destined to stain everything I touch. That is the reality of poverty. Once it has you, you feel its mark forever.
“I am sprouted in dirt; therefore, I am destined to stain everything I touch.”
Like the artwork, commission homes were replicas. Fakes. Yes, there was a roof (probably mould-infested and sinking) and windows (no safety glass, so no balls inside) and even a door (reminiscent of a cheap motel, chain lock and all) and nothing else. They are haunted, but not with ghosts. They hold within them the grief of all the families before. Once you find yourself within one, you have already lost.
The space has been created for something to happen, Esther Stewart website, accessed 18 October 2023.
When you line up for these homes at community-appointed crisis centres, they tell you that you must treat it as temporary. ‘The aim is to work towards leaving commission,’ says a fresh-faced graduate. As if the applicants hadn’t heard the same thing when their parents lined up 30 years prior. They will tell you that you must be grateful to end up wherever they place you, which means your children’s school will change, and any family you do have ends up living on the other side of the city. But your isolation and instability feel like first-world problems in comparison to your homelessness, so you take what you can get and deal with the repercussions later. Later always comes. But you’re grateful. You carry your relief with you, the same way you carry mould-induced asthma. You’re grateful because there is a roof over your head, and it sinks and cracks and sways, but it’s a roof, so how dare you complain.
***
I know my neighbours as my kin, for we share the same social exclusion, the same societal neglect. We have been left to rot, to fester together. And yet we find solace in the shared rejection. On a Wednesday night, before pension day, the street holds its breath. Like the house in the gallery, we are floating in a world of our own, hibernating. Thursday morning and my neighbours are awake before dawn, but not for Pilates or Yoga. There are pressing matters to attend to—life moves fast when you live paycheque to paycheque.
There are two outcomes when commission houses are built side-by-side, forming communities of their own.
The first is the possibility of crime. You grow up with sirens in place of lullabies and red and blue lights. You grow up hiding your laptop and jewellery before you leave the house, just in case. You grow up buying dogs from unreputable breeders because it’s all you can afford to do, but at least that deters the fence jumpers from hiding in your backyard. You grow up wondering if it was fireworks or a gunshot and you don’t look outside to check because it’s better not to know.
The second is the possibility of connection. It’s an ‘I scratch your back you scratch mine’ world. It’s borrowing cigarettes and sharing milk, swapping clothes when yours are too small but perfect for the girl next door. And she’s always grateful too; she wears your old clothes proudly because they are new to her. Most importantly, there is zero shame. You pop into each other’s houses for coffee and ignore piled dishes and dirty laundry. You understand that despite vigorous cleaning and cheap decorating, the houses are dirty in the way that says they have breathed the same stale air for over sixty years. There is no bleach nor scourer that can rid them of their filth, nor the generational trauma of the hundreds of families that have walked their dusty halls. Like fish, we have become acclimated to the environment, we learn to survive in such conditions, and in some warped way, we even learn to live.
***
I, unlike most of the children in my situation, was fortunate enough to attend a Catholic private school, funded on a hardship scheme. My uniform was donated and my books sourced from various organisations. Like a scene right out of Gilmore Girls, it’s my grandmother who packs my first school lunch and drives me there—she does not trust my mother to get me to school on time. I make friends with a girl named Amy and she embodies everything I have ever wanted to be. She lives in Essendon. She tells me her walls are painted the colour of coffee, and that she has her own bedroom. She wears perfume and her teeth are straight. She has never run away from home or shown up on her grandparent’s doorstep with clothes in trash bags and mascara-streaked cheeks. Her grandparents live overseas, and she even gets to visit. Every. Single. Year. I’ve never been on a plane, but I tell her I want to. Our friendship is innocent. I visit her house and I sleep there and we watch movies until 2 am.
When Amy asks to come over to my house, I lie and tell her I can’t. I’m busy that day. I’ll be busy for the rest of my life.
I find it harder and harder to fit in at school because, I come to realise, I am leading a double life. There is the part of me that lights my gas oven with matches, that must bash the top of the toilet in to stop it from running, that sleeps in the lounge room because there is no warmth anywhere else. And there is the part of me that is shopping with girls that wear Seed Heritage and CAMILLA AND MARC. I keep up the façade for two years until I feel like I am drowning. I am desperate to breathe, to resurface. I enrol into public school. I leave my old life behind, leave Amy despite wanting to keep her, and for the first time in a long time, I feel like me.
***
I see her a few years after high school, dress shopping. Between us there is a lingering spark of girlhood, of curiosity. I want to ask her if she still likes Taylor Swift and then remember I read an article she wrote for the Herald Sun, so that’s pointless in comparison to what she became. When we talk, I get the sense she wants to reconnect, but I already failed once at reinventing myself and I believe I am too far gone to try again. I have let myself succumb to everything I promised I’d change. I still fall asleep in my makeup and neglect skincare. I still leave my clothes on the floor because commission homes usually come without wardrobes and any chest of drawers you find on marketplace is only large enough to house a family of rats and nothing else. I still op shop because why would I pay full price for anything when I can get things almost free. I’m still messy. I write sporadically, and my laptop harbours open documents and a tirade of virus-inducing tabs. My clothes come sprinkled with cats’ fur because I sleep with them every night.
When you grow up living below the poverty line, you develop lifelong habits that become a part of your personality. They stay with you forever, regardless of any attempt to rid yourself of their grasp.
If you beat the odds and overcome the predisposed reality that states the children of housos become housos, you may find yourself lost. As I grow away from my roots and forge a life of my own, I realise that I crave the chaos. I have found stability, and yet I seek out the uncomfortable. I fear losing the simplicity I once despised. There is something liberating about living in filth, something comforting. It is so hard to flourish when all I have ever known is decay.
I will own my own house one day, because my stubbornness refuses to allow me to become a statistic. My home will include a staircase, because I have always wanted one of those, and a fancy stove that is sleek and flat. I will have a garden that is not just weeds and overgrown grass, and central heating so that every room is warm. In the space that I create, you will find normality, and yet if you look close enough, you will always find me. There will be threads of my past woven into my walls, seeping into my carpets, and hiding in my roof. Like the house in the gallery, my home will always float, because I am there, and I carry with me all the homes that have come before and every person that has walked through their doors. I am past the clouds. Past the atmosphere and a thousand light years away, spinning in orbit of everything I have ever wanted, and everything I am yet to receive.