Where Once I Saw Her Dance by Anne Casey. Reader Clare Grant.
I
Escape by Sheryl Dixit. Reader Sage Godrei.
Butterfly Kicks by Jamila Main. Reader Umima Shah-Munro.
Long Division by Jessica Andreatta. Reader Julia Christensen.
My Smarty Pants Phone by June Hopkins. Reader Clare Grant.
II
The Wresting by Anne Walsh. Reader Julia Christensen.
Safety in the Danger by Jay-Lee Richardson. Reader Clare Grant.
The Face Misplaced by Edilia Ford. Reader Sage Godrei.
Reconciliation Rescue by Angelina Hurley. Reader Umima Shah-Munro.
III
The Thing About Fish Being Held Captive is Not What I am Trying to Say. by Ali Whitelock. Reader Sage Godrei.
When the Bell Tolls by Kerry Reed-Gilbert. Reader Teena McCarthy.
Skipping Stones by Mikaela Castledine. Reader Clare Grant.
Everyone is Full of Shit by
Hannah Grace Fulton.
Reader Umima Shah-Munro.
IV
Burning Down the House by Lliane Clarke. Reader Clare Grant.
A Voice from Down Under by Jo Toscano. Reader Umima Shah-Munro.
Mrs Ziotto’s Three Hundred Dollars
by Elisa Cristallo.
Reader Julia Christensen
The Berenice Diaries by Roz Hall Farlam. Reader Sage Godrei.
Am I Fine? by Jamieson Rendall. Reader Julia Christensen.
Home by Gayle Kennedy. Reader Umima Shah-Munro.
The Magician’s Girl by Rijn Collins. Reader Julia Christensen.
where once I saw her dance
Anne Casey
beyond the sleepy dapplings of the mangroves
trailing lazy limbs into the drowsing waves
across the turquoise crests of placid currents
that lap up to the gently sloping shore
out past the breakers idly frothing
beneath the rolling drifts of whitecap spray
once I saw her dance, her head encircled brightly
in blooming rubicund and blazing saffron stars
tresses dressed with every hue there budding
ribbons streaming emerald and vivid sapphire-blue
peacock-feathered tendrils trailed behind her
a giant clam gasped deep and wide with awe
humpback whale came to slowly drift above her
their voices joined the wind to sing her praise
seals paused to frolic in her swirlings
a maori wrasse gliding past took his fill
and later as the evening stretched and lingered
slow to let the day slip to the sea
the sun came slanting through that glassy window
to spread a crimson blanket for her sleep
leaping with first light came the dugongs
and dolphins circling idly by her side
dragon-fish nimbly flitting through her fingers
Neptune’s Cup Sponge brushing past her toes
as clownfish coaxed a path around her shoulders
where her braids were twined with amber
and with rose; turtles grazed on grassy rolling
borders, porcupine ray rippling in the flats
ribboned pipefish nibbled at the treats she offered
mantis shrimp and krill came picking at the crumbs
in her garden suffuse with every colour
bottlebrush bordered staghorn skirting ferns
but storms came to dash her radiant features
her gorgeous tresses have all turned white with woe
her feathered grasses are falling all around her
blossoms fading from magenta, fuschia, gold
angelfish in anguish bow their heads down
swimming hard against a swiftly rising tide
she is drowning in a sea awash with cobalt
deadly metals fill the channels where she breathes
her lovely limbs are shackled down with plastics
her lungs are laced with deadly manganese
a crown of thorns to pierce her pretty head
a bed of sludge to lull her in her dreams
her cherished creatures perish all around her
in the clutch of slowly simmering seas
where once beyond the dapplings of the mangroves
beneath the drowsing waves and turquoise crests
way out past the breakers idly frothing,
I saw her dance, her head encircled brightly
in blooming rubicund and blazing saffron stars
tresses dressed with every hue there budding
ribbons streaming emerald and
vivid sapphire-blue
Escape
Sheryl Dixit
No, no, no, go, go go! Wait! Did I say that out loud? Did he hear me? No… he couldn’t have, that’s the front door shutting. Calm down, deep breaths just like she said deep breaths, one-two-three-four-five-six….Okay! That’s the car starting, he’s gone over the bump on the driveway. Thank God!
Quick, quick, hurry, don’t worry, it will be okay she said we will be okay. The chair, drag the chair to the window – oww! My arm – that hurt, right on the burn, now it’s bleeding! WHAT AM I DOING? Calm down, its going to be okay, just concentrate. We’re going to be okay. Chair to the window, where are my shoes? I forgot, they’re in the hallway, in case he noticed they were gone. deep breath, climb on the chair. Oh my God, I bumped my belly, give me strength, my belly is so big, but my body is so skinny. Open the window, rain’s coming in, the carpet is wet. he’ll be so angry. Stop! Concentrate! Push the grill harder. It. Must. Move! I loosened the plaster all week. Where did I put that the fork I used? Oh, oh, lightning, someone may see me. PUSH! Its fallen into the garden. Did someone hear me? No, the thunder was too loud. Stop, listen! Did I hear something? No, just the rain.
Climb on the sill, careful, both legs over, careful, hold my belly. What am I doing? I’m all wet, legs wet, belly wet. I should go back inside, at least the room is dry, I don’t think I can jump, it’s too high, what if I fall? On my tummy. He’ll find me and I’ll be in here, locked up again, I can’t bear it, stop thinking! one, two, three….. Okay, jump, its not too far to the ground, don’t think, just jump!
Aaaah, it hurts, knees hurt, tummy touched the ground, palms hurt. Did anyone hear me? No. Thunder, the thunder was too loud. Thank God! It’s so dark, I can’t see through the rain. Keep moving, hold onto the wall, feels rough, turn the corner, hurry to the back gate. feet hurt, ouch, something bit me, or was it a broken bottle? Keep moving, she’ll be waiting. Here’s the gate, where’s the latch, I can’t see the latch, I see the latch, lift it. The gate creaks, someone will hear me. But no, the thunder, is too loud, thank God!
Lights, coming towards me, is it him? Please God, don’t let it be him. She said she would be there, she would wait. Is it her, is it? I can’t see, the lights are moving closer. What if it isn’t her, what if it’s someone else? they’ll see me and stop, then I’ll have to go back in. Aaah, the lightning, yes, I can see it, it’s her car, the red car, the red car! And her face, she looks so pale., she’s slowing down, hurry, hurry.
Open the door, OPEN the door, let
me in! Shut the door, did anyone hear me? The thunder was too loud! Go, go,
drive! I’m safe, we’re safe, thank you, THANK YOU!
Butterfly Kicks
Jamila Main
I’m really not good at parties. I’m sixteen, drinking vodka and lemonade, and on my way to getting off my face for the first time. New Years Eve! My toes are pinching in these high heels of Beas. She’s off with Stacey’s older brother’s mate to smoke a joint and hasn’t come back. I really want to take these shoes off, but all the other girls have still got theirs on. I’m going to keep dancing, even though I really don’t know how. My legs are too stiff and my arms too long and I’m way too shy to throw them up into the air the way the other girls are doing. What the hell. Here goes! [She flings her arms up above her head and immediately slams them back to her sides]. I feel like one of those plastic wind thingys outside car sales yards. I am going back to my awkward bop. One of those rotating light ball things is turning my arms red, blue, yellow, pink. I watch the lights dance around the walls to a face- the only person not dancing, leaning against the doorframe, looking at me. The light ball spins and she’s gone.
I dive through the dance floor of sweaty teenage bodies, wriggling through their heat until I burst free. I sway and grab the doorframe but I don’t think it’s the vodka making my stomach flutter. The kitchen is bright and clean and crisp after the humid darkness of the living room.
“Hey”, I say. “How’s it going?”
I bloody wish! I’m not brave enough to make a sound. Instead, I stare at the ground and take a long sip of my lemonade vodka to delay the walk of shame back to the dance floor.
“Hey” she says. “How’s it going?”
And I need to take what feels like a full minute to process what she’s just said to me. That she actually spoke to me. And her eyes are getting bigger and bigger until they’re all I can see and they’re waiting for me to say something too-
“Hey” I say back. “It’s alright”.
“Alright?” She says.
“Yeah.” I say.
“Cool.” she says. And walks out of the kitchen.
I dive back into the dance floor and see her pushing her way through the crowd. She’s wearing earrings, lots of them, little silver hoops and studs, and when they catch the light they sparkle. She throws her arms up with abandon, like she could climb up through the air, past the ceiling and keep going until she reaches the stars. She spins around and sees me watching her.
I think she’s smiling. I mean, I know she’s smiling, I-I can see it. I know what a smile looks like. I mean, I think she’s smiling at me.
I kick off the stupid shoes and plunge into the crowd. She grabs me and pulls me past a group of grinding girls. She throws her arms into the air, taking mine with it.
“Hey” I say. “Do you feel like one of those plastic wind things outside car sales yards?”
“What?” she yells.
“DO YOU FEEL LIKE ONE OF THOSE PLASTIC WIND THINGS OUTSIDE CAR SALES YARDS?”
“Huh, yeah, I guess so.”
“COOL! ME TOO!.”
I’ve lost track of time when the music cuts out. A countdown starts from someone in the crowd and there’s a flurry of sweat and limbs as everyone hurries to find their mates and their boyfriends and their cameras-
10
9
I can’t see Bea anywhere
8
Stacey is grabbing the neck of the nearest boy and pulling him up onto the couch
7
6
Someone turns the TV on and there’s the Sydney Harbour Bridge
5
4
Bea’s fucked off, Stacey’s moving her mouth towards the boy, the televised countdown is ringing in my ears and the vodka burns in my throat and face and arms
3
2
I want to hold her close to me, for her to know that she is safe, and will always be safe, I’ll make sure of it
1
“Can I kiss you?”
HAPPY NEW YEAR
And she’s there. She’s
everywhere. I’m kissing her and she’s kissing me, and I close my eyes and I’m
flying, I swear, I’m fucking flying.
Long Division
Jessica Andreatta
I text Happy Birthday, two weeks late on a whim. Evie rings me back to say thanks. I tell her I would’ve called, being her birthday and all, but she always seems so busy in Prague.
The Hague, she says. And it’s Eve now, not Evie. But I can’t speak to being busy like you with the farm, she says. It must be all so … so hard – I don’t know how you do it. Droughts, floods, fires, hours. She says she understands long hours, herself. Says some of us have no choice if we want to thrive – no – just to survive in business.
I am still not sure what her business is exactly. I daydream:
Scenario one: A rescue mission under the cover of an early school drop-off. ( Child actors, given she doesn’t have any herself.). The Russian Mafia still tucked-up in bed as Evie enters the back of a downtown Czech Laundromat. Tumeric late in one hand while the other –single-handedly – saves the last remaining wild population of miniature saffron pandas, stolen from western Nepal the night before and smuggled out by Laund-R-Us vans into eastern Europe behind the cotton curtain of a certain aged-care empire as dirty laundry. Evie has the pandas loaded into her Lexus by smoko; the animal smugglers, still in their pyjamas, are prosecuted by lunch. Then as she orders a jasmine-white-tea late` before dinner, every eligible monarch queues across continent and sea in hope of wooing the hipster-ist solipsist of all spinsters.
Evie says my kids must be getting big. By which I’m sure she means: Popped out any more yet, Annie? As it happens, I’m half way along gestation number three but I’m not about to give her the satisfaction. If only she could see me now …… she’d think I was at the end of Pregnancy Twelve.
Who’d be one of those super tall women who go through cooking a bun in their oven without hail damage to show for it? Evie. Evie could’ve had a kid by now for all I know – and gone on with the career regardless.
And cook. Did I mention, the woman can cook?
Scenario two: The Daydream in Which Evie is Jealous of Annie for Reasons as Unfathomable as Annie’s Chicken-tasting Almond Macarons – otherwise known as: The Daydream in Which Annie Refers to Herself in the Third Person Because She’s Forgotten Who She Is, Who She Was, If She Ever Was an Organism at All … or … A Shell? …
Evie: tall, fine, full set of teeth. Even at fourteen, she was a woman of consequence. Had our town been a city, or just further west, our maths teacher would’ve had a crack. The boys only ever cackled at me.
Evie makes some joke, but I’m too caught up twirling my cankles.
Been nice talking to you Annie, Evie says. Really … nice … But she has to go – the bell’s ringing. Has to go to an important meeting whenever it rings, she says.
Saved by the bell.
Like school. Bells always seemed to ring just as Evie was getting it . I turned once to offer her an eyeroll of how achingly predictable the question was and instead I saw her, my work hidden under the crook of her arm, hiding what she had (or rather) what she hadn’t done.
And yet the teachers never seemed to notice the switch.
Evie. Diligent. Conscientious. A pleasure to teach, they said.
Annie. Fails to apply herself, they said.
Me, forever looking out the window. Forever having finished the work on the board before anyone else understood. Before Evie finished sharpening her pencil. Evie who wanted the world. Annie who had no idea what to do with it.
She laughs. I laugh. I miss her
laugh – ours together. That’s what I would say if she asked. The truth is I
don’t. Not anymore. Now I can do without
her.
My Smarty Pants Phone
June Hopkins
I have acquired a new phone – a SMART phone! I think it should be called a smart alec phone or a smarty pants phone. Lurking in its interior is a merciless, malevolent entity which seems determined to shame me at every opportunity. It goes by the innocuous name of Auto-Correct. Its alias is Predictive Text.
In old phone, if I wanted to start a word with C, I pressed the number 1 button three times as it carried A,B and C, and so on. Miraculously , my new phone seems to anticipate the word I want to use, before my fingers do!.
I compose a polite missive to send to a dignified person I know only slightly, asking for a small favour concluding with ‘I hope this doesn’t inconvenience you.’ The message changes to, ‘I hope this doesn’t incontinence you.’ Her reply was a single question mark.
I ‘m appalled when I learn my message saying hello to my friend, Emily,( who I address as Emie) usually arrive as ‘Hi Emu.’ My nephew, Eril received a text from me saying Hello Evil.
My grandchild forgot to take his Epi Pen with him, I messaged his school asking if I could drop off his epic penis.
I text a friend that I had an issue with someone, which needs mediation. Her reply was two words. ‘Menstruation? Why?’
I advise my friend that I am home from holidays. She rings me and asks when did I come out as homosexual?
I commence a message of sympathy to my dear friend with Dead Friend.
I need to take a deep breath and
slow down. You can send me a text to conglomerate with me if you like.
The Wresting
Anne Walsh
What is day for except further immersion into the utter unkeepable-ness? What’s day’s purpose, other than showing you everything you have to lose? The breaks in your lines you can’t explain at Centrelink, the enjambment of years I can barely take my 8 year old singing the cup song from Pitch Perfect in precious off-key a Capella banging his cup down, You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.
What is un-keepable to a keep-saker of macaroni kindergarten art? The heiroglyph of love is a strange thing, how it curls. What is un-keepable to a Glitter Collector? I imagine the headline on the cover of the local newspaper tomorrow,: Mum drunk dropping off kids to school. But it’s Beethoven’s piano, killer liquid preciousness, the hemlock of dawn, in his ever diminishing ear the acutest hearing, that I’m drunk on. As the kids run off to school from my old Ford and our newly broken home I’m drinking from Beethoven’s unrequited horn, the cornucopia of loss, the primary school backpack Appassionata playing, while my three peach trees run through the school gate, Star Wars keychains running wild on the plains of divorce intoned by family night emblazoned on the church sign across the street.
They run like nothing has happened. But how were they supposed to run with Mom and Dad aren’t going to be a couple anymore? Which I had to lay at their fairy doors. That unspeakable parcel of nothing the same, innocence staved like Dicken’s chapters about ghosts. It’s Beethoven, his frown and brillo-pad hair I think must’ve been so soft, who composes my homemade waxwings this morning that melt, falling like tears.
I try to tear away at the first note. But the notes are Everywhere. And I keep falling back to earth in glorious light smashed to pieces (that’s the definition of a mum). My back an epiphany of vertebrae, a fossil connection to everything, nerves spread down me. I’m a receptor. A terrible raptor capable of only the most impossible love forever. Driving my three kids, so bound to my fate to school so that I can only be terrible. A fiend with 1,000 arms trying to catch it all with my burning tongue. I just want to kiss them. Take them home. Never let them learn anything formal. Because love and time are lost in formality. T
hey run down the carpark, past the school office. Morning, in her scarlet Kindergarten smock, finger paints eternity everywhere in fuchsia and bright reds. What key are tears in? What symphony can the heart play without stopping? To be drunk in the face of all this un-keepable-ness, is the most arrest-able lack of offence. My soul came in a wrested. Heaven is a bird on earth. My heart a tree for flight. Still I hoped for a siren this morning, to lure me from my elsewherefaring, to keep me nailed to the worldly, some flashing light to say you know you’re wrong about all of this. We must take you in. You can’t drive under the influence of cosmoses. I need Origin police to throw me into a living cell. I need the tiniest working thing, an organelle, a mitochondria of hope, of respite for a minute.
Who to charge for the electric
particles that brought me here? Who to
charge with the sin of possession every breath holds the exhale of stars in my
eight year old’s hair? Come and lock me up, sirens, what a break from forever!
Arrest me for blaring Beethoven, for trying to stop the kindergarten sun in her
scarlet smock from painting the rest of our days away.
Safety in the danger
Jay-Lee Richardson
You’re like me. So if you’re toxic, so am I. And I know you don’t want to call me toxic, so why is it so hard to believe you’re not? You’re a healer. You help me heal my scars.
You accepted me, a girl of her own diversity and race, into your life. You treat me better than anyone else in my world has. You’re half of my heart. To me, you are more precious than any shiny stone.
It doesn’t matter that you have demons lurking beneath your mask. It doesn’t make you weak to cry, nor does it make you less to admit you need help. The only time I’ll look down on you, is when I’m helping you up. You are not weak, you’re one of the strongest people I know.
You call yourself dangerous. But how would living in a world covered in bubble wrap be any fun? Being wrapped so tight only chokes you, it doesn’t protect you.
Just be there if you want to protect me.
Be there and be yourself. Not someone else. Not armed.
If it’s impossible to trust you, then how do I? If you’re so dangerous, how do I find you safe?
I know you’re afraid to hurt me, to put me in danger, but I’m not glass, I’m not that fragile. You are my safety and my shelter. Sometimes, the most ‘dangerous’ and ‘toxic’ things are the safest.
I’ll be there. Through
everything. I love you.
This Face Misplaced
Edilia Ford
I have always led a duplicitous life. Exotically known as Eurasian in polite circles, a half cast, combination kid, chink, slope or gook in less polite circles. A third generation Australian of mixed Malaysian European descent, I am a coconut, I look Asian but am white inside my head. My self-perception is so white that I never thought being the only Malaysian kid, dressed as a gleaming shamrock singing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” was odd. People assumed my family ran a restaurant, they didn’t. I only speak English; my Malaysian is limited to counting to five on my fingers.
Once I was nearly kidnapped by a Indian Airlines tour guide in Canberra. I’m a Public Servant, on my way to Parliament House, in business attire, carrying a briefcase. As she attempted to push me onto her bus I finally convinced her I was not a Indian tourist.
Why are people bewildered by an Asian face with a broad Aussie accent?
Taking work colleagues to Yum Cha in Chinatown I hear “Wow. This place is authentic we are the only white people in here.”
Speak for yourself, white devil.
At one work party a UK prison officer was surprised on meeting me, and said loudly to the room, in her shrill Northern voice.
“Eeee. I can’ believe ‘er accent, comin’ outta ‘er face.”
Darling, I’m not the one with the accent.
At the Sydney Olympics Aussies shook my hand in the street, welcoming me to Sydney. I needed a T shirt “Please don’t help me. I live here.”
Visiting the night zoo with my son, we saw a possum scamper across the roof. A grinning zoo guide blocked our way, pointing to the roof, acting out what we had just witnessed. In slow, broken, rather loud English she explained the possum’s location.
Mitchell was fascinated, he watched intently then suddenly he spoke. “Mum, what is she trying to say?”
“Well darling, I think she is trying to tell us there’s a possum but I don’t think she speaks much English.”
Some Canadian college students in Honolulu once heard me speak and wanted to know where I was from. They insisted on taking a photo of me because their friends would never believe they had met an Asian Australian.
Out shopping once a Malaysian woman stopped me, after exchanging greetings she said “Do you mind if I speak Malaysian? It’s easier.”
“Go ahead, knock yourself out.
But don’t expect me to understand you. I don’t speak Malaysian.”
Reconciliation Rescue
Angelina Hurley
‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Queensland. For your safety and comfort, please remain seated with your seat belt fastened until the Captain turns off the Fasten Seat Belt sign.’
Finally! I couldn’t help expressing my relief out loud.
The elderly white woman sitting next to me was a typical Queensland retiree. With her 1950s roller set hair style cemented in hair spray, and a floral Easter Show gown, she looked like something straight off the cover of a retro Women’s Day magazine.
“Excuse me. Would you mind collecting my bag from overhead?” she asked.
She forgot to say please, I thought to myself but let it go.
“Of course. No problem”, I replied.
She thanked me and proceeded to tell me how nice it was to meet a visitor to ‘Her’ hometown.
I’m not a friggin’ visitor! I just arrived home. This is my hometown. I was born here. I’m a traditional owner. I’m Aboriginal.
“Oh I’m not a visitor, I’m actually from here”, I corrected her.
I watched as ignorance distorted her face with confusion and curiosity before belted out more stupid questions.
“I didn’t know any Aborigines were from here. You don’t look Aboriginal. Are your parents from here?” she asked.
Attempting to avoid further conversation, I just nodded and smiled politely back at her. “What about your Grandparents?” she asked. ”Yep, they’re from here too”, I replied. As the plane cleared I got up and grabbed her bag from the overhead locker.
“So how long have they been here?” she asked.
A gap opened up in the queue providing me with a timely escape. I shouted back at her as I took off down the aisle.
“Approximately 65,000 years darl?”
I let the experience wash over me as I walked towards the taxi rank. I was home after all, heading to a job interview. I had to focus. Do you know how often we get asked about our identity? Asked where we’re from, to clarify it, to justify it. These questions are offensive, disrespectful, insulting, and annoying. And they happen aaaaall the time.
The cabbie stared at me in the rear view mirror, and with the wobble of his head and a board smile he welcomed me.
“Welcome to Brisbane”, he said.
As I instructed him to take me into the city, I could feel the inevitable questions approaching.
“Are you coming from India?” he asked.
Here we go again I thought to my self.
“No I am from Brisbane”, I stated.
“Oh because I am thinking you are coming from Indian!” he said. “Your parents? Are they coming from India?”
“No they’re not coming from India either”, I responded. Breath I said in my head. Just breath.
The journey was an interrogation of ancestry and heritage, of my Grandparents, Great Grandparents, and Great Great Grandparents.
“Someone must have been coming from India”, he insisted.
I paid and jumped out of the cab relieved to reach my destination.
“No one is coming from India. My family are all from here, we’re Aboriginal”.
“Ah yes Aboriginal. I know an Aboriginal man”, he shouted.
“I’m sure you do”, I said to myself. I readjusted my outfit, fixed my hair and stood in readiness for my interview.
When I finally got there, I’m faced with an all white panel of interviewers. It didn’t faze me but you would think there’d be one Indigenous person. After all this was an ‘identified’ position, where only Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people could apply as it was specific to my culture, heritage, profession and education. Yep, Welcome to Queensland.
“So what part of your family is Aboriginal?” was the first question.
I lent across the table, grabbed the glass of water, took a big gulp.
Yep, Welcome to Australia.
The thing about fish being held captive is not what I’m trying to say. A letter to my husband.
Alison Whitelock
Start the letter. With something like: Despite the fact I lost and continue to lose my mind I never stopped loving you.
No, fuck that. How about: I love you more today than I did yesterday and less today than I will tomorrow.
Christ, that’s not it either.
How about something like: Before she came I bore no grudges.
Yes.
Before she came––with her Parisian pouts, the bikini that served no real purpose and the used sanitary towels she stuffed into my toilet bin till it was overflowing like i’m the fucking janitor ‘round here––I bore no ill.
Say something about my fear of the ocean.
How it’s true, I would never have gone in if she hadn’t come into my home refusing to speak English with that French way she’d hold her fag high in the air, drawing on it long and hard before pulling it from her perfectly Dior’d mouth with long sweeping gestures like she’s shooing away a mosquito in slow fucking motion. Then there was the ashtray he fashioned for her––a jar lid lined with tin foil, it wouldn’t have bothered me except I asked them both (nicely) not to smoke inside the house.
Ask him why he invited her here.
I tell my friends how two days after her arrival she rearranged my pantry, tidied my fridge. My friends tell me how fortunate I am to have a stranger decide where best to house my macaroni, my cherry bocconcini. When they meet her they exclaim how charming she is – those cheek bones––that flawless skin! Then they rave about the sushi rice she has boiled––ignore the wild caught salmon I have grilled, the chemical free kale I have steamed. Then my chia seed pudding lies neglected, cast aside in favour of the thin crust apple pie she has produced out of *nowhere (my fucking freezer) and okay so her sushi rice was not too bad, but the secret lay in the splash of Japanese vinegar she took from my fucking pantry.
Sixty four long days after her arrival, I put on my swimsuit that’s never seen water – the one with the little skirt that hides a multitude of sins and head to the ocean. He is already out there, bobbing fearlessly beyond the breakers. Gingerly, I make my way towards him and as I go deeper, the little skirt peels away from my thighs, floats up around me like lilies in a pond as waves, gentle as puppy dog tongues lap up against me and I can barely believe I am wading this deep.
Then suddenly the tide turned. The wind rode in on its high fucking horse and puppy dog tongues gave way to the white knuckles of bloated waves violent as last orders in a Glasgow pub––each one belting me hard till I was down on the canvas, spluttering, choking and swallowing sand and the ref’s counting me out––and one––and two––and three––
On four I gasp up through the surf, spit the salt from my mouth, scramble to my feet and pray for the bell to bring an end to this brutal round one.
Then suddenly, the high horse the wind rode in on took a fall, laid down and died and the loud mouthed waves whispered themselves to a quiet lace froth. And in the new calmness, I move freely, my legs are knives slicing through butter and before I know it I am bobbing fearlessly beside him, out beyond the breakers, swaddled in great reams of deep blue satin, smooth as the perfectly made bed in the five star hotel of my imagination and unlike the bedsheets in the spare room of my mind, this silk does not wrinkle nor tangle, does not coil around the doona of my distress, it merely inhales serenely, exhales contentedly, it breathes to the rhythm of a song I am only just beginning to know.
Later that night, Thomas and I swam neck deep in the creek the fading sun had turned the colour of honey. We floated––two cinnamon specks in a cup of soft milk and tranquil as any tropical aquarium where fish are well, held captive if anything, but that’s not what I’m trying to say––what I’m trying to say is for sixty four days I’d been sinking. Thomas is a scientist, he points out I cannot sink in sea water–– something to do with the salt ions. He is rational I am not, and whilst I have hated him in recent times, (after all it is him who invited her here), I have knuckled down, I have sucked things up through the thinnest of straws till I almost swallowed my fucking tongue and now I am chalking the days on the headboard of my discontent until she leaves. And it is unlikely I will go back into the water once she is gone. I will have proved what I needed to prove.
Send the letter.
I will not have her back in my
house again.
When the bell tolls
(Aunty) Kerry Reed
Gilbert
I heard a bell ring today and its music brought tears to my eyes. They say going home can be a good thing, but I reckon it depends on what you are going home to. A lifetime of love and laughter or memories of heartache and loss, sometimes the choice is not ours. Today my mother and I got in my car and drove. Both of us wanting to feel the red dirt under our feet before it is time for her to join our Mob in the campfires of the heavens. It is her bucket list.
As I drive she speaks of days gone by when I was a young girl playing in the dirt without a care in the world. The echo of the bell guides me along the highway and I become lost in my memories. As each gong sounds new images rush through my mind until we finally reach our destination.
The old church, a ramshackle old building made of tin and wood, still stands. Its paint peeling on all corners. The rustic drainpipe is blocked with leaves and branches and the dinted water tank a home now to the frogs. We came home today, back to the days of the missions, back to the days of terror. Glancing towards my mother I see her face, sadness etched within each furrow of her winkles.
Memories lead me back to the day the bell tolled bringing with it helplessness and despair. I sit under the big ghost gum tree. I sit close to the trunk feeling its strength beside my body. Closing my eyes, a young girl aged 6 or 7 laughing and playing in this dry hot red dirt country looks up at me. Each summer 40 degree heat was a daily event, the ground burning hot beneath her feet. Red dust everywhere, her skin varnished with the earth’s dirt lathered all over her body.
In the shade of the white gum I look above me to see the clouds but instead see the bell, large and rustic as it stands guardian over the church. Closing my eyes I am lost in the world of daydreams when the bell begins to strike, ringing loud and true. The high pitched sound reminiscent from days when it called everyone to church.
The church building stands tall in front of me as a shiver slides down my spine.
Within a heartbeat I find myself as a young girl, reachin for my mother’s hand I feel her tremble. People are passin by as they say a quick hello. Aunty stops and grabs me, kissin my cheek hello. I squirm wantin the moment when she lets me go to hurry up. Uncle pats the top of my head and bitin my lip I’m pretendin it’s okay. Mother lets me slip my hand from hers and seizin the moment I run to my cousins who have been waitin patiently under the large gum tree.
Happiness is all around as we all come together as family. The screech of laughter as we play tag fills the air. Soon it is time to stop our play, runnin quickly to Mother she tidies my dress brushin the dust away. The rundown church buildin looms to the side, waiting for me to enter, clothed in white holdin mother’s hand walkin beside her. Silently we slip our bodies between the rows and I’m kneelin in a pew half-way down the back of the church.
The Lord’s Prayer chants from my mouth in tune with the rest of my people’s voices. The preacher’s sermon begins as the Ten Commandments spew from his mouth as he endeavours to educate ‘the savages.’
His shrill voice pierces my ears and I want to block out the sound; I can’t stand it. I’m sure everyone else wants to put their hands over their ears too. The sound of his continuous drone makes us want to leave but we are too scared to move. Lookin around me each pew holds stiff backs sittin squarely on the cold hard wooden seats.
The men’s shoulders solid like rock no words utter from their lips, and no smile highlights their face as they sit upright listenin. Misery sits all around me. No happiness enters my heart as I too sit ramrod straight my mind blank waitin to hear the bell toll to signify the end of the preacher’s sermon.
Suddenly the door opens and Uncle rushes in. There are murmurs whispered voices begin to be raised in anger. I was lost in my thoughts wishin time away and I don’t know what was happenin. Our men yell, the preacher roars tellin everyone to sit and be quiet. Mother grabs my hand tight as she bends down and whispers in my ear. She tells me ‘as soon as the door is open run and hide because bad men are comin. They want to take children away.’
Fear grabs me like someone has punched me hard in the belly, panickin tears spring to my eyes and I try hard to hold them back. Mother sees them and tells me ‘now is not the time to cry. Be strong, be big, grown up.’ She spots my sister/cousin Lucy sittin over on the other side of the room. She catches her eye and in sign language tells her she must grab me and the younger ones and run.
Lucy nods her head ready to spring to her feet she taps her brother and sister. The men have risen from their seats. My mother signals to Lucy as she shoves me out of the pew. The church door flies opens and we begin to run. We don’t look back I’m runnin so fast I have a pain in the side of my belly but I know to keep goin.
Lookin back I see a little one stumblin comin to an abrupt stop. I turn around run back and pick her up. Throwin her on my hip I run fast landin on a stone my ankle twists but somehow I stay on my feet. We race down to the riverbank and disappear between the trees. Huddled together Lucy tells us all to stay quiet as a mouse and sneaks out she is goin to see what’s happenin. From our hidin place we can hear the bell ringing, it goes on and on. Us little ones hold our hands over our ears tryin to stop the hummin noise now sounding over and over in our heads.
We hear a noise, a branch breakin, Lucy has returned she tells the story of men in black shiny cars who are roundin up the little children and drivin away. She said many policemen were there too. One held a gun aimed at our fathers makin them stand still. One Uncle tried to pull his son from a strangers arms and another policeman knocked him down with the butt of a rifle. Tears ran down her face like a river when she said mothers were runnin behind the cars screamin their children’s names.
She gathers the younger children in her arms as they sob quietly on her shoulders. Grabbin my little cousin Janie as I hug her close I’m promising her I will not let go. I don’t know what to do but feelin a strength deep inside I know I will not cry as helplessness overcomes me. Soon the little ones fall asleep, they have exhausted themselves.
My eyes strain not to close too as Lucy tells me to stay and watch over the little ones while she goes and finds some water and food for us to eat. My stomach has been rumblin and my lips are dry. I try to wet them with my tongue but I have no spit inside me. My belly rumbles. I feel my body shrink holdin onto Janie waitin for Lucy to return.
Suddenly I am awakened by my mother shakin me from where I am sittin under the gum tree where my dream first began.
My hands grip the steering wheel
as a cramp penetrates my fingers from holdin on too tight. Glimpsing sideways
my mother has her head tilted onto the car window in deep sleep the signs of
tears lay firmly on her face. A sob wells from deep within me as I blink and
focus my eyes on the road, finally understanding the horror our Mob lived
through. Thanking Biamie that those days are long past, whispering to my mother
so as not to wake her I tell her how much I love her.
Skipping Stones
Mikaela Castledine
We go there, like usual, to that place near the lighthouse where the crusted water wheel sits above the edge of the shore, dripping fresh water with such wastefulness into the sea. We always come here at least once among our holiday days, to spring as alien along the shore as fresh water might, pitting ourselves against things and wearing them away; to go shouting into the wind and collect small treasures that will dry dull in the crevices of the car.
It is always cold and mostly raining and the two savage seas that come together at the lighthouse point are always fighting back against rain, against rocks and against children and the spring water that feeds the waterwheel. It is hard to tell who is winning.
We leave our mother and grandmother in the car, roll up our jeans and scatter among the rocks, barefoot and breathless in the face of the wind. Don’t run my father says, more than once, more indeed than twice.
It is slippery on patches of greeny slime and one brother feels his foot slide, catches himself, grins into the salt gale and jumps on; on across the rocks and the tide pools to the place where once we saw a seal sitting mournful at the edge of the water and threw small stones at it until we were called off like dogs.
I don’t run. I step careful across the tipping points of granite flakes and creep my way down the steep sided cracks to touch at anemones and prise at limpets. I find three pink and pointed shells and give them to my father’s pocket for safekeeping. Don’t run shouts my father and my brothers jump and balance. They want to reach the serrated edge where the sucking pools of deep dark blue swell and sink, where fish can be seen and stones drop quick and disappear.
I don’t run but follow behind, picking my careful way, obedient and sensible, watching my feet. My brothers are flying in the fine rain.
I am behind when I see him fall, sharp against the sky, dark as wet granite, spinning, arms out like a water wheel.
And I hear him. Hear a noise that I catch and can’t put down, an animal noise like a seal under thrown stones, like two opposing seas might make on hitting hard against a lighthouse, like a breath might makes when it is forced to leave you.
I don’t know what to do, for a moment. My father has disappeared into a crack between rocks, I heard him hit and know I am too small to lift him. I turn then and run. I run along the ridge tops of tilted granite slabs, leap over fractures and fissures, sea dark and orange with small crabs, run and run with the wind in my jumper and my jeans wet and unravelling. I never once slip or falter and do not feel the slicing sharp of shell edges. Don’t run said my father, but I do.
When I reach the car and my mother, quickly I say, Daddy! Daddy has fallen on the rocks. I turn and see him pulling up to stand, holding himself, dark against the gray sky, pale against the rocks. I think then that perhaps I should have gone to him first, helped him up, shown him a careful way back. Would that have been the right and sensible thing to do? I want to have done the right thing for I love my father fiercely and more than anyone else. But I was frightened of the noise and of blood that might be coming and instead I ran surefooted and strong for help.
I carefully don’t watch as my mother washes the blood gently from his head with the fresh water from the wheel race. I stand close though and wriggle my fingers into the pocket of his jacket for safekeeping. A fisherman who has pulled up nearby offers to drive us to the hospital. My grandmother stands on the edge of the car park and calls my brothers from where they are skipping stones into the waves, oblivious.
We climb, sandily subdued into the back of the car. Did you see me
run? I whisper, as I show them the tiny stinging cuts on my feet. Did you see
me run?
Everyone is full of shit
Hannah Grace
Fulton
I have this theory: everyone is full of shit.
After I had my heart broken I tried googling all these motivational stories. You know, ones about girls who’ve been in the same situation as me and gotten through it to be strong independent women who don’t need no man. I read poetry about moving on from first love, and personal essays about why you deserve better then to only be someone’s option. I always felt a little bit stronger after finding solace in the words of like minded strangers.
I needed to know it would get better because I couldn’t bare to be in so much agony all the time. All I thought about was him. The last time we spoke. What I said. Trying to remember what he said. Maybe if I said this or did this or played it more cool or more interested things would be different.
I catch myself having imaginary conversations with him in my head. I’ll be walking to the bus stop, and suddenly I realise we’ve had two different arguments and broken-up and gotten back together several times in the space of three blocks and I don’t even realise I’m doing it. Like, this is me getting mad over hypothetical situations that have never, and will never happen! It’s pathetic, really, not even my own brain can pass the Bechdel test.
I told myself that going overseas would solve everything. I wouldn’t be thinking about him so much because I would be too busy drinking gin with my new friends and flirting with hot European men with exotic names like Sven who can get a tan when it’s snowing outside. I would learn to just love myself and see that I deserved more. I would Eat, Pray, Love myself better! Besides, every film I’ve ever watched taught me that if I left, he’d realise how miserable he was without me and come crawling back. Or, I’d find my soulmate. It was a win-win situation.
But with every city I visited, every Instagram photo, every fun-loving post on Facebook, all I craved was his attention. His approval. What would he think? Is he hurting too? Look at me now. Look how much I’m enjoying life without you. Do you miss me? But when people would ask me how I was doing, I would put on a brave face and say: “yeah I’m fine! Totally much better off without him haha SO GREAT hahaha. Love being single and travelling. Woo!”
I’m so fucking exhausted!
Honestly, the highlight of my trip was Santorini. Because he watched all 32 of my Instagram stories. ALL 32! I know I’m starting to sound a little obsessed, but come on! Not even my best friend watched all 32. I asked a guy I was drinking with at the hostel bar what that meant, but all he said was “men are visual creatures. It’s easy for him to watch your stories. Not so easy to give you a relationship. Don’t read into it.” And this guy was HOT! So what did I do? Took a photo with him to add to said stories as a big F U to ‘Mr Voyeur’.
Seriously you can sit through thirty-fucking-two of my Instagram stories but you can’t send me a txt? Can’t get on that fucking phone and call me? To apologise. To say you see me. You see me, and you miss me too. Let’s work it out, yeah? Fuck you!
You’ve ruined Europe for me, you jerk. You’ve ruined Santorini. I wanted to come back here for my future honeymoon and you’ve ruined it because now it’s the Greek Island where I got drunk and uploaded 32 fucking Instagram stories for you, cried about it to this super hot French dude, who I kept singing “voulez vous coucher avec moi, c’est soir” to, and then vomited on his shoes before passing out in the hostel lobby.
So I’m calling it: the whole world is full of shit. Once you’re broken that’s it, you can’t be fixed.
All that’s left is a walking cliché with trust issues and
a $10,000 credit card debt.
Burning down the house
Lliane Clarke
I thought my lace curtains would go up first but they’re just smoldering. I’ll crouch here for a moment longer. It’s cool here. Cool in the dark shadows of eucalyptus trees and asparagus ferns. The embers and sparks can’t touch me.
I thought the verandah would go up really fast, but the tin roof is slowing it down I guess. Listen to her – groaning under the burden of her wooden beams. She’s seen it all! All the shouting and pacing, the late nights, glasses of wine hurled at the window, and me curled up in bed with a pillow over my head.
I will weep in the darkness, where nobody will see. I have seen this coming. I will grieve for you but I will do it alone, where you can’t harm me, can’t stop me breathing. I feel your heat but from a safe distance.
I hand painted every one of those window panes, hand sanded, then undercoat then gloss. There’s the crack of the glass. How can you not hear that? There goes the furniture on the front verandah! It’s taking out the hammock – where we lay, now the sofa, and the chair where we would sit, then just me alone.
Should I throw petrol on it? Should I run for the water buckets in the out house laundry?
Now my hand embroidered lace curtains are catching. Look at them dancing in the light. Now that is a big explosion at the back of the house. Okay. Lights out. Electricity down. Just darkness and this red fire. Think you can treat me like that and get away with it? Think you can scream and shout around my kitchen and then – go out? Then ignore me. Then come back for more.
And there you are, front door banging, running out into the darkness.
“What the fuck
have you done! You’ve gone way too far this time!”
Jo Toscano
A Voice from Down Under
Note: this is
spoken by a fictional character
Rookwood Cemetery. Sacred ground. They have no bloody idea how sacred it is. It’s Koori land. I dunno the proper name for it and all that, but I know, like, if they were gunna have a ceremony here, like an open day or some shit like that then it’s real political and correct to say stuff like ‘we acknowledge the traditional owners, the blah-blah people’ and then everyone nods and claps coz that’s what you’re suppose to do these days if ya give a flyin’ fuck about Koori stuff. I mean, it’s great to do that, it’s a start, it’s respect, but I wonder just how many people really understand what’s happened to our people.
I was startin’ to think about gettin’ more knowledge about our stuff but then I got a fuckin’ fist full of cancer in me cunt so I had to stop. And now I’m here, waitin’ with all the rest of the dead to see what happens. Uncle Jimmy said that they shoulda taken me back to the traditional place, ya know, where me mum’s mob comes from, to rest. Ya don’t rest down here, too busy thinkin’ about how ya stuffed up yer life, regrets rollin’ around in ya head like clinkin’ glass marbles. Should’na had kids with that bloody no-hoper Mick, shouldna left school so early. And sometimes just frickin’ bad luck comes down on ya when ya don’t expect it like the diabetes and the bone density and cancer and then Mick. Least he’s in the big house now. Even me mum warned me about Mick. Loser bastard.
I know Aunty Pearl’s lookin’ after the kids all right. Uncle Jimmy said I shoulda been taken back to me land, Biripi land, where me mum’s buried. Near the sea. Biripi people, their totem is the shark, he told me kids. Joey pointed to his football jersey. He’s a Sharks supporter. Uncle Jimmy said, ‘That’s right, Joey, the sharks.’
Aunty Pearl’s me hero. She’s at university now. She never got an education, like me and she’s poor but she’s got pride. She went back later and got educated and then she just kept goin.’ She says it’s given ‘er power. Us women, she says, black or white, doesn’ matter, we gotta stick up for one another. Self-respect, education an’ empowerment. She even got tee-shirts made up with them three words printed on ‘em when she ran the women’s workshops. She’ll whip me kids into shape, make em stay on at school. Maybe some of ‘em might go to university too. Pearl’s kids are at uni.
I don’t reckon Uncle Jimmy’s gunna last that long. I
reckon if Uncle Jimmy dies and ends up here, near me, he can talk to me about
traditional things and I can learn some Koori stuff, some Biripi stories from
the old country. Maybe them stories can
help me sleep at night instead of tossin’ and turnin’ down here, thinkin’ about
what’s gunna happen next, when I’ll be called up. I dunno what I’m gunna do
when that time comes or where ya go. If it’s God that’s waitin’ at the other
end I’ll just have to say, ‘Listen Big Fella, I didn’t have much to work with,
but I done the best I could.’ Anyway,
I’m buggered, gettin’ all that off me chest.
Mrs Ziotto’s three hundred dollars
Elisa Cristallo
It took two years for us to get our papers to come here. We rent granny flat from a widow, Mrs Ziotto near the port so we could be ready to get on ship at any time.
But I tell you I spent only the first night of that two years living in Mrs Ziotto’s granny flat – then I go up to the house and I see how she live. Beautiful house but covered in three inch of dust, she too old to do anything. So I clean for her and cook for her. Every day I cook her fresh food. Everyday I sit and talk with her.
One day I go up to the house to start dinner, I find her collapsed on floor. I scream for my husband because she not breathing. We turn her over and I breathe into her mouth. Then after I think no-one could go this long without breathing, God send her back to us.
After that Mrs Ziotto want me to stay and live with her. But I tell her I can’t, I didn’t leave my own family to live with her. She upset so I tell her it could still be months before we leave. But because this the way life works, three days later we get our papers.
I meet a couple of the wives leaving for Australia too – they going to buy clothes for when they arrive. They say they don’t want to look like nothing the day they get off the boat. I say I can’t go, I have no money for clothes.
When I get home I tell Mrs Ziotto what’s wrong, she go into her bedroom and come out with $500 dollar – American dollar. I say no – I don’t tell you so you give me money – I tell you because you my friend. But she say no, take it, it’s nothing compared to what I have.
So I go and I buy clothes, for me, for my husband, for my boys. I buy so much I can barely carry them home but even them I could only spend $200 dollar. I give the rest of the money back to her, she no want to take it but I say I cannot take more than I need.
The next day we leave for Australia. We come to Sydney. My husband he find a factory job in the Marrickville. I take a job sewing because I can do while at home, with my boys. All day I sew. Sew, sew, sew. Even on the toilet I sew. Then people start to hear about me, they ask me to make something for them, something special. One young girl come to me because she need a christening gown for her son but she worried she can’t pay – I say, then of course you will not pay, I will make for free.
But that very month my husband lose his job in Marrickville. By the time he a find new job we were already behind in our rent, our landlord say this what happens when you rent to migrant, when you rent to wog, they will rob from you.
The day I have to go see landlord and beg him for more time to pay I put on my bravest face. I put on the suit I bought for the day I arrive in Australia, because it make me look older and stronger than I feel. I go downstairs and knock on the landlord’s door. That’s when I see my hands are shaking. I put my hands in my pocket so he won’t see… that’s when I find Mrs Ziotto’s $300 – the $300 I tried to give back to her.
Mrs Ziotto saved me from my shame that day.
The landlord find me there like that, holding $300 American dollar and with tears in my eyes. I give him $100 and say, this for the month’s rent, and next month’s rent, and the month after and I let you give me change in Australian dollar.
Slowly we
save enough to move out of city to our own house, with backyard. We make our
memories in that backyard – we have BBQ’s, pizza nights, the birthday parties
for the kids, we live. We live.
THE BERENICE DIARIES
Roz Hall
Farlam
Berenice: (pronounced Bear-a-niece)
It was a bit of a shock – more than a bit really – probably more like what the dinosaurs felt when they looked up five seconds before the meteor hit the planet.
I’d always felt lucky that my husband and mother really liked each other. Well, you hear so many stories about husbands and mothers-in-law not getting on. It just never occurred to me that they were getting on THAT well.
Mum always said I’d “missed the boat” when it came to getting married; that I’d passed my “use by date.” But I knew the moment Steve walked up to me at the Church social and said; “Hello Berenice, I think you’re Bear-a-nice!” that he was the one. It wasn’t love at first sight so much, as just a type of knowing. He had a twinkle in his eye – and funny! He was always cracking us up, especially Mum. Steve and I used to talk about getting our own little place, something small but cosy, with a little garden out the back – and a cat.
They left me a note.
She reads:
Dear Berenice, Steve and I have decided to leave Eagle Flats and move to Tassie. I’m afraid we won’t be sending for you, dear. I know it’ll be a bit upsetting for you at first but I’m sure with the passing of time you’ll realise I’m right and this is best for us all. You’re a good girl Berenice, but not the right girl for Steve. Look after yourself, love. Love Mum and Steve.
I didn’t know what to do, so I rang Carla. She wasn’t happy.
“You know what Mum’s like,” she said, “give her an inch and she’ll take a mile. Oh my God, Tilly Maidstone is going to have a field day with this at the next Tidy Towns meeting!”
I still went to work at the library, even though Mrs. Mac thought I should take a few days off because, apparently, I’d put Fifty Shades of Gray in the Automotive Maintenance and Repair section and the Lynda La Plantes in Native Garden Landscaping. But when she showed me eHarmony and RSVP on her computer and announced there were “…plenty more fish in the sea”, I said “Oh no, no, no, no!” But she insisted I had to “… get back on the horse!”
Well, the next thing I know, I’m sipping a lemon squash across from one Eric Hinglestone at the local Mandarin Court Chinese restaurant that Saturday night. He was a farmer from out the back of Burner’s Stumps and everything was going well until Eric started making choking noises into his prawn dumplings. I thought he was laughing and was going to tell me a funny story, but then he looked up – tears were streaming down his face. Turned out Eric had lost his wife, Angela, only a year ago and he was finding it all… a bit hard. There isn’t much I don’t know about Angela Hinglestone now and as he told me – several times – if I’d met her I’d have loved her too.
And then one day Barry Majecklian walked into the library – former school captain, State level rugby and cricket player – and asked me out! You could have knocked me over!
We had a few drinks at his car dealership and then he offered to take me for a spin in one of the new convertible Mustangs he’d just got in. We raced up and down every back road between Eagle Flats and Burner’s Stumps – the wind was in my hair and I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face and then suddenly Barry hit the brakes, it made a huge cloud of dust, and he leaned over… and kissed me!
I don’t know what came over me but after he got the seat down, well… it wasn’t like anything I’d ever experienced before. I mean with Steve it was only ever in our bedroom and only on a Friday night with the lights out and we always had to be quiet because of Mum, but this…!
And then the phone call came.
I thought it was Barry confirming our date. But it was Steve. I didn’t answer it, so he left a message.
Mum had left him and he wanted to come home – back here… to me. He said he’d realised it was me he loved not Mum and that we should move out to a little place of our own like we’d always planned, something small and cosy, with a cat.
“Of course you should take him back!” Carla said. “And put an end to this whole embarrassing saga.”
Then he rang and left another message, that he’d call me again… tonight.
She pulls her mobile phone out and dials a number.
Hello Barry? Hi it’s me… no everything’s still good. I was just wondering if you could come and pick me up now instead of… oh you’re already on your way… great! OK I’ll see you outside, bye.
She hangs up and
puts the phone down and begins to leave the room. The phone starts to ring –
she stops, looks back at it, then ignoring it, continues to walk out.
Am I Fine?
Jamieson
Rendall
Eleven thirty, good the train will be here soon. Two minutes if there isn’t a delay. Who am I kidding- there will be a delay its Metro after all. It’s done now you’ve put everything you know on that page, and let’s face it you know a lot, or you know some stuff about literature. You know a decent passable amount about the books we read this semester – I’ll be fine.
Don’t come this way. Don’t meet my eye. Look down. Look down. “Yes, this train does go to Clayton”. Smile. Oh god I should not have smiled. “Yes, it is sunny.” Where is the train? Go away. Go away. Why won’t he leave? Ah the train…
Is he following me? There six seats and only one is free. He cannot follow me. Sit down, rest your shoulders. Put your headphones on, let Paul Kelly take you away. What is that? A hand? His hand. Why is his hand on my arm? How did I not notice the seat across the aisle was free? Why did he take that seat? Why is his hand on my arm? Show your displeasure, let him know he is to take his hand off you. NOW! “Thank-you.” Why am I thanking him? His hand is gone – I’ll be fine.
Oh god, he is staring. He is talking to me. Tell him you have a boyfriend. Tell him you are married. Tell him to fuck off. “No, I am single.” Fuck why can’t I lie? Is it really that hard to lie, it could save your life? Please someone notice me, see me, help me. This train is full of people.
Clayton. He said he was going to Clayton. My stop is after that, he has to get off before me. We just passed Oakleigh. I just have to wait a few more stops, if he does not get off then I can start. Start what? I am small and weigh nothing: what am I going to start? Get your keys out, if you need to use them as a weapon. Get your phone out make him think there is someone waiting for you. “My dad he is picking me up from the station.” What now I can lie, where was this lie expert when I needed it? He will get off at Clayton – I’ll be fine.
Huntingdale, good one more stop. Fuck someone help me. Meet my eye. Look at me. There is a man twice my size making unwanted advances, does no one see this? Oh god do I look like I want this? Am I sending the wrong signals? What if he thinks I am flirting? When did being polite equal flirting?
Next stop Clayton.
Next stop Clayton. Get up the platform is approaching. Walk to the door. Why is
he not moving? Others are moving. The train has stopped he is not moving. Oh,
God. Help! I am not fine. This is not fine. “Good bye.” Shit. I am fine.
HOME
Gayle
Kennedy
Mum yearns for home. She finds neither peace nor comfort in this place by the sea. Says she can’t feel her Blackness and fears dying here. She’s afraid the spirits of the ‘Old Ones’ won’t find her amongst the concrete, steel and gleaming white walls. She worries they won’t hear her spirit cry through the thrum of people and machines. She begs me each day to take her home. I tell her the doctors say she’s not well enough and will die if she leaves.
‘So what’ she says ‘it’s my life and I want to live the rest of it on country. Sign whatever papers you have to and get me outta here.’
She doesn’t know that I could sign them now and take her home. I don’t because I know she will be gone in months and I can’t bear the thought of that. And so she stays, toying with bland hospital food and longing to drink scalding tea the colour of burnt caramel from chipped enamel mugs sweetened by thick, condensed milk. Limp white bread smeared with margarine can’t match slabs of hot crusty damper slathered in melted butter and apricot jam from tins. She doesn’t care for jam in glass jars.
‘Don’t know why’ she says ‘but it just don’t taste as good.’
She wants mutton and vegetables cooked in camp ovens on the smoldering ashes of saltbush and belah trees.
She wants her dog, Gus and worries for his welfare.
‘He’s an old fulla like me. We been together all his life. I just gotta git home to him daught.’
She wants red earth, clear blue skies. She wants bindis in her feet for the sheer pleasure of having her granddaughter dig them out with safety pins so she can display them on the tip of her finger to be admired and to murmur ‘now that was a big biggen eh bub?’
She wants to gossip, give cheek, play cards and bingo, go shopping. She wants her people around her singing and playing country music on guitars and telling tall tales.
‘I know these whitefullas do their best, daught, but they ain’t blood. No one knows you like your own blood.’
She wants old Jeannie B to cut and die her hair that deep black with the mulberry sheen she loves. The sight of her white mop makes both of us cry.
‘Ain’t no Jones woman over the age of 50 ever been seen with their own hair colour, This white, cotton wool on me head just makes shame.’
I tell her I’ll dye it for her but she reckons no, only Jeannie B knows how to do it right.
I have to find the courage to take her home and let her live her last days as she chooses. I must care for her as she cared for me. With unconditional love.
So I sign the papers and for the first time in this longest month, my mother smiles. She’s giddy with joy as I wheel her to the car for the long journey home.
The first thing she does when we get there is collect Gus. Then once inside her gate, turns the hose on and sprays down the bone-dry garden, inhaling the sweet smell of water on red earth. The scent of home. Her safe harbor in the desert.
No needles attached to cannulas could ever inject the kind of life giving potions into her frail body that this sweet aroma and her joyful, prancing dog does.
In her last months we eat, laugh, drink, and sing. We sit beneath the trees and she tells me stories of droving and riding camels and months on the road and buying beautiful dresses and shoes from the travelling, Indian hawkers to wear to the show and the big dances. Especially the one when she met dad.
‘Never seen a better lookin fulla in all me born days. Never loved a man before or since him. You got his smile daught. Lucky you eh.’
Oh yes! Lucky me.
She dies on a still
summer morning on an old wooden bed beneath her beloved trees. Music playing. Her old dog is beside her. I
hold her hand as our people quietly keen.
Tears turn to smiles as a flock of cockatoos fly overhead. We all know that they have caught her
spirit. It will not wander alone. Once again she is home. Old Gus joins her the next day. They come for him as well.
The magician’s girl
Rijn
Collins
It was his voice I recognised first. He poured me the whiskey and pushed it across the counter. When he asked if I wanted ice, I felt my stomach drop. Even over the clamour of other customers, I knew Marcus’ voice. I didn’t answer, just stood there with the coins in my hand. I took in his pale blue eyes, and the lines around them that were now so much deeper. His pupils were still large after all these years, telling me his demons hadn’t stopped circling. He stared at me, then slowly lengthened his spine. It was then that I knew he’d recognised me too.
Neither of us wanted to go into it. I couldn’t just walk away though, not after so many years. The conversation was brief, it was warm and I cannot stop hearing it: had we kept in touch with the others on the ward, how much older we looked, whether Dr Ewers had retired by now. When he held out a trembling hand and laughed ‘still got the medication shakes’, I was hesitant to hold the coins out, in case he saw my hand twitch too. I slid the money across the bar instead. I wished I’d ordered myself another whiskey but had to make do with just the one, glowing like liquid fire in my hand. And then another customer came and I stepped back into the darkness of the bar, away from the conversation.
And the truth was, Andrea, I needed to leave before he asked about you. I could just about take the nostalgia and the steps in the shadows it uncovered, but I couldn’t take that. The last time I’d spoken to him was to tell him what you’d done. I was a fragile teenager, trying to choose the words that wouldn’t cause my cracks to splinter into one and shatter me completely. I didn’t want to ask why he hadn’t turned up to your funeral, why he’d left me alone on the grass with your sisters holding up your goodbye note and giving me five minutes exactly to read the parts with my name on them. I hadn’t had time to scan for your name too. I still regret that now, all these years later. So I took my whiskey and walked back to my husband instead. I curled my legs into the velvet couch and pressed my nose against the curve of his arm. He kissed the top of my head and clinked his glass against mine. He is my future, though he knows so much about the secrets of my past.
He knows about the hospitals; the one I met you in, and the others that followed. The threat of E.C.T., and the side effects that made my mouth dry and my memories curl up at the edges like faded photos. All those Sylvia Plath books lined up on my shelves.
That’s how you and I first bonded, remember? In the day room on Ward Eight, you reading ‘The Bell Jar’…’like every mad girl should’, we laughed. My own copy was under my hospital issue pillow. We’d recite her poetry and exchange verses ripe with blood and battle, symbols of our womanhood and wildness. We read of Plath’s struggle between motherhood and the creative urge, and made vows to each other that we would never tread the worn path. We wouldn’t live long enough to be mothers anyway, we agreed, and I think we meant it.
I know you did.
You chose the anniversary of Sylvia’s death to lay your head down. To everyone’s surprise – to my surprise – I decided not to.
Andrea, I know I told you I’d support your choice, but lord, honey, my heart aches when I think about all you’ve missed. We were teenagers when we made that pact. I didn’t know I’d find the right medication, and that the weight it put around my hips would more than make up for the weight of the world it took from the middle of my chest. I didn’t know then about all the lands I’d visit when the sickness receded – I hadn’t known it could. I didn’t know I’d long for the light again, after so many years adjusting to the darkness. And when the longing came, I chose to follow it back into the world.
There have been clifftop mornings watching the sun rise over the Mediterranean, and slow dancing with girlfriends on the banks of the Mississippi. I didn’t know I’d go to book launches with my words within those magic spines, or that I’d watch winter solstice bonfires with my man’s arm around my waist and my beautiful step-son on his shoulders. I didn’t know I would live not just to approach forty years of age, but to embrace it, with dirty martinis and rockabilly and dancing with my shoes kicked to the side and the dirt between my toes. That there are still passions to pursue seems a gift: I have not yet lived in Berlin, or seen my novel published, but there’s still time.
I wish we’d both known, honey. Then maybe it wouldn’t just be my triumph, but ours both.
Your favourite Sylvia Plath lines were the ones where she felt scorched to the root, flailing about in the flames. I want to tell you that fire can purify; it can cleanse, leave you burned to the bone to the point where you can start to rebuild. My sickness burned me clean, and this new life is my response. I am the magician’s girl who does not flinch, Sylvia also wrote. This is my favourite line; my answer, and my triumph both.