A Girl in Three Parts

by Suzanne Daniel

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  I’ve just walked Lucinda’s dragster to the Lucky Listers’ place across the road, and as I’m heading back to Number 23, I see Joy beckoning me from the cane lounge on her front veranda next door. My feet don’t feel their usual skippy selves as I move toward Joy, but then I see she has a dusting of icing sugar on the collar of her orange blouse, and I’m thinking she might have eaten some of my cherry strudel.

  “Ally, darling. That was, without a doubt, the most delicious strudel that has ever graced my lips. I was completely and utterly exhausted when everyone left this afternoon, but after two little bites of your vitamin C–packed cherry strudel, I perked up completely.”

  Sister Josepha did tell us that the first sign of scurvy was being tired, so maybe I got the cherry strudel to Joy just in time.

  “I’m fully restored now and it’s all thanks to you, my darling Ally.” Joy gathers me in toward her chest, and her fingernails get to work on my neck.

  “Now, how does this sound? I thought before it gets dark, you and I might have a little adventure. Simone de Beauvoir is not quite herself after the events of today, and since she’s a penny tortoise and can’t have your cherry strudel to perk her up, I thought some fresh tadpoles might do the trick instead. What do you say? Go tell Matilde you’ll be with me for a while, and we’ll sneak to the creek next to the golf course and catch a tadpole feast for Simone.”

  I’m back in the harbor between Joy’s bosoms and my heart loosens a little as I push a deep breath out of my lungs. Because even though Mandy was in Joy’s garden today, I am the only one with a berth in her chest. Besides, Joy doesn’t have a colored glass bottle of the tears she shed on the day Mandy was born labeled ELATION.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  We set off to the golf course with a net and a bucket. I follow Joy to the edge of the creek, and when we arrive she points out piles of transparent black-spotted jelly lying on the mud.

  “Ally, look down here, these are tadpole eggs. Aren’t they beautiful? If you look closely, you’ll see itty-bitty tadpoles inside each one of these tiny jelly balls.

  “Now, darling, you take the net and wade just a little way out from here. I’ll watch as you scoop up a delicious feast for Simone de Beauvoir. She’ll be so grateful.”

  Joy waits by the bank in her red tartan gumboots.

  “You know, Ally, standing here reminds me of funny old Commander Jacobs,” she says, looking across the creek as though she can see him in the distance. “He was rather fond of Simone de Beauvoir. He arrived one day with these smart gumboots for me, saying he knew the perfect spot to catch tadpoles for Simone. But of course, being British, he called the boots ‘wellies’ and the tadpoles ‘pollywogs.’ Oh, he was a hoot!”

  “What happened to Commander Jacobs, Joy?” I ask, realizing I haven’t seen him visiting Number 25 for a while. He used to let me try his monocle and taught me how to play chess.

  “Oh, I sent him packing, back to London. Home to his wife, where he belongs.”

  With each scoop I make through the murky water, the net emerges with at least a dozen wriggling black tadpoles. I wade back and forth through the reeds, emptying the tadpoles into the bucket. Simone will hopefully be fully restored when we tip this load into her pond.

  “How long would it take for these tadpoles to turn into fully grown frogs?” I ask.

  “Well, that depends on their environment, darling,” says Joy. “If they live in the right conditions with everything they need, the right food, the right current and the right weather, it might take only a couple of months. But if food becomes scarce, or the current goes against them, or the weather perhaps closes in, it could take considerably longer. And of course, sadly, predators will eat some of them, so they won’t ever grow to become frogs at all.

  “It’s a bit like children, Ally. Put them in the right environment and they thrive. They’re hopping about in no time. But if you don’t protect them and give them what they need, especially love and affection, they’ll never grow legs to stand on their own two feet. That’s why I had to help little Mandy, darling. I do hope you understand.”

  “But how do you even know Mandy?” I ask.

  “Well…through our Liberty Club. We’re more than just sweeties and song, pet. We’re the Sisterhood. We’re the champions of women and children who live in fear.”

  “But what are they living in fear of?” I’ve changed the swing of the net in the water so that now I’m letting out as many tadpoles as I’m catching.

  “Not every daddy is like yours, Ally. Some daddies are drunks. Some have tempers, and some are cruel and violent. Instead of looking after their families, they actually hurt them.”

  That’s so sad…dads hurting their families. Rick might be a Riffraff, but I know he would never hurt me.

  “But what can Liberty Club do?” I’m moving the net differently now, trying to avoid catching any tadpoles at all.

  “Well, as it turns out, quite a bit, darling. We’re letting women know that they don’t have to put up with it. We’re raising consciousness. And we’re trying to set up a safe house where women and children can go if they need to leave their own homes in a hurry to escape being beaten.”

  My arms stop moving and the net sinks to the murky creek bottom.

  “Is your house going to be the safe house?”

  “Good God no, darling, not my house. I’m just doing the little I can to help. We’re trying to establish a special house called a refuge. Just imagine if you were so frightened you had to run away from your home in the deep of the night wearing only your pajamas.”

  Joy looks in the bucket and empties half of the tadpoles back into the creek. “Let’s give these little ones a chance to become frogs.”

  On the way home I’m carrying the net and the half-full bucket. I’m picturing Mandy as a tadpole with little frog legs starting to bud, and I’m wondering if, with Joy’s help, she’ll get out of those dirty yellow pajamas and hop around on her own two feet.

  Joy is ahead of me, swinging her arms. Her corkscrew hair seems loosened as she whistles “I Am Woman” into the dusk. The moon is rising, and the part of my heart that sends signals to the hairs on the back of my neck is telling me that Joy is saved from scurvy and she is at least half full of God’s grace.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The bus is buzzing with clapping-game girls and pea-shooting boys as we head to the Blue Mountains for the sixth-grade camping trip. Last week was full of tears in the playground, all caused by Kimberly Linton, of course. She kept changing her mind about which pick-me girl it would be from the Popular Group who would get to share her tent.

  First Roslyn was the chosen one, but then she tipped Kimberly out in a game of tag, so she was dumped for Bernadette—who, without having any idea why, was dumped for Karen.

  We each got to nominate one person we’d like to share with, and just as I was working up to asking Patricia, she actually picked me first. That was the best-ever day in my whole entire life.

  Sister is out in the front with a large stick, leading us into the bush in pairs to walk the Valley of the Waters track. The Popular Group is on slippery footing, with Kimberly still quite twitchy and switchy. I drop behind with Patricia and fall into step with her green-apple scent and her light-footed tread. Patricia has this uncanny way of somehow reading my thoughts and resetting them to a happier rhythm. She’s picked up that I’m working hard not to absorb Kimberly’s peppery mist.

  “Breathe the bush right down into your lungs, Ally. Go on; take it in with big deep breaths. It clears your head and blocks off any badness floating around out there.” We stop among the green foliage and together breathe in the blue haze.

  “And hey, Al, just watch that stupid lot ahead—the soothing smell of the oil from the eucalyptus trees will sort them out in no time and stop
their bickering before too long.”

  Patricia is spot on. Ten minutes later and the Popular Group is singing “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree,” a bit out of tune but at least all together.

  A little farther along the track, Patricia stops and pulls down a woody shrub toward her chest. She leans forward and sucks the ends of the spikes on its yellow flower head.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, thinking she really shouldn’t be putting this prickly plant anywhere near her mouth.

  “It’s okay…these banksias are chocker-block full of nectar. It’s good, really sweet. Here, have a go.”

  I look around quickly and join her in sucking the ends of the spikes, nervous that Sister might see and give us both a demerit. Patricia is right again; the liquid flowing over my tongue is actually quite delicious.

  “You know what, you can soak these flowers in water and make them into a sweet drink,” she tells me as we move farther along the track. “It tastes heaps better than that Tang orange powder stuff you get at the shops, and it doesn’t cost a cent.”

  “Really?” I had a cup of Tang once in the Listers’ rumpus room; it’s hard to imagine anything tasting better than that.

  “Hey, stop here a minute, Ally. Look…up there…there are geebung berries growing on that tree. Here, can you see that? You can eat those berries. Not now, they’re still green, but when they’re ripe they’ll fall on the ground and you can collect them and eat them up. Now, they’ve got plenty of vitamin C.

  “I like that Sister Josepha, I like her a lot, but sometimes the things she teaches us are pretty stupid. If Captain Cook or that Captain Phillip fella had watched what my people ate, and copied them, they wouldn’t have had to worry about scurvy, and they wouldn’t have had to eat that stinking sauerkraut stuff either.

  “And look here.” Patricia is peeling back the bark of the berry tree. “If anyone gets an insect bite, you can make a bush Band-Aid from the red stuff under here. It stops the sting, and it’s just as good as the antiseptic you get from the chemist shop.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?” I ask Patricia, amazed by what’s under her bark.

  “From my nana. Nobody could ever know more about the bush than my nana.”

  “Does your nana live with you?”

  “Nah, she moved on.”

  “Oh right…moved on,” I say. Whatever that means.

  It’s nighttime, and Patricia and I have pulled our sleeping bags close together so we can talk in our tent without being caught out. After a while there are no sounds coming from any of the other tents, so we know we’re the last ones in sixth grade still awake. I can see the outline of Patricia’s face and the white triangles at the edges of her eyes. Whispering to each other inside this moonlit canvas makes everything we say feel like an important secret.

  “Where did your nana move on to? Is she living with some of your other relations?” I ask softly. I’d really like to meet this woman.

  “Here, Ally, I’ll show you where she is.” Patricia pops up, puts her head through the slash in the tent, makes room for mine and beckons me toward her.

  “Can you see that dark patch up there, near the Southern Cross?” she says, turning my head gently and pointing up to the stars. “That’s the emu. See, can you make out its head, the dark bit? Now follow across and you’ll see its body and farther down…see…there are its legs. Then over to its left is the great river of light. That’s the Milky Way, and right up where the brightest cluster is glowing, that’s where my nana’s campfire is. She moved on to be with her mob.” Patricia goes quiet for a bit.

  “We used to live with Nana up in Armidale, Mum and me, but then she died. Mum says the diabetes got her in the end. But Nana told me, on the sly, just before she went, that the great canoe would come for her in the dead of night and take her to join her mob’s campfire. She sent a shooting star down soon after she went, and that let me know that she’d got there safely.”

  For a long while we sit in our sleeping bags with our heads poking out of the tent. With the whisper-close talk and clear sight of all the burning campfires in the sky, that part of my heart that powers my thermostat warms right up. I never realized before that having a best friend could bring up the core temperature of a person.

  Patricia drifts off to sleep, but I stay awake. Stargazing.

  I’m searching the night sky for a shooting star to behold.

  To perhaps…Behold My Mother.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  There’s no buzz on the bus on the trip home from camp. Everyone is exhausted. No pea-shooting or even much talking. Most of the sixth grade’s heads start nodding off. Except for mine. My head is taken up again with the round-and-round question of who I should choose to be my Confirmation sponsor.

  I arrive home to find Rick hosing down his van in the driveway that runs along the other side of Number 23. I ask if I can help him with the windows. He throws me an old cloth nappy and the glass cleaner and I set to work. When I’m almost done, Rick lifts me up so I can reach the top of the windscreen. His hair smells like still-warm hot chips.

  Rick doesn’t put many words into the world. He says we have two ears and one mouth and that we should talk less and listen more. Today I want Rick to listen, but I also want him to talk. I really want Rick to tell me who he thinks I should choose to be my Confirmation sponsor.

  “I love Matilde very much and I love Joy a lot, and I think they’re both sort of full of God’s grace, but I don’t know which one is actually my role model. Is it Joy or is it Matilde?” I’m doing big circles with the nappy, making sure to polish all the salty haze off Rick’s windscreen.

  “Sometimes I think it’s Joy, but then she does something a bit mental, and that makes me think it has to be Matilde. And then, when I’m thinking it’s Matilde, she gets that cranky cleaning face and she ticks her tongue, so Rick, I just don’t know who to choose.”

  “You’re overworking this, Al Pal.” Rick sits me down on the low brick fence and moves in close. He squirts the glass cleaner at a bull ant making its way toward my bare toes until it changes direction.

  “It’s pretty simple, really. Joy is Catholic and Matilde was Jewish. You have to choose Joy.”

  “Joy! But Matilde will be so sad if I choose Joy. I don’t want to make Matilde sad.”

  “It’s not really your choice, Al. It won’t be you making Matilde sad. I think you’ll find that Father Brennan won’t let you have Matilde. She’s not a Catholic, she wasn’t baptized, she wasn’t confirmed, so she can’t really be your sponsor. Church rules.”

  “Oh…okay…church rules. So you think it’s gotta be Joy.” Rick nods. My heart releases the muscles around my shoulders, easing them down and forward.

  “Can you please tell Matilde for me, Rick?”

  “It’s best if you do that, Al Pal. But I tell you what, I’ll stand right beside you when you do.”

  We go inside, and Rick boils the kettle and I set to making Matilde toast. I lay the tray the way I do at Joy’s place, and I’m about to take it in to Matilde at her sewing table when she appears in the kitchen doorway.

  “So first you are baking the cherry strudel and now you are making the tea tray. You are becoming very able indeed, Allegra.”

  Matilde looks pea-sized proud, like she thinks she’s my role model and that I’m growing up to be able just like her. I know I have to get out fast what I need to tell her, and I glance at Rick, who slides a little closer toward me along the bench. My lips start moving and I hear the words they say to Matilde: “I have to choose a sponsor for my Confirmation when I’ll become a Soldier of Christ and Father Brennan says the sponsor has to be my role model who is full of God’s grace and even though you’re quite a bit full of God’s grace, because Joy is Catholic and you were Jewish, I’m choosing Joy. But I’ve made you honey toast.”

 
Matilde looks down at the tea and honey toast. Her right hand moves across to her left arm and she slowly rubs her thumb across the numbers on her wrist. She leaves the kitchen without looking at me or looking at Rick or touching the tray, and she goes back to the front room and her sewing table.

  After a while Matilde’s Singer starts to pulsate, and my birthmark begins to throb.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Joy is in the glasshouse, breaking up boiled lettuce to feed to Simone de Beauvoir. It’s been four days since Matilde didn’t eat my honey toast, and my birthmark has finally settled down. It’s time to ask Joy to be my Confirmation sponsor. Besides, Sister Josepha has reminded me twice that she needs my forms returned.

  Joy is “tickled pink” that I have chosen her. She holds a small crimson glass bottle against her rosy cheekbone to catch the pooling tears at the corner of her right eye, and she tells me all about her own Confirmation day, “oh, so many moons ago.”

  “I remember it as if it were yesterday. I wore a beautiful white dress made of broderie anglaise that my mother bought for me at Veronique’s, and she paid a pretty penny, too. We matched it with a shoulder-length white veil handmade especially by our neighbor, Mrs. Dunmore. It was a shame I had to wear the veil, really. My older sister, Joan, did my hair in the luscious wavy style that was all the fashion back then, but the veil covered the back of my hairdo completely. I was almost thirteen, rather petite and particularly pretty. I had a tiny waist, dainty wrists and the ankles of a ballerina.

  “That was the first time I noticed Douglas Fernon noticing me. All the girls loved Douglas. He was tall and fair with a strong jawline and a counterclockwise cowlick. Oh yes—dear Douglas—he was a handsome boy, but just a bit too holy for my liking.” Joy gives me a little wink with her dry left eye.

  “We thought he’d enter the priesthood, but he ended up entering the police force. Similar work, I suppose.”