The Serpent's Skin

by Erina Reddan

  ‘If she was there, sure as sure, she’d pick up Aunty Peg’s phone and call us,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Tessa.

  I gave the shoe a last blast and put it aside. Picked up the other one. Tucked my hand in its hood. ‘Dad’s a bloody bugger liar.’

  ‘JJ!’ Tessa’s voice was knife sharp. ‘God will strike you down.’

  I dropped the cloth and spread my arms like Christ on the cross, as if to say, here I am, strike away.

  ‘So where else is she, then?’ Tim asked, all reasonable.

  I got the cloth again. ‘Dunno.’ My voice was no bigger than a pinhead.

  ‘Reckon you should ring Aunty Peg and find out,’ he said.

  I poked my tongue at him.

  ‘She’ll do no such thing,’ said Tessa. ‘Nobody goes near the phone without Dad’s say so.’ Tessa got Philly to pack away the polishing. She sent Tim out to chop the kindling. She made me clean the polish off the lino.

  When Dad came in for lunch he nodded at the shoes lined up square like usual. He sat to the table with a grunt, as if he’d been on the tractor day and night for a month. Tessa had sliced up the corned beef Mum’d cooked the morning she left and had it on the table ready with a bit of lettuce and some boiled eggs, so we all sat. Dad forgot Grace so Tessa reminded him. He gave Tim the nod, and Tim gave Grace a good run for its money. Dad didn’t stop him racing through it, though.

  ‘Dad,’ I started. ‘Dad—DAD.’ Not a peep back. ‘DAD.’ My voice went up, an edge in it.

  ‘Yep,’ he said, like he’d been paying attention all along.

  Tessa kicked me under the table.

  I kicked her back. ‘When’s Mum gunna call again?’

  He grunted.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mum.’

  He brought his great hammer of a fist down on the table. The salt and pepper shakers jumped out of their skins. ‘How the hell would I know?’ he thundered. ‘How am I supposed to get inside the workings of your mother’s head? Why does any sane woman up and leave her husband with a litter of kids? It’s not right. She’s a selfish b—’ He stopped himself just in time.

  None of us moved. Dad never said a bad word about Mum. Ever.

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad,’ Philly finally said. ‘Aunty Peg’ll be right in a couple of days.’

  ‘She’ll call when she can,’ he said, all mild again, as if Philly hadn’t said a word.

  We got back to the business of eating, not daring to look at each other. I waited until he was up to his cuppa for my next go.

  ‘Dad, can we take Mum’s things to her?’

  ‘She’s got everything she needs,’ Dad said, all final and no more to be said on the matter.

  I pushed my chair back, tipping it over. The sound of it clattering behind me as I sped into Mum’s room, raced back out. ‘What about her weddin ring, then?’ I asked, holding it up.

  ‘Shit.’ He looked at each of us in turn. ‘Where’d ya get that?’

  ‘It was on her bedside table.’

  He glared, and then it was like his glare came undone and his eyes got lost.

  I picked up the chair and sat in it, closing my fingers over Mum’s ring.

  ‘Hell of a rush, she said.’ Dad’s voice was low and gravelly. ‘Must have forgotten it behind.’ He had his eyes back under control and had them staring out the window.

  I left it go for a while, then I began again. ‘Dad.’

  It was him and the winter grey outside the window all wrapped up together.

  ‘Dad,’ I said again.

  We held our breath.

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘Clear up, JJ,’ said Tessa, standing up to stop me. ‘Your turn to wash.’

  ‘DAD,’ I yelled. His hand started trembling on the table and I was quick sorry.

  ‘We have to get her ring to her,’ I said, tripping over the words cause I had to get them out before I thought better of them. ‘You know how she says she’s all naked without it.’

  ‘And you know we don’t have the petrol.’ He said it in this low and dirty voice as if it was all my fault. But even though he was looking right at me, I got the idea that it wasn’t me he was talking to.

  ‘We should get the petrol from Mr Kennedy,’ I said. ‘Cause what if she’s not at Aunty Peggy’s any more? If she’s gone somewhere else? She might need us to find her.’

  ‘Stop talking rot.’

  ‘Can we call her, then?’

  ‘Your mother’s a busy woman, JJ. She’ll call when she can. That Peg’s a mad old coot. Especially when she’s high as a kite.’

  I swapped a look with Tim. This was a lot of talking for the old man. He was acting all weird again.

  ‘Reckon she’d have time for one phone call,’ I said, pushing.

  Tessa saw Dad was about to blow so she grabbed me by the shoulder and hiked me off the seat. ‘Stop your bloody lawyering on.’ She shoved the plates into my hand and pushed me towards the sink.

  Dad didn’t even say anything about her swearing.

  I didn’t either. I was too busy screwing my eyes up tight, tight, to keep it all inside. Tessa had said the thing Mum always said to me, but coming out of Tessa’s mouth it didn’t sound right.

  THE STORY JACK TELLS

  Early Sunday I was in my school uniform and Philly was in hers, ready for Mass. She didn’t like it, but since we didn’t have any good clothes, Mum always made us wear our uniforms. Philly sat, hands clasped, arms long across the kitchen table, like she was in school and waiting for the teacher to give her a gold star.

  ‘What’s got you all extra prim and proper?’ asked Tim as he hurtled out of his room towards the front door, ready. Philly shook her head. Once and then twice, with a wait like a full stop at the end of each one. Tim stopped short and grinned. He crossed his arms and leaned against the cupboard, waiting for the show to begin.

  Tessa came in from outside with the egg-collecting tin. ‘This is your job, Philly. Just because Mum’s away.’ She put the tin on the bench and looked at Tim, then tracked back to Philly, suspicious. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Waiting, like I should be,’ Philly said, her chin tilting up just that bit too much.

  ‘Never known you to “wait”.’ Tessa had her fingers all quoted up. ‘Give us a look at you.’

  Philly shook her head, twisting her legs under her stool, eyes bulging out of sockets with the worry of it.

  Dad blasted on the horn outside. Tessa marched over to Philly and hauled her out of her chair by the back of her school jumper. Tim saw it straight away. I followed his eyes to Philly’s feet. It took Tessa a few seconds longer to get there, but when she did she didn’t waste a second. ‘Get them off,’ she barked.

  Mum couldn’t have done it better.

  Philly shook her head. Dad blasted on the horn twice more. Philly started for the door.

  ‘There’s no way on God’s good earth—’ more Mum words from Tessa’s mouth—‘that you are wearing party shoes to Mass.’

  ‘Just this once,’ I said.

  ‘You butt out, Miss Troublemaker.’

  Philly half ran to reach the door.

  Tessa stretched a hand out to yank her back. ‘Get her school shoes,’ she threw over her shoulder at me.

  ‘Get em yourself.’ I pointed to the hearth where Philly’s were the only shoes left. She’d pushed them under the newspaper but the toe of one still peeped out.

  ‘You’re where she gets this kind of behaviour from,’ Tessa said to me as she pulled Philly over to the fireplace to rip her shiny black patent-leather shoes off.

  School shoes on, we all got in the car. I patted Philly’s hand behind Tessa’s back.

  At least Tessa didn’t have the nerve to get Mum’s Mass book and Mass scarf out of the glove box. I would have had something to say about that. Nobody touched Mum’s missal. She kept it tied nice and tight in her Mass scarf. She always swiped our hands away when we tried to help her with the knots. ‘Not
hing wrong with my own fingers thank you very much.’

  We were the last car to pull into the church paddock, just like always. Mum would have been putting her scarf around her neck, making the blue blue of the flower sit right at her throat. Mum and I loved hyacinths. ‘Things staying the same,’ she said. ‘Consistency.’ I liked all the ‘sssssss’ sounds in the way she said consssisstensssy.

  I rubbed my tummy.

  ‘You sick?’ asked Philly.

  ‘Nah, just funny.’

  ‘Cause Mum?’

  I nodded.

  The church even smelled different. We were in our usual pew, right up the front, but there was something dark in the air.

  I had a good look around. It was the flowers that made the difference. Big, fat night-red roses from Mrs Nolan’s garden. There were a lot of them: regret and sorrow. Not the promise of spring lilacs Mum’d been bucketing the bath water on for weeks. Not that Mrs Nolan would have ever read Mum’s flower book to know what’s what. I saw Tessa’s eyes burning into the flowers, too. She’d forgotten it was Mum’s turn for the altar, otherwise she would have made sure Mum’s lilacs were up there all right. Tessa tore at a fingernail. She’d missed another Mum beat now and I was glad.

  All the mothers were face front to the altar but murmuring to their husbands and swapping side looks at one another. Only an emergency would mean Sarah McBride would let Nancy Nolan do her flowers, that’s what they were all thinking. The secret language of flowers. Flowers had a language all right: we spoke it loud and clear at Our Lady of the Rosary.

  The altar boys shuffled in from the vestry, frilled up in their white dresses, with Father McGinty and his big beer gut bringing up the rear. Mrs Tyler squidged in behind us on her high-heeled toes, late like usual, all the way to the front pew where the rest of her mob were. She snuck in right as Father McGinty finished his bowing to the altar and turned to face us, staring right over our heads so he didn’t have to actually look any of us in the eye. Dad always shook his head at Mrs Tyler being late, but Mum hushed him up, saying it was because she had to iron the boys’ good shirts, do the girls’ hair, get the roast on, pile the wood on the fire and a million other things before she could get herself dressed, like women had to do everywhere. But since they only lived across the road she could send the rest of them on ahead so it was only her who was ever late.

  At the end of Mass, the mothers pegged Dad down on the church porch. He could have got past them down the steps easy if he wanted to escape because no woman ever went into the men’s circle. But Dad was in no hurry at all. Only too happy to stop and coat all the mothers up in what Mum called his Big Church Man smile, all serious and holier than thou. Mum hated that look. Dad stood there taking all questions, explaining the last-minute emergency. They knew what Peg was like. They all grew up together around Nulla, went to the same school, same dances, same church; all thick as thieves until Dad threw Aunty Peg out of our house just before Philly was born, and she took herself off to the city to live. There were nods and tsks all around. Tessa stood at Dad’s elbow, Tim to the other side, and Philly and me behind, scuffing our feet against the wall, but soft so we could still hear what he was saying. Dad said a neighbour had found Aunty Peg raving in the street and had called Mum. Nobody said boo, cause like Mum said, they all treated Dad like he was some kind of god.

  Dad served it all up and then got out free into the open air. He punched one hand into the other as if he’d done something hard but done was done. I elbowed Philly to show her, but she’d been looking the other way. Her eyes were all on Mrs Nolan heading in our direction. I backed away fast, sliding along the wall, but didn’t get far cause Philly was in the way and then it was too late.

  ‘How are you, pets?’ Mrs Nolan asked, head to the side, her mouth like a small pinched button, even though it was all lipsticked up fire-engine red.

  I squashed down the quick lick of flame at the cheek of her saying ‘pet’ after what she said about me to Mum when they were doing the tomatoes the morning Mum took off. But I had to keep shut about it in case she asked any of her nosy questions in front of Philly. Besides, what if Mum told her one or two things after I did what I did?

  So I kept my head down, and Philly and I scuffed and grunted like we always did talking to adults. Philly had one sock up and one down. I was torn between wanting to pull one up because I didn’t want Mrs Nolan saying anything terrible about Philly being a little savage, and pushing the other down cause then Philly’d have two relaxed socks. Philly had her eyes on the ground, too, so it didn’t take long for her to see the state her socks had got into. A gasp popped out of her and she clapped a hand to her mouth. She put her short sock leg up the wall behind her to hide it from Mrs Nolan.

  ‘We’ll set up a roster.’ Mrs Nolan patted her handbag. ‘Poor love.’ She nodded at Tessa, who was moving at a grown-up slow pace. ‘Been telling me all about it. She’s got a lot on her plate.’

  ‘We’ll be right, thanks, Mrs Nolan,’ I said in a rush. ‘It was just lucky Mum did a lot of extra cooking the day before she had to go.’

  Mrs Nolan turtled her neck back to give me a stab-sharp look like something wasn’t adding up. But she didn’t say what, and I wasn’t about to ask in case it ended up someplace I didn’t like.

  ‘Best be on the safe side, though,’ she finally said. More patting against her handbag. Philly had her eyes glued on it, despite Mum being who knows where. That bag was as shiny black as the party shoes Philly had tried to wear to Church.

  ‘Just luck I opened up early this morning to check everything was shipshape.’ Mrs Nolan tsked. ‘And very fortunate I did. Imagine my worry when I saw Sarah hadn’t done the altar.’ She put her hands up like stoplights in front of her. ‘I just happened to have the roses in the car. Saved the day. You never know what will come in handy, I say.’

  Is that what you say? I said, but all in my head. Then: Are you and your roses tooling around waiting for somebody to slip up? Like my mum. Happy now?

  ‘We don’t need a roster, thanks Mrs Nolan,’ I said, making my voice loud. ‘Mum’ll be back in a fair shake of a pussy cat’s tail.’ I hoped hard that using Mum’s own kind of words might add a bit of weight.

  Mrs Nolan gave me a look like I had dirt on my face. ‘There’s Kathy. We’ll sort it out.’ She headed off to catch Mrs Tyler, patting my arm before I could whip it out of the way.

  I screwed up my face at Mrs Nolan’s wide, wide back.

  Philly looked out to where the other kids were haring about like aeroplanes and windmills. She took a step to go and join them, but Tessa’s hand snaked out and grabbed her by the elbow. Philly’s face jerked up. Tessa shook her head. We both knew what that meant. We had a sick Aunty Peg and a saint of a mother, so we’d better make her proud. I caught Tommy’s eye. He had his hand on the edge of the slingshot poking out of his pocket. We’d made it out of the crook of a good old branch last Sunday and we were going to test it out on the bullseye tree today. I lopsided my mouth and shook my head. He jerked his head saying he understood, scuffed his feet in solidarity with me for a few seconds, then sent me an apologetic twist of his mouth which served as a smile and took off. I didn’t mind. I would have done the same.

  Philly leaned back beside me on the wall again, her mouth bunched up at the unfairness. We stood there, nobody looking but everybody knowing where we were. Tessa was in the women’s circle for the first time in her life.

  In the empty stretch of boring, I elbowed Philly and showed her a couple of pebbles I’d taken out of my pocket. I nodded towards Tessa. Philly shook her head as if to ask, What’s wrong with you? So I threw a pebble at Tessa’s back all on my own. Tessa didn’t look around. So I threw another—with a bit more force. She put her hand behind her and formed her fingers into a gun.

  I let a few more minutes of nothing snail by and when Tessa was good and distracted with the sad of it all, I wandered back into the hush of the church where Mrs Tyler was collecting up the vases on the altar. I was sorry Mum w
asn’t there to do the flowers. All us girls helped her, but Mum looked to me to get them right because I was the best feeler among the lot of us.

  After a while I went up the aisle to the altar rail. I pressed my hands to my tummy while I waited, but Mrs Tyler didn’t come out of the sacristy where she’d taken the vases. I scratched my face with my bitten-back nails, then bobbed before the altar, hoping God wouldn’t strike me down for going where I didn’t belong. I went up the stairs and then behind the heavy red velvet curtains.

  Mrs Tyler was there fussing about with goblets and vases. When I was with Mum I loved the feel of all the shiny tin and smooth glass, but now I shouldn’t be here because women were only allowed if they were cleaning up after the priest. Which Mrs Tyler was. But I wasn’t.

  ‘What’s up, love?’ Mrs Tyler asked as if she didn’t think it strange that I was there at all.

  I couldn’t get the words lined up right.

  She put the gold serving plate she was holding down and came over to me. ‘You worried about your mum?’

  I nodded. I didn’t mind Mrs Tyler because Mum liked her best.

  She kneaded my shoulder. ‘She’ll be back.’

  ‘She wants a roster,’ I blurted out.

  ‘Who? Nancy?’

  I nodded my head as if I could nod it right off.

  ‘You worried it means your mum’s not coming back?’

  I kept my head at nodding because that was exactly right. Mrs Nolan was the one who drove Mum away and maybe she knew more than anyone.

  ‘Your mum’s helping Peg and we’re helping your mum. That’s the way things are done.’ She looked at the open wardrobe where she’d just about finished putting it all away. Shuffled a couple of vases to the side. Picked up the plate again. ‘You mustn’t worry. It cuts your mum to ribbons.’ She smiled over her shoulder at me. ‘She’ll be back soon. You know wild horses couldn’t drag her away from you little rascals, especially you, JJ.’ She tucked the plate under a smaller one.

  ‘Has she rung you?’ I asked.