by Erina Reddan
‘Do you reckon you should take Mum’s Mass scarf to her?’
He tore his eyes away from the petrol and locked them on me. Then his face went all soft and collapsy and he turned away to get a good look at the horizon. I knew the taste of sorry again, all dried up bitter. Now Mum was gone gone I had to stop and think more, just like she always said. After a bit, his back went up and down and I got real worried about that petrol. I grabbed the hose from him and held it up so Pete would have enough left in the tank to get him home. Doll came sniffing around and rubbed up against Dad’s leg. Dad dropped a hand on autopilot to Doll’s head. I pulled out the hose and the funnel and tiptoed off, not wanting to get in the way of the thing Doll was giving Dad.
Once Dad was packed off down the track to the city and Pete had gone back to his own farm, Tessa said Mum was sure to be in heaven, but just in case she had to go to purgatory for a little while we should say a rosary. Philly and I got the beads out from under everybody’s pillows and we placed the chairs in a circle facing outwards so when we kneeled we couldn’t see each other. Not that Tim would be wiggling his eyebrows to set us off today.
I sat on the floor in the middle of the chair circle waiting for the others. Philly came to sit by me, close, tucking in under my wing. She nudged my shoulder like a foal. ‘You reckon it’ll be Tessa or Tim?’
I pulled the side of my mouth down at this new worry. Tessa’s the oldest so she’ll want to lead the rosary, but Tim’s the boy so he’ll reckon he should lead off. Tim came into the laundry and shucked off his boots, just the way Dad did.
At the sound, Tessa flew in from the lounge, kneeled in front of her chair and took up her beads, feeding through them to get to the right starting one. Philly and I got to our knees too and slid across the lino to slump over the seat of our chairs as well, giving our backs to each other.
‘The first Sorrowful Mystery, the Agony in the Garden,’ said Tessa before Tim could even get his beads into his hands. He kneeled over his chair without putting up a fight.
Twenty minutes later the lino was getting its teeth dug up good into my knees. Truth be told, it had been biting in a while, but I’d been offering up the pain to get Mum out of purgatory. But I was real glad when Tessa swung on to the final Glory Be. When it was all done, Philly collapsed on the floor. I grinned and leaped like a frog and sat on her. She giggled. Tessa frowned, like she didn’t know if giggling after the rosary was wrong. Then Tim was on top of us, wrestling me off.
We jumped up and shoved the chairs aside. Philly got the towels from the bathroom and twisted them up to mark out the arena on the ground. Tim, now Gorgeous George Junior, got into the ring first. Frank Knucklebender, me, charged in there after him. Baby Face Davo kneeled just outside the ring and leaned in as far as she could, arm stretching, stretching towards Frank.
Gorgeous George swung low from side to side like he was an ape and then he lunged, going in fast. I dodged, but George turned fierce and grabbed me about the waist and brought me down. He had a knee on my chest and it was pressing in hard. ‘Little Sheila,’ said Gorgeous George with a big grin. But Frank Knucklebender sees red, just like me, and the red exploded out of his belly and rolled Gorgeous George off. He yelped with the surprise, but lurched back around to pin me down.
I flung out my hand to tag Baby Face, but George pulled me back so I couldn’t reach Philly. Gorgeous George’s arms tightened. Tim’s eyes were squeezed shut. He took one hand from around my neck and pounded his fist into my arm.
‘Tim,’ I yelled. ‘Tim, it’s me. It’s me.’
Tessa screamed at him to stop. He pounded on. I pushed up into him and got my arms around him and hugged him hard. Philly was hugging him from the back. Tessa flew over, grabbed his fist, so then her hands and his were both pounding into my arm. Then she got her hands to his cheeks and cradled him up. The surprise of it stopped him. He slumped over, breathing like he’d been galloping a runaway. Philly lay against his back, Tessa kneeled over him and I was in the middle. Holding on.
Mum would know what to do.
Time slithered like a snake, all silent and like it wasn’t there. Eventually Philly got the bright idea to get the Milo tin and four spoons. We lay on our tummies just where we were. Licking the last of it from the spoons before dipping them straight back in the tin again. Tessa too. She didn’t even say anything when Tim’s and Philly’s spoons crashed on the way out of the tin and Milo went all over the floor. She just licked her thumb and pressed it over the little brown dots on the lino, then licked them off her finger. Tim, Philly and I looked at each other, a big question between us. Tim shrugged, and then we were all licking our thumbs and pressing them into the floor.
All the rules were broken and bloody now.
When Tim had had enough he downed tools and lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Philly copied him. Tessa and I looked at each other and did the same. It was like we were still in the middle of everything and none of us wanted to go on to the next thing.
‘Mum would be so mad,’ said Tim, a smile swimming in his voice.
‘She was Sister Mary of the flying tea towel,’ I said, thinking of her charging at one of us.
‘Or Mother Superior of the Sore Bum Order,’ said Tim.
‘Or Mother Whack-a-lot,’ said Philly.
‘Monkey,’ said Tessa, tickling Philly, who squeaked. Tessa lay on her back again, but this time she was right flat beside Philly.
‘Do you reckon Aunty Peg was sick at all?’ I asked.
Nobody said nothing.
‘Or,’ I said, tasting the words as they came out loud for the first time, ‘maybe Mum just left us, like Dad said in the first place.’
‘You have to spoil everything,’ said Tessa.
She said it like a fact.
ALMOST PROOF
After lunch, Tessa spread her hands behind her on my bed, pretend-lounging back. I flicked a page in Mum’s flower book. Tessa coughed to get my attention. I held the book higher, turning it into a barrier between us.
‘What about Mum’s lilac for her funeral?’ asked Tessa.
I bought the book closer in so I couldn’t see any part of her. Mum and I understood flowers, not her, and I wasn’t going to let her in close on this.
‘She’s not in love,’ I said.
‘She said it also means the promise of spring.’
‘Dead’s not spring.’
‘In heaven it is.’
I turned the page.
‘Maybe you would have been nicer if you stuck with Elizabeth,’ said Tessa.
I lowered the book. Tessa was the one who called me Jane-Jane after my second name to start with, because she couldn’t get her baby tongue around Elizabeth. When I was old enough I got it nice and short and snappy into JJ.
‘What do you bloody want?’ I spat at Tessa and her big fat opinions. ‘Because if you’ve got nothing nice to say, you can walk right on out.’ I said it just the way Mum did.
She let it go, which was nowhere near like her. Instead she said, ‘Reckon we should ring Aunty Peg and find out once and for all if she did have a turn.’
My mouth dropped open.
Her eyes darted out the window. ‘Just to shut you up.’ She flicked lint off the bedspread.
‘I’m good,’ I said quickly. After the Milo I saw I couldn’t be talking out aloud about why Mum left. Cause if she didn’t go to help Aunty Peg, sure as dirt they’d find out it was all my fault she’d gone.
‘Philly’s right, Dad would never lie.’ I crossed my fingers behind my back and added in my head, Unless he had a good reason. Maybe God might think Dad covering up for me was a good reason.
Tessa squinted at my sudden change of heart, but then got back on her own track. ‘Philly says she heard something when they were fighting the night before.’
‘What?’ My voice came out a bit hoarse. I cleared my throat.
‘Mum told Dad she was leaving him.’
The words struck me like a fist in the gut. This was something n
ew. It’d have to be real bad for Mum to say she was leaving Dad. Nobody left their husbands. Not even if they got beat up. They just went to the neighbour’s until things settled down again and the drink made its way out of the father’s system.
‘What did Dad do wrong, then?’ I asked.
Tessa shrugged and picked at the lint. ‘Philly didn’t hear that bit.’ She locked eyes with me. She had this emptiness where an answer should have been. The nothingness went on and on so I stopped looking before we both got drowned deep.
That gumboot by the dam. I caved over, stubbing the edge of the book into my gut hard, panting and desperate for air, just like Dolly after a full-tilt chasing after runaway sheep.
‘What?’ asked Tessa, on alert.
I shook my head. ‘Nothing.’ Because it couldn’t be anything. Mum’s boots were right where they should be, standing tall and neat between Tessa’s and Philly’s in the middle of the puddle of the rest of ours. I straightened back up. Closed the book.
Dad would never. He loved Mum. More than any of us.
Then the new thought. Mum told Dad she was leaving before I ate the cake and told her she was a bum. She did all that baking in the morning instead of the afternoon like normal, and she’d cooked food and put it in the freezer for us. Enough for a few days at least, Tessa said. What if she left not because of what I did, but something Dad did? For a second that perked me up. But then I remembered she was still dead.
Tessa was back at her plucking at the bedspread, waiting. I gave her a long look weighing things up. Squinshed up my face because this new thing meant we had to call Aunty Peg, even if it also meant Tessa finding out what I did.
‘We’re not allowed to use the phone,’ I said.
‘We won’t tell Dad.’
‘What about when the bill comes?’
She shrugged.
‘Got Peg’s number, then?’ I asked.
‘In Mum’s address book.’
‘We’d better get on with it then, before Dad gets there to make her say what he wants her to.’ I was starting to get all itchy inside so I shot off the bed, trying to stay in front of it. Mostly because I remembered something. I’d heard Mum asking Dad the other day if we could bring Aunty Peg back to live with us. Dad had said, ‘Over my dead body.’
‘I need the help,’ Mum had said.
‘She’s a bad apple.’
‘One mistake, Jack. A very long time ago. She’s a grown woman now. Where’s your Christian charity?’
Then Dad’s voice had got all fierce and whispery. ‘You know we can’t have a filthy woman like her under our roof. What would Father McGinty say to us having her back if he found out?’
‘It’s none of Father McGinty’s business,’ she whispered back just as fierce.
‘I think you’ll find that’s exactly whose business it is,’ finished Dad.
Mum must have been disappointed because Aunty Peg was her only sister and they were orphan girls. Maybe Mum left us to go live with her. Maybe. Except for, she hadn’t bothered leaving before and she did take us down the city to see Aunty Peg behind Dad’s back pretty often. We knew enough to not let on to Dad.
But what else was big enough for Mum to leave Dad? Tessa was right. First off, we had to find out if Peg had a turn or not.
Tessa raised her hand to knock on Mum’s bedroom door as if Mum might be home.
I pushed her hand away before she could connect to the door and the silence behind it. I leaned the door open. It was all dark and shroudy because of the curtains. Tessa crossed the room to yank them open. Mum’s address book wasn’t where she normally kept it in the drawer by her bed. We walked around, too scared to move anything. But I told myself to offer the scare up to purgatory for Mum, so I started moving papers on the big round table and that got Tessa to work. She found Mum’s book in Dad’s drawer, where it shouldn’t be. Tessa frowned, turning it over, before her face cleared. ‘He’ll have wanted to let her friends know.’
I shrugged ‘probably’, but thought the bush telegraph was plenty fine because all the people who knew her came from around here. We headed to the lounge where Philly was playing with her doll and a handful of pebbles.
‘Get the washing in,’ Tessa said.
‘Can’t reach the line,’ said Philly without breaking her stride in moving the pebbles from the imaginary kitchen to the imaginary sewing room.
‘What’s the drum for, then?’ asked Tessa.
Philly sighed and got up. Tessa watched her go until she was well out the front door. We turned the phone around so it was between us.
‘What’ll we say?’ I whispered.
‘We’ll ask how she is.’
‘You do it.’
Tessa shook her head.
‘Give me the number.’ I picked up the phone from its cradle and put it against my ear. I dialled and then held the phone in a way so Tessa and I could both hear.
‘Aunty Peg?’
‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s me—JJ—and Tessa.’
‘Needs a good haircut that Tessa.’
Tessa flew her hands to her twisty neat plaits.
‘How are you?’ I asked, to get Tessa’s mind back on the job.
‘Good as gold.’
‘Better, then?’ I said. What now? I asked Tessa with my eyes.
‘Nothing wrong that a stiff tot of Scotch wouldn’t fix.’
Tessa grabbed the phone, her hands over mine, so we were both holding on. ‘Aunty Peg, when did you last see Mum?’
‘Why? What’s wrong with her? Finally left His Highness, has she?’ She laughed. ‘Must be why Your Lordship is gracing me with his presence this afternoon. If she’s got any sense in her at all, now she’s got away she should stay away.’
See, I’m nodding at Tessa. She doesn’t even know Mum’s dead. See, Mum wasn’t at Aunty Peg’s at all. See, Dad’s been lying all right.
Tessa’s eyes were going wild and her teeth were pulling at her lip, but not because Dad lied to us. But because Dad was on his way over to Aunty Peg’s and Aunty Peg would tell him we called and he’d know we’d been using the phone. Then we heard Aunty Peg drop the receiver and walk away. Tessa squeezed my arm so hard I wanted to pinch her, but I just held the phone tighter.
I imagined Aunty Peg moving careful like a cat through the mountains of newspapers stacked all over her house. She reckoned things were always whispering at her and she needed them papers to check the truth. Made sense to me. Things whispered at me all the time.
Aunty Peg came back.
‘Sarah hasn’t been for sixteen and a half weeks,’ she said. ‘That’s a long time.’
‘Sure is,’ I said.
Aunty Peg’s voice changed so she was speaking in a posh accent. ‘It’s as if she believes I don’t speak the Queen’s English or that I’m not good enough.’
‘Goodbye, Madam,’ I said, in the same posh voice. Tessa gave me a look as if I was as mad as Aunty Peg.
‘Who shall I say called?’ Aunty Peg said.
‘It’s the electricity company,’ I said. ‘I bid you good day.’
I put down the phone.
‘Good one, Elizabeth Jane,’ Tessa said with a grin.
‘I hope she doesn’t go through all those newspapers looking for Tessa and JJ from the Electricity Company.’
‘Dad won’t believe a word she says now, anyway,’ said Tessa, clapping her hands. We heard Philly coming into the laundry so we ran the address book back to Mum’s room to put it exactly where it’d been.
‘What are we going to do?’ We sat in the muddle of blankets on the unmade bed. Tessa was scratching her head and looking at the blankets as if she was planning to make the bed right then and there. Mum would never have left it like that. I hooked her back to the big thing before us. She was wringing her hands like there was a sudden frost on. ‘I don’t know—Dad—he’s not like that. He wouldn’t tell a lie. He’d rather die.’
‘But Aunty Peg said,’ I listed them off, ‘she hasn’t see
n Mum, didn’t have a turn, didn’t know Mum had appendicitis.’
‘I know, I know.’ She was squeezed up and twisted in. So was I. All these lies soring up Dad’s mouth. I was as sure as sure now. Mum wouldn’t want me doing all that lying, too. I had to tell Tessa. Now. About maybe it was me who made Mum leave. But the words didn’t know how to say themselves, like they didn’t have the get up and go to get out my throat. What did come out was this terrible strangled cat noise.
Tessa’s face jerked up, alarm switched up high. She gave me a quick thump on the back. I yanked away, heaving hard to get my breath right. I held up a hand to let her know I was fine, which maybe I was and maybe I wasn’t. It took me a while to get myself straight. She had her forehead all scrunched, waiting. I shrugged my shoulders up and down a couple of times real fast to loosen the words up. Took a steady breath and started in on everything I’d done.
I got right to the end. Tessa didn’t interrupt once. I sat back, twisting my hands around and around.
Tessa furrowed up her eyebrows again, clicked her tongue. ‘Don’t be stupid, JJ. You are a pain, but you’ve been the same pain forever.’
I scratched hard at the palm of my hand and it felt good to get at the itch. What Tessa said made sense and it was like something had been smashed up good. Mum hadn’t acted like something was broken between us. She’d rubbed my back and washed my face. I rounded out my eyes and smiled, all hopeful. But Tessa didn’t smile back and then I lost mine as well.
‘If Dad wasn’t covering for me,’ I said, ‘then he lied for himself. That blue they had. Maybe it was real bad. Maybe Dad’s got something real bad to hide.’
‘It’s probably just a mistake,’ she said. ‘Let’s see what he says first.’