A Lifetime of Impossible Days

by Tabitha Bird

  When Lottie says she can’t find any more boxes, a sea wind blows strong. The sand around the bottom of the tree dries quickly. I climb down from the branches to tell the old lady she can stay if she wants, but she wanders out of the ocean-garden through the path Lottie made when she moved the rocks earlier, and then … poof. She is gone. Same as when I saw her in town. Where did she go? I jump to the ground, and Frog and I hunt about.

  ‘See my platypus?’ Lottie shoves a shell in my face.

  ‘Sure. Keep digging.’

  ‘That house was fun, same as ours, but old and smelled like Grammy’s hairy armpits.’ Lottie’s digging about in the dry sand.

  ‘Wait!’ I point a finger in Lottie’s face. ‘Did you go into a different house when you got those boxes?’

  ‘Uh-huh. I already telled you. And when I got to the edge of our ocean-garden it was like all cloudy and stuff, but then I was in a different backyard. The old lady’s backyard with her house in it.’

  I stop. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t see her. ‘So there was clouds, kinda like fog in the air, when you went past the rocky edge? And then there was a different backyard?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Lottie says.

  When I watered the ocean-garden I walked through fog and then into a different backyard, too. But … I haven’t watered it since I got back here to my house. When we saw that old lady the sand was wet. Maybe she has an ocean-garden, too, and she watered hers as well. Why is she gone again now? Lottie throws some sand at me, but it blows away like dust.

  ‘That’s it, Lottie!’ I jump up and down. ‘The sand is dry now and so the ocean-garden has closed. It grows every time you water it, and anyone can travel through it until the sand dries!’

  Lottie stares at me.

  ‘Tell me again. You went past the rocky edge to a different place? You have to be sure, Lottie!’ I squeeze her arm hard.

  ‘I did. Pinkie promise.’ Her bottom lip wobbles.

  I squeeze her to me. ‘Amaze-a-loo! Don’t you get it? This is going to work – if you got through the ocean-garden, all we have to do is water it, get Mummy and go!’ I look back at our house and feel a bit sad that we would leave it with Daddy. Then I have another thought. Maybe we could get Daddy to go through and us girls could stay here and keep our beautiful home. Then he would be gone and we would be safe! I’ll wait for him to get back from work.

  The old lady left when it was still morning, but Lottie and I play in the ocean-garden all day. We even make jam sandwiches and have a picnic on our little beach under the mango tree. Late in the afternoon, we see the woman and her two little boys.

  Chapter Fourteen

  1990

  Willa Waters, aged 33

  As I lie on the green tiles of my childhood bathroom, I am sore with the return of memories and thoughts of my sister.

  Lottie is a place men have visited, feasted on her starving need for them, and left. She is in my veins; we are one and the same place. I was eight years old, eleven, fifteen, and there were all the boys who smelled my confusion over where I ended and their want of my body began. I said yes to things without realising you could say no.

  I was eight. The morning after the ocean arrived I woke up in a brilliant sunshine-yellow bedroom. Our tin house was transformed into the Queenslander, the same house I saw by the beach with Grammy, the one I desperately wished for and asked to help me. Could that all possibly be true? As a child, I asked my mother repeatedly about it. My mother did not remember living in the tin shed; she only ever recalled living in the Queenslander.

  My counsellor suggested that the tin shed was another story I’d told myself. Perhaps my childish imagining that the house had transformed was a projection of the safety I needed but didn’t have.

  ‘Yes, that’s all it was. That’s all.’ I lift my head slowly and blink, clearing the water from my eyes. I don’t want to see what I fear I will see. But there it is: the room around me has transformed.

  I blink again, but it’s no use. I am standing in my childhood bathroom, complete with yellow ceiling, pale-blue bathtub and pea-green tiles. Mother’s pride and joy in 1965.

  No! I fling myself out the door and down the hallway, touching walls, opening doors. But my Brisbane shoebox is gone, and in its place is the rambling Queenslander of my childhood. A house I knew well and ran from many times, and eventually, once and for all.

  I rush from room to room, a seasickness inside me. There’s an intense tingling in my legs, in my hands, a sensation worse than waking a limb with pins and needles.

  A sunshine-yellow bedroom appears where the boys’ room once was. The furniture seems to be my own, but the house is definitely not. I bang my hands down on the lemon-coloured laminate counters in the kitchen. Someone has managed to prepare the VJ walls so they can paper over them in blue flowered print, bold enough to knock your head off, and the cabinets are a horror turquoise. All décor the 1960s threw up.

  Tearing outside, I see that our wrought-iron fence has morphed into white pickets. The uniform brick houses of my neighbours are now timber-clad, with verandahs and views over paddocks. Across the road on the footpath is a flowering red bottlebrush that in spring will pulsate with the screeches of lorikeets. I race to the end of the road and read the street name.

  Seagrove Way. What? We’re in the country – in Boonah? I grab fistfuls of dirt and throw them at the sign, screaming.

  Running back up the street, I notice the old farm truck parked out the front of our Queenslander. I bend over, trying to breathe. That’s my father’s truck. Why do we have my father’s truck? Oh, god. This really is my childhood home?

  And then I think, I can’t hear my boys. That single thought nearly makes my legs surrender me to the ground. They were in the living room watching Play School on TV. Where on earth are they now? The loss of them would tear the centre out of me.

  I stub my toe and bang my head as I run back through the house calling their names. Even though the layout is so familiar, I nearly lose my way. They’re not in the living room, not in the bedrooms, or the kitchen or bathroom. This can’t be happening. Think, Willa. Think harder.

  It’s their laughter that jolts me, the first real thing I understand, and I lock onto it like the sound is life.

  Through the back glass door and out onto the deck. In the backyard, I see them. My boys are with the afternoon shadows under the mango tree, playing with busy trucks and diggers. The afternoon sky begins to turn pink.

  They’re here. Breathe. Slow and full, just breathe.

  Seb bangs cars together with his dimpled hands. Tummy hanging out over his shorts.

  Eli spies me and skips out of the garden, past the rocky edge. ‘Look at the dog clouds. See?’ He points up at the sky. ‘I like our new house and this garden. That’s a cool magic trick. How did you do it?’

  I pat him down, but he seems himself. Nothing amiss. ‘So you know the house changed?’

  ‘Yeah! Are you being silly?’

  I shake my head because I can’t find any words.

  ‘It sounded like waves crashing, and Seb and I couldn’t hear Play School and then the lounge room changed. The whole house was changed!’ He holds his hands out and twirls around. ‘And we found this sandpit. Are you okay, Mummy?’ He pulls my arms around him and it’s all I can do to stand there holding him. I look back up at the clouds bumping close to the earth.

  ‘See? The clouds look like my dogga, Wozley. Give Wozley a kiss!’ He holds up his dog teddy. His front teeth are missing, a childhood gap. I touch the tip of his nose, so many freckles. His daddy all over.

  ‘What’s that freckle called?’ he asks.

  I force a calmness into my voice. ‘Freckles don’t have names.’

  ‘Mummy!’

  I swallow hard. ‘Um, Martha?’

  ‘No, this freckle is a boy!’ His hands go to his hips.

  Another deep breath. ‘Oh, right. Of course. Then, ah, this freckle is Tom?’

  ‘Tom the freckle.’ He skips around me.


  I finally take notice of the garden. We don’t have a garden, especially not one encircled by little rocks. My left-to-flourish weeds are gone, replaced by this garden with a mango tree in the middle and white sand all around. We do not have a sandpit. This can’t be what I think it is. I simply stand there, the fabric of me undone.

  Bending down, I take Eli’s arm. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Here, of course! Wanna climb the tree with me?’

  A real smile, it could be that, wants to form on my lips. The moment begins to weave around me, as if everything has always been this way. The last of the sun touches Eli’s cheek.

  He watches me looking and pinches his face. ‘Apple-pie cheeks. Yummy to kiss. Come on, climb with me,’ he says.

  The house has changed, and my boy is pulling me into this moment.

  ‘Mummy! Climb up, please?’

  My mouth opens, but there are no words. He fills a jam jar from the garden hose and splashes the water around. Some lands on his brother, some on my nose, more on the ground under the tree. Seb drives trucks over my toes. His jiggle-belly laugh.

  The phone inside interrupts before I can pull Eli out of the tree and I go inside to answer it.

  ‘Poppet, are you okay? I’m sitting here and this word came to me. Abditory. It’s a noun that means a hiding place or somewhere you can disappear. Have you disappeared? Tell Grammy. What’s wrong?’

  I push the receiver closer to my ear as if that will bring me closer to my Grammy. ‘Where do I live?’ I ask.

  ‘Now, poppet, you’re home.’

  I fumble the phone and accidentally hang up. It rings again.

  ‘Grammy?’

  ‘Hardly. You could have rung me back yesterday,’ Mother says.

  ‘Have I moved house?’ I stretch the phone cord through the kitchen so I can keep an eye on the boys. It seems the afternoon for things disappearing, but they are playing happily.

  ‘Don’t change the subject. Sam called me this morning at some ridiculous hour. Lottie has resurfaced, has she? You could have called me.’

  Mother waits and I’m vaguely aware I should have answers.

  I stammer, ‘Sorry I didn’t call. Okay?’

  ‘Not really. It’s rude. How do you think I feel?’ Her voice rises, stretches out the word feeeel.

  ‘Have you heard from Lottie?’ I ask.

  There’s a pause and I dare to think there might be a soft compassion coming. Questions about how Lottie is; if I’m okay. I’m corrected when she snaps, ‘So now I have to call you if I know something, but you can’t do me the same favour?’

  ‘Look, can you tell me where I live?’ I mumble.

  ‘I wouldn’t have a clue where you are at these days, Willa. It’s not like you talk to me. I see other mother–daughter afternoon teas and shopping trips, but you and Lottie –’

  ‘Where do I live?’ I interrupt, all too aware of my failures as her offspring. ‘Did we move?’ I press her.

  ‘All I wanted was to be a good mother, but you and Lottie only ever think about yourselves.’ Her words are like fingernails inside me, scooping me out. I don’t hear what else she says because I put the phone down and walk back outside.

  Eli hangs by his legs from the tree branches. Winter is a time for uncomfortable layers and a faded sun, my bones always cold. But this afternoon brings warmth like Grammy’s cream-of-chicken soup. Something tangible.

  A dandelion seed floats into the garden under the mango tree and I follow it. Eli swings out of the tree and runs out of the garden, past the rocky edge, chasing one. ‘Make a wish, Mummy?’ But I am swallowed by memories of this garden.

  Eli fills the jar with water again, a strawberry jam label still attached.

  ‘Eli, wait! Where did you find that jar? You broke the other one.’

  He points behind the mango tree. ‘Buried around there.’ He sprinkles the water everywhere. It’s already too late to stop him. The ocean is here, planted when the water in his jar dripped down the front stairs.

  Eli waters the ocean-garden again and I see a younger me in his actions. I once did the same thing. And I used to bury the jar behind the mango tree, too.

  Suddenly the tree is young again, the garden full of lavender and mint. There’s a moisture in the air, a breeze caught up with sea spray. Then the strong scent of wet sand and summer. I try to gather it all in one breath as I watch the puffy seed heads float by. Grammy had wonderful things to say about dandelions.

  ‘Such simple things. Did you know they used to call dandelions clock flowers?’ Grammy collected them in vases on the kitchen table.

  Weeds, in vases! I didn’t say that, though. Mummy said people act odd as they get old. I thought old people acted perfectly.

  ‘How does a silly dandelion know the time?’ I asked.

  ‘Silly, are they? Those daisies open at dawn and close at dusk, keeping time for all creation. How many flowers do you know that are clocks?’

  ‘Snow flowers,’ I hear a voice say. Lottie called them that. The air is thick with dandelion seeds, and now the smell of ocean is overwhelming.

  ‘Pretend it’s snowing, Lottie,’ another voice says. Lottie sits in the branches of the mango tree next to … gumboots? Lottie with beads around her neck.

  Floating seed heads, twisting and untamed, rest on my arms and legs.

  I rub my eyes, my arms. This can’t be happening. Eli has moved away from the tree and I almost call him over to check if I am really seeing this, but he’s happily playing and I don’t want to worry that big heart of his.

  Lottie holds her sister’s hand as dandelions nest in their hair. I can’t take this all in. I have not seen those girls together in a thousand years, and for that thousand years I feared they’d let go. That I had let go. But there they are.

  The girls stop. Listening to something. The sisters squeeze hands. I duck behind the tree because they haven’t seen me yet.

  ‘Listen. Don’t ask Mummy and Daddy about the house anymore, okay? If they don’t remember the tin thing we hated, then we can’t get into trouble. And don’t tell Mummy about the tree. Not yet. Let me do it.’

  Lottie nods, solemnly. Her big sister takes her hand and says, ‘Let’s play a game. I spy with my little eye something beginning with P.’

  ‘A unicorn?’ Lottie says.

  ‘Nooo … I spy with my little eye something beginning with T.’

  ‘A unicorn?’

  ‘Lottie! Where are all these unicorns?’

  She makes a triangle shape on her head with her hands.

  ‘Is that his horn? Fine. I spy a unicorn. And I’m gonna eat me one. Watch out!’ And the big sister makes snapping hands and tickles Lottie till they both nearly fall out of the tree.

  ‘Mummy?’ Eli skips over, offering me a slice of sand cake.

  ‘Don’t really eat me!’ Lottie squeals.

  Eli stares into the branches. ‘Oh look, friends in our tree. Where did those girls come from? Can they stay and play, Mummy?’

  I hunch down in front of him, pulling him behind the trunk with me. ‘You can see them?’

  He nods, tilting his head to the side in confusion, and I let go of him.

  I try to usher him out of the garden. ‘The girls, um … they’re just leaving.’ Now I know I’m not imagining them. A shaking begins inside me until my arms are covered in goosebumps.

  ‘Can they come again tomorrow?’

  ‘Eli, please, honey. Take Seb inside?’ He stands there with his arms folded.

  The sisters stop again. Listening. I strain. And then I hear it, too. A yelling that is not coming from them. They move closer together, and we all listen to where the quiet should be. Inside myself, I pull into a tight ball. The scream is a metal sound we can taste in our mouths. It’s no company for two little girls, who say, Mummy, Mummy! with no voice and no words. A terror inside of them where no terror should be.

  Eli rushes into my arms. We huddle behind the mango tree. ‘Someone screamed, Mummy!’

  I hol
d him to my chest. Seb toddles over to us. I gather them both close, then I reach around the tree trunk to see if I can touch the hem of her cowboy pants. They are real, so very real.

  Eli looks up into the branches. ‘Are the girls okay?’ His eyes begin to tear up.

  All I can do is squeeze my boys to me. A fierce ocean wind blows and the water Eli poured around the tree begins to dry. I remember that the ocean has to be watered, and that the garden will close as the water evaporates. This will be over shortly.

  The boys bury their heads in my arms. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ I say, for them and for me.

  The girls look down and scream, and I scream too.

  ‘What’s happening? I don’t know what to do!’ Eli wails at me. Then we all hear Sam walking into the backyard. ‘Daddy!’ Eli calls. ‘Come, we’re out here.’

  I rush out of the garden with the boys and into the safety of Sam’s arms.

  ‘Honey? Boys, leave your mother now. Eli, help Seb inside. I’ll be there in a moment.’ Sam is saying other things and I’m vaguely aware that I should respond. But I’m now staring over my shoulder into the tree. He’s asking me what I can see.

  ‘The little girls. They were there. Lottie.’

  Everything in me begins to rupture.

  When the boys are in bed, Sam kisses my hands. There have been no words between us because all I can do is cry.

  Sam runs a bath. As I stand inside the same green bathroom of my childhood I notice a very important, cataclysmic change. Sam is here. His presence creates safety. His hand outstretched, inviting me into the water. My numb body lies underneath a froth of bubbles.

  ‘Want me to stay for a bit?’ he asks.

  I nod and he pulls up a bath stool too small for him, then perches there performing human origami just to be near me.

  ‘But. This house?’ I try to hold my insides together as I ask. ‘Tell me what you remember about the Queenslander.’

  He tells me we have always lived here in Boonah. In this house. But I know that’s not true. The ocean has transformed our brick home into my childhood home, moving us back to Boonah.