by Tabitha Bird
‘Why don’t you care, Hawthorn? You never listen!’ Mummy’s screeching. She pushes Lottie out of the way into me. I don’t know why they’re fighting, I just want it to stop. Daddy glares at her, but he doesn’t move.
This time I press my fingernails into Lottie’s arm. She’s trying to break free, but she’s not big like me.
Daddy’s hands swallow the beer he pulls out of the fridge in the laundry. Mummy stands in the laundry doorway and he pushes past her.
Mummy roars, spit gathering in the corners of her mouth. ‘I am not invisible. You hear me? We have to talk about this.’ She stomps in front of him, right at the bottom of the stairs. Hands punching the air. We are caught around their feet.
Stop.
‘You don’t care about me, you don’t care about those girls, you don’t –’
‘Move, Ebony.’ He’s trying to get back up the stairs, past her.
‘I’m not moving until you listen to me! She was my daughter, too. You think I don’t grieve for her every day?’
‘I’m not talking about this. Now move!’
They’re fighting about the baby. The one born before Lottie. The baby I killed because I didn’t watch her closely and she didn’t wake up one morning.
Lottie presses her hands over her ears and I pull her to me. I know I should do big things now, but we are only shoving and bumping in the shadows by the laundry wall. Think harder, Willa. Think more. I will save this sister; I have to.
Lottie digs under my ribs. ‘Make them stop!’
Stop.
Stop, please. How did Lottie get beside Mummy again? Mummy’s words are louder and louder.
I’ve forgotten the plan.
‘Enough!’ Daddy yells.
Run. Run now. The stairs are so close. ‘Come on, Lottie – move!’
Daddy stares at us like we don’t belong, like we’re in the wrong house. I want so badly to be in the wrong house. I want it so badly I don’t know what it is I want. Lottie hangs off me.
‘Take them to bed!’
‘Mummy?’ Lottie squeaks. I’m wondering why Daddy doesn’t know it’s too early for bed.
Mummy steps closer to him. ‘For just one minute I want to grab your ignorant head and make you see. This isn’t going away. We have to deal with it.’
Daddy stands wood straight. Steel-ruler straight. I don’t want to be here for anything that happens now.
Daddy’s face. So purple and …
‘Take. The. Children. To. Bed.’
‘I can do what I want, Hawthorn. You don’t tell me what to do. Fuck you. You hear that? I said fuck.’
Lottie screams and holds tight to Mummy’s legs.
Then everything happens. It happens so fast it happens on top of things.
Daddy throws Lottie to the wall. A thud that I hear inside me.
‘No! Lottie? Please. Wake up.’ Oh. It’s all happening again.
I was three and Mummy and Daddy had a fight one night. I didn’t check on my sister before I went to bed. When I went to her cot in the morning and picked her up, she was floppy. Blue. Wake up! Wake up!
I have Lottie now and I’m not letting go. Carrying, dragging her up the stairs past them. Her head hangs to the side. Why is it so droopy? Halfway up the stairs we stop. Her legs don’t work. She’s slipping.
At the bottom of the stairs, Daddy grabs Mummy’s arm.
The first smack lands on Mummy’s legs.
I drop Lottie.
Mummy screams.
Back up the stairs. Run! Along the hallway. To my bedroom.
Sounds of smacking follow me up.
Lottie is nowhere.
I am nowhere. Everything is a crazy, spinning rocket.
Sirens come. Sirens fade. Doors open and close and there are people talking. But I don’t hear what they say because I hide under my covers with my hands over my ears.
Later, I don’t know how much later – it could be a little bit of later or a lot of later – the house is quiet. All I know is there’s a scary lot of dark in my room. The night came while I was hiding.
Don’t cry, Willa. Listen.
Nothing.
Our whole house is full of so much nothing it plasters the walls. I pull my blankets tighter.
‘Mummy? Lottie?’ My ears hurt with trying to hear something. Anything. Why is there no sound?
I’ve forgotten all about Frog Dog. ‘Froggie!’
A small shape jumps on the bed and nudges under the covers with her nose. I give her a quick squeeze and shove her down the bottom of the bed. What if Daddy comes for her, too?
Think of a story. Um … once there was a … pig with an ear like a … Oh. Like a rabbit. A … umm.
There’s a creak outside my room. I reach down and pull Frog close to me.
Footsteps. The creak comes again. I hold my breath. Frog Dog growls.
Everything is moving, yet my room is very still, with claws that hold me down.
I think of Lottie. Eating ice cream. Looking for the platypus. Silly stuff. Maybe I’m not here. Maybe if I think hard enough I can make myself disappear.
But then I think of hitting sounds and slipping stairs.
Someone flicks the light on in my room. When I look up … Daddy.
‘Good. You’re in bed.’ He walks over. Long, don’t-argue-with-me steps.
Imagine we are under the stars. Think of all those stars.
‘Go to sleep.’ He stamps a kiss on my head, a wet thing that lies there. My eyes squeeze shut and Frog Dog growls again.
Bite him. Please bite him, Frog. But then I don’t want Daddy to hurt her, so I shove her back down the bed.
He is leaving and I don’t think I’m going to say anything, but this question digs into me. I push my voice forwards.
‘Where’s Mummy?’
He stops by the end of my bed. A humungous thing with folded arms. ‘Humungous’ was Grammy’s word of the day once. Now I know what she meant.
‘She’s in her room. Go to sleep.’
He turns and walks away. If only my questions would, too. A new question grows. It’s a soggy one. Old cereal in my stomach and it has to come out. I take a breath.
‘Why did you hit her?’
He walks back. I sink into the mattress, waiting for his hands to come for me the way they came for Mummy.
But he stops. ‘She was saying bad words. I had to discipline her. Now, go to sleep.’ He turns the light off.
I lie blinking into the dark. I don’t know how long I stare at nothing. How long is everything when you are never going to cry?
‘Willa?’ a voice asks. This time my bedside lamp goes on.
‘Mummy! Is Lottie okay?’ I throw my arms open, but she slumps on my bed, her arms around herself.
Lottie and I saw a baby bird fall out of a tree once. Mummy seems like that bird, and I want to shove her. Wake up! I want my Mummy back. The one who marches around wiping and cleaning. Even when she says playing is wasting time, that’s better than this. I don’t know what to do with this ’cause I’m not even sure what this is.
‘I asked Daddy why he hit you.’ Mummy can say sorry, and we can all be happy again.
‘Oh. What did he say?’ Her question is so small. I want her to shout something much bigger than that.
‘He said you were saying bad words, so he had to discipline you.’ I wait for her to understand. When she says nothing I add, ‘You can say sorry.’
She doesn’t say anything and crumbles over, still holding herself, and that’s when I know. What Daddy said is wrong. I haven’t fixed anything. Daddy hurt her and I am just like him.
‘You’re just a little girl. What would you know?’ Her voice is quiet. I didn’t know quiet could hurt.
‘I’m sorry the baby didn’t wake up,’ I say. ‘I shoulda watched her better.’
Mummy rocks on the bed, saying her name over and over. ‘Ruby-Jae.’
If I were a boy then I could fix everything. I’d be big and strong and … There is one last thing I want to know before
I think I’ll never talk again. ‘Is Lottie okay?’
Mummy looks at me like she doesn’t know who I am, then she gets off the bed. She stops outside my door. ‘Lottie’s gone now. She’ll be back later.’
I wait till Mummy leaves, then I tiptoe across the room to Lottie’s bed. She’s not there. She’s not even in the spare room with the blue wallpaper. The door to Mummy and Daddy’s bedroom is closed now. Lottie is gone, I don’t know where. Maybe she’s in a tiny box just like Ruby-Jae. At the funeral everyone will tell me to be a good girl and look after Mummy. But good girls don’t drop their sister on the stairs.
Tiptoe into the bathroom. Green tiles. I pull the bath stool over to the mirror on the wall. Behind the mirror is a cabinet. I run my fingers over the little boxes and bottles, reading the labels. Herco face cream, Empirin aspirins, Cutex nail polish in a colour called ‘purring peach’. Then I find what I’m looking for.
I grab the hair-cutting scissors. Hold them to my face. The tip of the scissors pushes into my cheek until a bright red dot appears. But then my hand falls down beside me. I’m not brave enough. Instead, I yank a handful of my hair. Chop. Chop. Chop. Hunks of dead hair fall into the sink. Onto the tiles. When I’m done, it’s all hacked off.
There. Now I am a boy.
I look at the mirror and spit at my face. ‘All your fault!’ I say. Then I think of Middle Willa. She musta known this was going to happen and she didn’t warn me. It’s her fault, too. I spit at the face in the mirror again. I’m going to tell her what a bum-bum-head she is and then I’m never talking to her again.
I walk back to my bedroom, not caring who hears me. Through the gaps in the curtains I can see the night sky. No stars, no moon. Frog Dog licks my leg.
I fall asleep pretending I’m a big boy flying through the sky, holding on to Lottie and Mummy. I’ve decided to be a boy now. Below, far below on a dirt path, someone is chasing us, but I have strong metal wings.
Chapter Twenty-three
2050
Willa Waters, aged 93
I wake with a gasp.
‘I dropped her!’
I remember my father slammed our yellow front door. There must be farm muck on my front deck. Are his boots there? The morning is pressing against me, pressing into my head. The dream I had last night. My parents were fighting, and I tried to drag Lottie up the stairs. And then I dropped her. In the dream I dropped her, but it wasn’t a dream. I look down at my hands, open in my lap. What good are hands if they cannot hold on?
She is downstairs. Oh, goodness. Lottie is falling. Lottie was falling? Everything is muddled, and I can’t decide if this is happening now or if it happened back then. I have to check. Have to help Lottie and Super Gumboots Willa.
‘Eden? Can you help me?’ I incline my chair forwards with the remote and push up with my walker. Lottie was on the stairs that led to our laundry. I waddle towards them. It looks a long way down there.
Eden rushes along the hallway. ‘Mum? What’s wrong?’
‘Lottie!’ I point at the stairs.
When did stairs start causing such problems? I’m sure I once used to take them two at a time with a laundry basket on my hip. Now stairs loom or creep up on me. Raising their heads.
‘We have to get Lottie!’ I yell from the top of the stairs. ‘I dropped her. Oh, Eden. Please help.’ I reach out to her.
There’s a firm hand around my waist. ‘Now, it’s okay.’ She’s moving my walker back towards my chair, and helping me into it.
‘You can’t go down those stairs, okay Mum? Are you listening to me?’ Eden’s face is full of burrows and lines.
‘No, you don’t understand. I dropped her. There’s not much time!’ My head hurts.
She tucks a crocheted blanket around my knees and another blanket around my shoulders. Patchwork with whale print. ‘You didn’t drop anyone.’
There’s a knock at the door. Eden looks up. ‘Oh, that must be Mr Hume.’
She opens the door to a man with a trolley. ‘So sorry about the delay in collecting your oven. Time just ran away from me today.’
‘That’s what I was saying, Eden. Not much time, and this man said time runs now, too.’
Eden focuses on the man. ‘I thought you’d never come. Yes, through the dining room. I’ve had the oven disconnected so it’s ready to go.’
‘Eden, I need help.’
She pats my hands. ‘I know. What about some mint tea?’
‘No – with time and fixing things! Where’s Lottie? What did you do with … with …’ I grab the edges of the whale-print fabric. ‘Seb? Eden, get my notebook out. Read all the things. And help me put my gumboots on.’
‘It’s okay now. You’re talking about things that were a long time ago.’ She’s determined to wipe my brow with a face washer despite my waving her away. ‘I’m sorry. I suppose it’s difficult for me to accept that you’re getting …’
‘My gumboots, could you put them on?’ There’s a lot of banging around in my kitchen, and I think the man walking out the front door with my oven is stealing it.
Eden says she can’t put my boots on. We have other, more important issues at hand. But what is more important than someone being dropped?
Eden is on the other side of the living room with my notebook in her lap, a swollen distance between us. She flicks through the pages. ‘I forgot Dad said you could draw. He said you never did it much after Seb … well, after.’
I gulp. ‘What was after?’
Eden shows me the page in my notebook where someone has drawn a picture of a woman getting into a car in the rain. She reads out what I have written.
19. I am sorry, Seb.
20. I am sorry, Seb.
21. I am sorry, Seb.
Something is very wrong, but does it have to do with dropping someone? That’s part of it, but there’s another grief on top of this.
Eden eases my slippers over my bent toes and manoeuvres my feet into the gumboots. Gently, she says, ‘It was all a horrible accident and there’s nothing you can do about it now.’
‘Is the accident why Eli and I don’t get on?’
‘Well, I think the thing is, when you divorced Dad, we hardly saw you. Then after, you wouldn’t talk about it. It’s been easier for me because I wasn’t there when it happened, so I don’t have memories of Seb. The loss wasn’t as keen for me. Maybe you and Eli don’t get on because you haven’t talked about this.’
‘I want to get on, Katie.’
She strokes my arm. ‘I’m Eden.’
‘So you are, dear. Write that down in my notebook.’
22. Your daughter’s name is Eden, she writes.
‘No, Eden. Write about talking.’
Things I Am Sure of. 23. It’s time to talk to Eli about Seb.
Chapter Twenty-four
1990
Willa Waters, aged 33
On the swings under the mango tree in the moonlight, I wonder about Super Gumboots Willa. Wondering why I haven’t seen her in a few days. There’s a hope inside me since Grammy’s midnight tea, a thing so small that is not even the size of a mustard seed, but it is there. Perhaps I can find a way to help Lottie yet.
Suddenly, Super Gumboots Willa flings herself out of the garden, kicking sand. ‘I hate you!’ Her hair is all hacked off, and there’s spit at the corners of her mouth.
‘What happened?’ I stand and walk towards her, but she throws fistfuls of sand at me.
‘You know what happened. If you are me then you already knew what was gonna happen and you didn’t tell me!’
She rips up seaweed, throws shells, kicks the mango tree. Her scream rips the night in half as she runs back towards her own house.
‘Wait!’ But she is gone.
I didn’t meet my thirty-three-year-old self when I was a child; I only met the old lady. I wanted to tell Super Gumboots Willa that things are changing in my life because the ocean was delivered to me in a box and it connected me to her. Ever since, new memories have started forming insid
e me. I try to bring memories together. What has happened in her world? What have I done?
I know Sam is behind me before he speaks. He pulls a blanket around my shoulders as I watch the ocean-garden, not moving.
‘Willa? Eli said he heard someone scream. Are you okay?’
When I breathe again, three words fall out. ‘I’m cutting again.’
Sam is still. Shadows collect under the mango tree.
I don’t see the point in hiding it from him anymore. If I have lost it, he will find out soon enough. I let everything spill out of me. That I’ve met my eight-year-old self. I tell him about the day Super Gumboots Willa first came to our house and how Eli nearly fell down the stairs. The box that arrived with a jar. The way the ocean transformed the floors and then the whole house. That this very thing happened before, when I was a child. I tell him about the Very-Best-Day-Ever with Grammy, and how badly I wanted the ocean and the old Queenslander by the beach. How I wanted to make my family safe. To have a real home. Then I tell him how angry Super Gumboots Willa is with me. How I think I’ve broken everything, and that somehow whatever happened is all my fault.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say as I sink into his arms.
He holds me. Saying nothing.
We have been together long enough for me to have said all sorts of wild things. Words I never thought I’d say, like, ‘I love you.’ And later, ‘Yes, I’ll marry you.’ And, later still, ‘You are going to be a father.’ But never this.
‘I’m not sad or happy … I’m nothing. I’ve forgotten how to feel. I’ve stuffed everything that happened in the past so far inside me. I’ve stuffed myself inside, too, and now I’m not even me.’
Sam nods, but I wish he wouldn’t. For some reason I want him to tell me I am insane. Want him to take me immediately to hospital, where they can lock me in a room far away from this tree and my past.
After a long moment he says, ‘Where is this little girl?’ He isn’t making fun of me; he wants to know.
‘What? She can’t be real, Sam. I’ve lost it. Cracked. Mind gone.’ I stand back from him, searching his face.
‘Willa, I’ve known you since you were sixteen. In all those years you’ve told me many things: difficult, sharp, edgy, make-me-stand-up-and-pay-attention things. You’ve made me look at myself as a man more clearly and this world through different eyes. But you have never lied. And I’ve never thought you were crazy.’