by Tabitha Bird
Middle Willa walks to the edge of the ocean-garden. I didn’t think she was just gonna leave. Now I’m really cross. I’ve got to tell myself to be a lot more amaze-a-loo when I grow up, to stay and have fights. Maybe say words like ‘stinky bum-bum’.
‘Want to go adventuring with Stinky Bum-bum?’ Middle Willa turns back to me.
Okay, that’s a bit better. That’s something I would say. But I’m still gumboot-stomping mad at her. Should I go adventuring with this woman who is me, but doesn’t do a very good job of it most of the time? Lottie likes to decide with ‘Eenie, meenie, miny, mo’ or by picking dandelion flower petals and saying, ‘I will, I won’t, I will, I won’t.’ I pluck a dandelion and pick off its seeds.
I will go adventuring, I won’t, I will go, I won’t go adventuring.
One petal remains.
I was going to go anyways. The newspaper crown is still lying there under the tree so I pick it up, because everyone knows that when you see a crown you should jolly well wear it. I’ll follow her for a bit.
‘I’m really sorry I didn’t say more about Frog Dog.’
‘You’re not, and I hate you!’
She hangs her head and then says, ‘I … I’ve been thinking a lot about your ocean-garden. You make up great worlds in your head, you know.’ She walks to the mango tree.
‘No, I made up great worlds,’ I spit back at her. ‘Not that you remember.’
‘Because of you, I remember a lot of things. Babies with wings, birds wanting to be ballerinas. How brave you were. How much you wanted to save Lottie and your mother.’ She turns around and looks at me. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m going to help Lottie. I’ve hired someone to find out where she is and then I’m going to do whatever it takes to help her heal. And I’m so sorry about your father. We are going to work out what to do, you and me.’
I stand there digging my gumboot toes into the dirt.
Then Middle Willa does something I almost don’t believe: she starts to climb my mango tree. When did she start climbing? Before I know it, she’s halfway up. Well, no mummy-type person is going to beat me to the top of my own tree.
She waves from a branch above for me to come up.
When I’m up next to her, I point at her sandals. ‘Why are you wearing them for?’
She sighs. ‘Good question. They’re sensible, predictable and altogether stuck on my feet. Some type of mother’s uniform.’ She unbuckles them, flinging them to the ground. ‘That’s better. There, I’m free!’ She sighs again. ‘How could I forget all this? Do you remember laughing with Lottie till your belly ached? Playing Duck, Duck, Goose? Calling out Red Rover, and then screaming out “bullrush” so everyone would run at once?’
I play-punch her. ‘Sure do. That was last week. I’m still a kid, remember.’
She tries to tickle me, but I scoot along the branch.
‘You still climb onto the roof of your house?’ she asks.
‘Uh-huh. Best views from there.’
She is quiet for a moment, then says, ‘What about that night under the stars with Daddy? Has that … happened yet?’
The wind howls now. I pretend I didn’t hear her last question.
I look right in her eyes. ‘Tell me a story?’
‘I can’t. I’m not good at that anymore.’
Maybe you really can forget how to do stuff you loved when you were a kid. ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Try it?’
She looks down at the ocean-garden. ‘If I tell you a story, you have to tell me one after, and it has to be the truth, okay?’
I nod and give her my best pouty, story-waiting look. Lottie does this better, so I hope I’m doing it okay.
‘All right then, let me see … Once there was this little girl, who wasn’t really a little girl at all. She was born with wings, but her parents snipped them off at birth. They didn’t think flying was a good idea. Anything could happen way up there,’ she says, pointing at the sky. ‘And how would they stop her from playing among the clouds whenever she wanted? She might never have known that she once had wings if it wasn’t for –’
‘Her little sister?’
‘Lottie.’ Middle Willa watches a seagull fly out of the tree.
I’m twirling a piece of my hair real tight around my finger. ‘I’m gonna walk on the moon when I grow up. What … what did Lottie grow up to be?’
Middle Willa stares off towards where the seagull flew. Maybe she’s thinking about something that’s too big for her to say.
Without a word she drops to the ground, then marches off towards the edge of the garden.
‘What? Hang on a minute, would ya? You’re gonna leave just like that?’ I drop down and run after her, but she pushes me away.
‘Tell me about Lottie! You’re a scaredy cat. Is this what you do every time? You leave me – You just leave yourself behind?’
She spins around. ‘You want to know about Lottie? Okay, fine. I’ll tell you. But remember, you’re the one who asked.’
Then right in my face she says, ‘Lottie calls one night. She’s … sad. Broken. You don’t know what to do because you’ve never had the guts to be sad in your life, and you have already tried to fix her a bunch of times that never worked.’ She yanks both my arms. ‘She’s your sister. When she rings, you tell her you will come and get her. No matter how hard it is, you go find her.’
She’s still shaking me and then she grabs me and holds me. Sticky close. Sweating. She flops down in the sand right on top of my plastic farm animals, but I don’t care. At least we’re not talking about phone calls and getting Lottie.
Middle Willa folds her skinny arms around herself.
‘I’m sorry.’ She ruffles my hair again. That must be a mummy thing to do. I don’t ruffle hair yet. ‘Lottie’s going to be okay. We have to believe that.’
‘I know because her cast is off now. Lottie went to hospital and was Robot Girl, with a pirate peg leg.’ I pick a mango leaf and break off bits of it.
When I can look up again, a patch of sunlight is on the end of Middle Willa’s nose and she’s touching my cheek. ‘Mother will say that you didn’t like hugs. That you didn’t need anyone. She is wrong. Okay? She’s wrong about you.’
We huddle together for a while.
‘Now it’s your turn. You promised you’d tell me a story,’ Middle Willa says. I’ll say anything she wants, ’cause I don’t like how hard she’s holding my shoulders. ‘I want a story about what happened that night in the art shed. The whole story. The truth.’
I try to move away, but she hooks her fingers into my shoulders. ‘You’re hurting me!’ I yell at her.
‘Listen, I have to know what happened that night. Did you ask for what your father did to you? What do you remember?’
The wind hits me. ‘That’s why you came to my garden? You want me to say yucky stuff that you forgot?’ Now I’m mad. I push her off. ‘Everybody wants me to do stuff. Daddy says, “Don’t tell Mummy, Willa.” Everybody wants me to say stuff. Mummy says, “What should I do, Willa?” You know what, you’re all stinky bum-bums!’
Middle Willa is so close to me I can smell her yucky breath. ‘You have to tell the truth. You want to wear gumboots and save people? You want to save Lottie? Tell on your father. Right now. What’s happening is wrong and you’re the only one who can stop it. Do you understand? Tell somebody.’
‘Tell on Daddy? That’s what you want me to do?’
She grabs my shoulders. ‘You have to stop him. There must be someone who’d –’
‘Grammy tried to talk to Mummy. She tries all the time. They fight and fight. Mummy says if I tell people what’s happening they will take Lottie and me away and we’ll never see each other again!’ I hate me because I’m not big and I can’t stop being little. And I hate her because she’s big and she doesn’t act like it.
‘Is that what you think? You think they’d send you away?’ Middle Willa says, her nails in my skin.
‘That’s what Mummy and Daddy said!’ Then I look right at Middle Wi
lla. ‘You didn’t save Lottie, did you? This is your fault!’ I shove her, hard.
Chapter Forty-four
1990
Willa Waters, aged 33
Super Gumboots Willa is gone. She sat next to Frog Dog’s grave, crumpled, and now I am alone.
The mango tree looms over me, the leaves falling, fruit sick with maggots. It’s nearly my birthday and the tree is dying.
I am three and Ruby-Jae died of cot death.
I am eight and Daddy took me to the art shed.
I am eighteen and my heart skittered away with my sister. I left her in one hospital after another. In crack houses. On the streets. Alone in parks. And when she called me, I wouldn’t let her come to my house. I’m no sister at all.
I am thirty-three and my father has spoken.
I am a liar.
I did ask for what he did to me that night. I wanted to save Lottie, but I didn’t save her at all. I haven’t saved Frog Dog. And now Super Gumboots Willa is in such danger.
Every time I tried to protect my mother, terrible things happened. I remember the beatings with a shoe, the rage that night I tried to take Mother through the garden. And Frog was killed. Lottie locked in a room with my father. Super Gumboots Willa is going to keep trying to save her family and it won’t work. She will never tell the police what is happening. Never tell Grammy.
This ocean-garden must be destroyed. I can’t face that child anymore.
I stand barefoot, sand through my hair, snot and tears all over my face, and hold a chainsaw to the trunk of the mango tree.
Chapter Forty-five
2050
Willa Waters, aged 93
The morning is new, but something about today is wrong. ‘Did I eat my breakfast, Eden?’ But I don’t think that’s what I want to ask her.
She’s pacing the floors. She has been stomping about for days. ‘Yes, Mum. You’ve asked me that already.’
‘Well, this restaurant is terrible! Most of the furniture is gone. I’m not coming back here again.’
Eden presses something on her wristphone thingy. ‘That’s okay. The nursing home serves great jelly.’
‘Do you hear yourself? Vikings don’t eat jelly.’ I look over at her; she’s now on the phone. ‘What are you doing? I’m not going to the Plastic-Sheet Home!’ I fumble for the notebook in my pocket.
Eden gets hold of someone. ‘Yes, hi. I called last week about a missing Chihuahua pup. She hasn’t turned up at your dog shelter, has she?’ A pause. ‘No, I tried the pound, the local council, I even put announcements through the digital posters in town.’ Another pause. ‘Okay. Let me know if you hear anything? Thanks.’
Eden sticks her head out of one of the boxes. She unpacks and repacks it. ‘She’s not here, Eli. I’ve been searching for days. Neighbours haven’t seen her. That darn dog has completely disappeared and Mum keeps saying Willa has her.’
Eli stands across from me. I shove my notebook at him. ‘Is it today? Is it number twenty-eight?’
28. Willa goes into the nursing home on 18 October. Give Middle Willa a chi … a chuw … a dog.
Eli closes the notebook and hands it back to me. ‘Yes, but it’s going to be okay.’
I stab my finger at number twenty-seven. ‘Seb will forever be in our hearts?’
Eli gives a solemn nod.
‘I need you to write it properly. Please?’
Eden tries to take the book off him, but he says, ‘Mum needs to see this written down. Let’s just give her that one thing, okay?’
When he is done writing, Number 27 reads: Seb will forever be in our hearts. We visited his grave in October 2050. He died on 1 November 1990. Then to Eden he says, ‘Mum’s written “Slip through the garden” all over this book. Maybe we should check the jolly garden for the dog. Have you looked outside?’
‘What do you think!’ Eden rubs her forehead.
‘Don’t worry. You take Mum to the home and I’ll keep looking.’
Eli tries to put his arm around her, but she flings his arm away. ‘I’m not doing this on my own, Eli. You know how distressed she is about the –’
‘The ocean-garden! Oh, that’s it. I have to go through the garden.’ I tuck the notebook into my skirt pocket. ‘Get my jar of water, Eden, quickly dear. No time to buy time. Gumboots. Wait, we have time for gumboots. Put them on my feet. Orange dress!’
Eden throws her hands up. ‘Just get the jar of water, Eli. I’ll help Mum get changed and take her to say goodbye to her garden.’
Yellow gumboots, sure and true. Look at me.
‘Goodbye,’ I tell them both. ‘I am disappearing.’
‘You’re right here with us, Mum.’ They grip my elbow on both sides as we go down the back ramp. Eden helps manoeuvre my walker.
My fingers start to tingle. ‘No Plastic-Sheet Home today, Vikings! Splash the water on the ground, dear. The garden won’t water itself.’
The ground glows blue and there’s a smell of fish and chips. Salt and good things.
As I move past the rocky edge of the ocean-garden, the air is thick with fog, as it always is when we cross the threshold. Behind me a voice calls, ‘Mum! Where has she gone? Oh, Eli, she was right here. Muuuum!’ I know they can’t see me as I walk out of the ocean-garden and into Middle Willa’s backyard.
‘Drop the chainsaw or else,’ I say to Middle Willa.
‘Or else what, old lady?’ She barely glances at me.
‘Listen, there’s no time for your nonsense. They were taking me to the Plastic-Sheet Home today.’ My walker sinks into the sand as I lean heavily on it.
Middle Willa gives me a proper look, now I have her attention – or, rather, my burnt-orange dress has her attention. I’m the daft dear going batty. Perhaps we both are.
‘The tree is dying and I can’t face that little girl anymore.’ Middle Willa revs up the chainsaw engine and takes aim near the base. The tree could fall and knock us both down and I don’t think she’d care.
‘Listen to me: I escaped the Vikings, and there are some things I want to get off this saggy chest of mine before I forget.’ I hobble forwards, the paper crown falling from my head.
Middle Willa stops revving the chainsaw, but she doesn’t lower it. ‘I’m going to destroy this garden. What good is it? I can’t change the past. Super Gumboots Willa didn’t tell anyone. I never told anyone.’
She lets the chainsaw crash beside her then leans her back against the mango tree. Sand, dirt, grit and muck. That’s what we are, a fine mess.
I move my walker beside her, the effort of it all making my vision blur.
Wiping the back of her hand across her nose, Middle Willa says, ‘If I said something as a child the abuse would have stopped. Lottie might be well. And I wouldn’t be here now.’
I try to keep upright with my walker, the midday sun bearing down on me.
‘Maybe when I was little I was too scared to tell people what was happening, but what about when I was older? Why didn’t I tell then? When Lottie made accusations about my father as a teenager, I denied it ever happened to me.’
There’s such weight in the words she has just spoken. This is what we were too ashamed to tell Solomon. ‘We blamed Lottie because …’
She nods her head. ‘Because we don’t trust our story. The physical abuse I remember, but the rest … my father keeps saying I’m a liar, or that I did something.’ She squeezes wet sand through her hands.
It all comes tumbling out. How the police came around. Lottie’s statement was taken down at the station. Mother wailing outside. All she ever wanted was to be a good mother. Surely she would have known.
‘In the end I told the police that Lottie was lying, that she was unstable. She had a total breakdown not long after, but it was my fault she was committed to those homes. If I had supported her …’ Her voice is thin, and she begins to weep. When she gathers herself she pleads, ‘But can I be sure of something when I can’t remember all the details? When I try to remember exactly what happened that night in
the art shed, my mind won’t go there.’
All I can think about is why the hot-headed sun is so nasty today.
A young woman at the base of the mango tree snaps twigs with her hands and throws them. It sounds like the cracking of crab claws, and I like those little guys. ‘That little girl won’t tell me what she remembers and I confronted my father without all my memories.’ The woman has sand on her hands and knees. ‘I can’t change the past. I can’t even heal it.’
There is a chainsaw beside her. Maybe she’s the new gardener? She’s doing an awful job. The tree is dying.
‘Please fix this!’ I say.
She grabs a jar of water and dribbles it around the tree. ‘Don’t you see? It’s over. There’s no point. You have to go – please?’
‘Go? No, I can’t go. Don’t make me go,’ I say, but she turns me back to the rocky edge of the ocean-garden and walks me out. A fog. There’s a smell like the beach. Goodness, I needed to say something. She wants to be a moonwalker.
Two people grab me firmly by the elbows. ‘Oh, thank heavens, Mum. Where did you go? Are you okay?’
‘No, I can’t go to the Plastic … to the home …’ Things blur. Did I tell her? Someone is missing.
Chapter Forty-six
1990
Willa Waters, aged 33
It’s late when I decide to call Grammy. Maybe she has some word, some candle she can hold out in the darkness for me, but she doesn’t answer. I fall into a fitful sleep, only to be woken a short time later by the phone.
A man called Harry speaks. ‘Willa! Thank goodness.’ He sounds breathless, his voice quivering. ‘I’m at the hospital. She had a stroke. I found her collapsed on the floor. Can you come?’
‘What?’ My ears ring with his words. It takes a moment for me to place Harry, Grammy’s friend and devoted gardener. And then the world stops. There are some things Grammys are not allowed to do. She cannot be … I can’t even think it.
Harry’s saying other things. A doctor comes on the phone. There are strict orders not to resuscitate. She has signed paperwork. A stroke, not conscious. All things that can’t be true. I have to talk to her. Hear her call me poppet and make me believe in myself again. She isn’t allowed to be lying on a hospital bed.