by Tabitha Bird
Super Gumboots Willa isn’t coming with me; I tell her to stay at home with my boys and a neighbour who we ask to babysit. Some things are not for little girls to deal with.
The address the private investigator gave Sam is not far from the centre of Brisbane City, a neighbourhood of high steel gates, clipped hedges and oak front doors. Money has obviously found my father later in life.
From the kerb outside I can’t see any lights on in the house. The storm has passed and this day, my birthday, is clearing to pale light.
Sam tried to talk me out of my plans all morning, saying I should rest and then reschedule with Solomon. He is right, of course. I will, but I fear if I don’t do this today I may never have the courage. Super Gumboots Willa deserves this moment.
Sam has followed me in the family car as I asked him to, and he parks behind me.
‘Let me come with you.’ He takes my hands.
‘No, I have to do this alone. I promise I won’t go inside the house. You’ll be able to see me from the gate.’
He lets my hands slip from his. Some battles you fight alone, not because there is no one else with you, but because you need to see yourself stand up. I am a woman, and despite what that little girl might have been taught, a woman is a fine thing to be.
As I walk down the white concrete path, I think of the man I once called Daddy. If only he knew how desperate that little girl was for him to love her like a father should. How much she wanted to draw with him, look at the stars, see wonder in the world.
My hand lingers above the brass knocker on the door. A lion’s head, with a handle hanging out of its mouth. And I knock. A loud, mudpie-making girl knock. A woman’s knock.
I wait.
Heavy footsteps drag. The door opens. My father stands in his boxer shorts, stomach protruding over the top. He appears even shorter than last time, and his hair thinner still.
‘Oh, changed your mind about me, have you? Decided I was right?’ He smooths down what hair he has left.
‘I’ve changed my mind quite a lot, actually. And there are some things I must tell you.’
There’s a smell of liquor about him. And something else I can’t place. Musk, or is it sweeter than that?
He holds the door open wider. ‘Come in.’
It’s not a question, but this time I am not to be commanded.
‘No. I’m standing here.’
His face darkens. ‘You’re my daughter. Come in.’
‘I don’t belong to you and I never did. You know, I want to hate you. But I’m not going to. There’s too much passion in hate, and I don’t feel that for you.’
‘What do you want?’
‘To tell you the truth. You abused me. Sexually, physically, mentally, emotionally. I want you to know I believe myself. I was a child. You were the adult. And you abused my trust and my love of Lottie. I am not a slut or a liar. And you have to wake every morning knowing what you did. Not only to me, but to Lottie and my mother.’
He tries to interrupt, but I continue, my voice gathering itself from all those hurt places. ‘You have no power in my life anymore –’
He grabs me roughly and pulls me towards him. I can hear Sam open the gate as I yank my arm away.
‘I’m not finished with you yet!’ I say with such force that he steps back. ‘You are not powerful. You never were. Men who abuse are weak and afraid. You’re still afraid of the truth. Of what I might do with it.’
My father shifts his weight to the side momentarily. Behind him I see a shadow move, a shadow about the same height as me.
‘Lottie!’
She stands in the dim light, her face taut and marred. Bones protrude at angles from her cheeks. She wears a tight slip of a torn dress. Her eyes are vacant and deep all at once.
Her hand reaches out. My heart skitters and I throw myself forwards, but my father blocks me.
‘Now, let’s start again, shall we? You will do everything I tell you if you want to save her,’ he says.
Things happen so fast they happen on top of each other.
As he runs towards us, Sam yells that he called the police before we left our house. My father tries to slam the front door, but this time I am the one pushing my body against his door. Sam grabs my father with one hand, the other helping me keep the door open. Strong, good hands.
In the moment of struggle, I slip under my father’s arm into the house. Into a cavernous living room with closed windows, a dim lamp, furniture covered with empty bottles and cigarette packets.
Lottie’s whole body is shaking. ‘Willa?’ She barely breathes.
I take her limp hands and search frantically for a way out. Spying a side door, I pull her towards it.
Behind me I hear voices, Sam’s and other men’s. There are sirens from the street, so loud they become a throb in my head, then red and blue lights shining into the foyer. A scuffle, then something hard smashes against the door. A loud bang. A gun?
And then a terrible silence.
Lottie’s hand slips from mine and she crumples to the floor.
It is that night on the stairs all over again.
‘Lottie? You have to get up.’ But she is shaking so badly she can’t go anywhere. I do what I should have done all those years ago when she came to my door. What I should have done when she called me. I wrap my arms around her. I stay.
Chapter Fifty-four
1990
Willa Waters, aged 34
With my eyes closed, I can hear the sounds of spring. I’m lying on my bed, listening to the whistles of pied currawongs and the hum of lawnmowers. As we edge towards summer there will be the sound of thunder in the late afternoon, with grey-edged clouds that turn indigo and heavy silver, then bubble and boil before lashing the lands with rain and hail. Twigs with their buds beginning to flower scrape against the house. Everything is bursting with life.
A small hand taps me on the shoulder.
‘Where are we?’ I push up on my elbows, head fuzzy.
Eli crawls up on my bed. ‘Mummy, we’re here! You’ve been sleeping for days. Daddy says we can have your birthday cake today if you’re ready. It’s past your birthday, though. Is that allowed?’ Then he snorts a laugh. ‘Oh, that’s right. Grammy always said there are no Birthday Police.’ He puts his hand over his mouth like maybe he shouldn’t have said her name.
‘It’s okay,’ I tell him. ‘We should remember her and say her name lots. But … my birthday?’ Then I remember the last few days, in and out of sleep. Me asking where Lottie was and Sam telling me she was in hospital and stable. We could visit later, but I should rest now. Sam bringing me jam drops and tea. More sleep. A brief phone conversation with Solomon to make sure I was okay and to make another time to see him. The haze of numbness when I remembered that my father didn’t survive. He tried to take the gun off a policeman and was killed in the struggle. Sleep. More sleep.
Eli runs out of the room and down the hallway. ‘Daddy! Mummy is awake, we can eat all the cake now!’
Thirty-four, I think. I made it.
Super Gumboots Willa is standing in the corner of my room.
‘Are you okay?’ she says, and walks over to the bed.
I pull her close. ‘Yes. I want you to know that everything turns out okay. We make it, you and I.’
She traces the pattern on my bedspread with her finger. ‘I did what you said. That night after the storms I took Lottie to Grammy’s house. Mummy and Daddy got mad about me running away, but Grammy said she had some serious convers … con … talks, and Lottie and I are staying at Grammy’s. Today she made us pancakes for breakfast.’
‘You are? She did?’
New memories grow in me. Super Gumboots Willa running back through the garden and taking Lottie to Grammy’s house. After my ninth birthday Grammy takes us to live with her, my mother to follow later. Lottie had already been abused, and she takes the torment into her adult life. But at least the abuse ended after that night, and we never had to live with him again.
; ‘I’m nine now.’ Super Gumboots Willa puffs out her chest.
‘Of course you are. And look at you, practically all grown up. Happy birthday, honey.’ I kiss her cheek. She stands tall like I’ve placed a tiara on her head.
‘I’m sorry I can’t change the past, but I can heal it, and I get to tell the story from this moment forwards. And I’m determined to make it my best story ever.’ She seems pleased with that and is about to run off when, at the last minute, she points at my stomach and says, ‘Are you getting a joey pouch?’
‘What do you mean?’ I place a hand there.
‘A fat belly!’ Then she does run off.
I look down. I’m not fat, but definitely bloated. And starving, all of a sudden.
Sam is in the kitchen making pancakes, but when I walk in there the smell of them makes me queasy.
‘Happy belated birthday.’ He nuzzles my neck, his touch warm. Good. I realise it feels good.
Us, the history of us: it feels so good.
‘What do you think of knocking this house down?’ I ask. ‘The land is beautiful, but this Queenslander was a house, not a home.’
‘So, we build a new Queenslander?’
I smile broadly. ‘Perfect, yes. We might have to save for a while, but I’d love a fireplace and bay windows and French doors. And a kitchen with white doors and wooden benchtops. Brand-new floorboards that our children can mark with scuffs. And a ramp. We have to put a ramp in at the back. Maybe when I’m older I paint the floors like the waves of the sea. Just for fun.’
That evening, I ask Super Gumboots Willa to make two paper crowns. One for her, one for someone else. Don’t forget the peacock feathers. With the crowns and a jar of water, she follows me into the backyard.
I slip my shoes off – gumboots, no less – and walk barefoot into the ocean-garden. She sprinkles water from the jar and I begin to hear the distant sound of waves crashing on the sand.
The sun rests its weary head on the horizon. It’s light enough to see, and dark enough to expect the first stars to appear anytime.
Super Gumboots Willa looks at me. ‘Are Mummy and Daddy and Lottie gonna be okay?’
I have to tell her. She needs to hear it from me.
‘You won’t fix your family. It wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t your job. But I want you to know that Lottie is safe.’
I tell Super Gumboots Willa about how things ended with her father, but only what she needs to know. That I told him to stop being mean and he won’t ever bother us again.
‘You’re big,’ she says, looking at me like she might burst.
‘And you’re amaze-a-loo,’ I say right back.
Chapter Fifty-five
2050
Willa Waters, aged 94
The night sighs with the warm breeze of the day gone before it. My ocean-garden is alive with the scurry of crabs and other shelled things; gulls call to each other in the mango tree branches; seaweed waves with their white foam roll over my gumbooted toes. The scent of sea water is on the air. Standing next to the mango tree, I see them: a child and a woman.
They creep forwards. ‘It’s us,’ the woman says. ‘The other Willas.’
The child flings herself around my waist. ‘Oh, you’re alive! I have a paper crown for you!’
‘Well, of course, dear. I had a few days in hospital, but no harm done.’
I place the newspaper crown on my head. I especially like the feather.
Then memories of that thunderstorm night set my pulse thudding. ‘Oh, no – the car! Where is Seb?’
‘Right here, Mum.’ A grown man stands tall beside me. Lines on his face, a life well mapped. ‘Where did you get that crown from?’
I don’t answer. Instead I say, ‘Did I tell the woman she was just a little girl?’
Seb laughs. ‘We hear you say that all the time.’
The woman hugs me. ‘I’m fine. You’re fine. You did it! It’s me, Middle Willa. I know it wasn’t my fault. I believe my story. And I’m learning to love me better.’
All the world exhales. ‘I am? I do?’
‘Mum? I’ve been searching everywhere.’ Eden rushes to the bottom of the ramp and trips out into the backyard. ‘Seb, why didn’t you tell me you’d taken her out here? The doctor said she should stay inside.’
As they help me walk out of the ocean-garden, moving a few rocks from around the edge, I look back. The Willas are gone.
Eden takes my arm. ‘Were you looking for mangos? Our tree is certainly full this year.’
But I’m too busy staring at the back deck. ‘Where did the ramp come from?’
‘What? That’s been here for years.’
She walks beside me, footsteps soft and sure, to the back door. French doors in wood, not the glass door it was in my childhood. I almost ask her about the doors.
‘Come inside. We’ll eat jam drops and drink tea,’ Eden says.
I sit on a new wheelchair thingy and it glides me into the living room. Tea for two. Oh, how I do like tea. But this is more than tea for two. People spill from every corner of the house. The noise is a babble flowing in and out and around. Balloons assault me from the ceiling.
‘Who are all these people?’ I grip the sides of the chair.
‘Your family. Your birthday was a few days ago, but you gave us a terrible fright the night of the thunderstorm. Remember? I’m just thankful to have you back and in fine shape. Now take it easy tonight, okay? Not too much birthday excitement for you.’
‘Oh, yes. The Willas are all having their birthday.’
Eden reaches forwards and hugs me. A thing as warm as cream-of-chicken soup and home baking.
‘I’m coming right back. I want to show you something.’ She returns moments later with a gold frame. ‘You’re always asking me if you divorced Daddy? I found this photo yesterday in an old box.’
‘No packing boxes! I can’t go to the Plastic-Sheet Home. I’ll get lost!’
‘Come here, Mum.’ She squeezes me again. ‘You aren’t lost. I meant the storage boxes. You live here with me, remember? I’m still healthy and strong … ish. Strong enough that, with the help of Eli and Seb and their lovely wives and grandchildren, you and I are going to stay together in this house you love until the cows come home.’
‘The cows are coming home?’ I rub my tired hands together.
‘Look. Here’s you and Dad.’ She hands a photo frame to me.
I rub crooked fingers over two faces looking back at me. And then I see them, I mean really see. Our hair the colour of salt and storm clouds. Same faces, but with creased skin. He grew a beard. That would have made him laugh; he always wanted one. In the picture his hands cover mine as we cut a cake.
‘Your fiftieth wedding anniversary.’ Eden touches my hand.
I can’t breathe. It is him. Us.
Children run through my house, giggling and calling out, ‘Grammy? Can we eat some more jam drops?’
‘Where’s Grammy?’ I ask.
Eden strokes my arm. ‘It’s you, Mum. That’s what the grandkids call you.’
I smile at that.
A man with freckles adjusts his glasses. The children call him Pop.
‘Who are you?’ I ask as he walks over to my chair.
He tucks a blanket around my legs.
‘Don’t do that. I’m not old. I can’t imagine it,’ I say.
He laughs. ‘It’s me, Eli. Are the kids bothering you? We thought you’d like to see the great-grandkids again. Remember my boy, William, and his wife, Tina?’
We sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to someone. It’s a few days late, but they wanted to wait until this person got home. I clap along. All the children have cake on their noses. I even get to blow out the candles.
The night is smooth and warm to the touch. Boonah is hugging us tightly.
Eli reads picture books to all the children.
When he finishes, I ask, ‘Who wrote those delightful stories about children with wings and walking on the moon in gumboots? Simply amaze-a-loo.�
��
Voices from everywhere say, ‘You did!’
‘I was a picture-book-maker?’
A nice young man with freckles says, ‘The very best picture-book-maker there ever was!’
The Beginning
Willa Waters, aged 35
From the back deck of my newly built house, the evening conducts a most doleful nocturne. A symphony of bugs rises from the garden. The mango tree still stands; I made sure of that. I think of the old house we knocked down and the new memories, the new future, that will take its place.
Boonah still bumbles along with her mismatched family. Farmers with their mud-caked wheels roll through town. Talk in pubs is upbeat. Farmers are planting. Seed is growing. And of course, so are we. All five of us. Sam and I had a little girl, born 15 March 1991. Our little Eden.
Lottie is a shy aunt, but my children adore her. She is in regular counselling, as am I. Together we are healing and working out this messy, beautiful thing called being sisters.
One afternoon I decide to while away some time by looking for that white card with the instructions to plant the ocean. I find it with Sam’s letters in one of my keepsake boxes in my bedroom. While I’m sorting through them, I find a child’s lined exercise book. Must be one of the many things I kept from when I was little. Perhaps my stories are in it. When I open it, though, it’s blank. It reminds me of Silver Willa’s notebook. Oh. It is exactly the same as Silver Willa’s notebook.
That’s it: I’m the one who starts this!
In bold black letters on the front I write: Things I Am Sure of.
I think back to when Silver Willa first showed me her notebook. Now, what date did she write to post the boxes? Oh, yes. The first day of winter in Australia.
1. Post two Very Important Boxes on 1 June 2050.
2. Stay out of the nursing home.
Inside the front cover of the notebook, I write, Word of the Day. Then, underneath, Catawampus (adjective): Awry or askew.
Silver Willa will love that word.
I make a reminder note to myself. Mail those two Very Important Boxes to arrive at the end of May 2050. I call the post office and ask them to deliver the boxes out the back under the mango tree. They’ll be safe there. I guess I could mail the boxes directly to my thirty-three-year-old self, but then Silver Willa might forget everything she needs to do to help Middle Willa. Better I leave things as I know they happened. Or … will happen. Or … Gosh, the Willas do my head in sometimes.