The Blooming Of Alison Brennan

by Kath Engebretson

  There was a book I loved when I was small. I didn’t remember the story, but I kept the book under my pillow and took it out often just to stare at one picture. It was of a little girl in a big bedroom. It was an old-fashioned book. You could tell by the furniture in the room, and by the frilly nightdress, and the little white cap the girl wore in bed. I think they called them ‘mob caps’. Her bed was very high and wide. There were lots of soft-looking pillows and a pale blue and grey-striped eiderdown.

  The thing I loved best about the picture was the big armchair at the end of the bed. All of her clothes for the next day were folded neatly on the chair, waiting for her. There was a long dress with a sash, a shawl, a petticoat with flounces, white stockings and, on the floor, small, shiny red boots. Everything was perfect, clean and ordered. The girl sat in her bed, safe and cared for, reading a storybook. Tucked in next to her was an old-fashioned doll, the kind with skin that looked like china.

  The picture filled me with wonder. I wanted to be that little girl. I would stare at her for a long time, imagining what it would be like to sleep in that big, neat bedroom, with all the books and toys I wanted, and with pretty, clean clothes waiting for me.

  I knew that this was a ‘fantasy’ for me, but at least I had a clean room now. I smiled brightly for the first time in … well … I couldn’t remember when.

  I was sweeping the floor later that day, and Trent was cleaning the window, when Uncle Leo said, ‘I’ve got something I think you can use, Allie.’

  He went back to his house and returned half an hour later with a small desk that he took from the back of his car. It was made from warm red-gold-brown polished wood. Uncle Leo told me that it was rosewood, and that it was an antique, made in the 1850s. It had belonged to his mother, my grandmother.

  I didn’t know anything about furniture, but I could see that it was valuable. The lid sloped gently down, just right for reading or using a laptop. Under the lid there was room to store books, stationery, pens, anything you needed. At the back left corner there was a hole containing a funny little cup. Uncle Leo explained that it was an ink well. He said that when he was small he would watch his mother filling her fountain pen from it. The fountain pen was special. She used it to write letters, answer invitations or send cards. Sometimes, he told me, she’d let him sit on her lap as she wrote in her flowing writing. He told me that the smell of the ink combined with his mother’s perfume was one of his happiest memories from his childhood.

  Most amazing were the legs. They were curled like your hair when you used an electric curler; just like ringlets. More than 160 years ago, someone had carved them from a piece of wood, then planed and polished them until they were perfect. On the left side of the desk were four drawers, so that when you were sitting at it you just had to reach around to the side to get anything you needed. I could keep envelopes, paper clips, a stapler, even my diary there. On the other side was a small cabinet with a fancy latch. There was not a mark or scratch on the desk.

  It was the loveliest thing I had ever seen. I wanted it so badly. I couldn’t wait to unpack everything from my school bag and put it all away. Then it would be mine, as well as my grandmother’s.

  Uncle Leo put the desk in place under the window.

  ‘It’s time you had something of hers.’ He put his arm around my shoulders and drew me close. ‘She’d love you to have it. You’re very like her in many ways.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Oh, you have her amazing blue eyes and her colouring. She had thick, brown hair like you. And you have a kind heart like her.’

  I had to look away and swallow hard. No one had ever told me that.

  Everything was swept, dusted and cleaned. I’d taken the curtains down to wash them, and the window sparkled. I could see across the weeds in the backyard to the park where children played on the swings. Dad had disappeared as he often did. Uncle Leo and Trent were about to leave, but they were coming back to paint my room the next day while I was at work.

  Suddenly, Mum was in the doorway. I didn’t know how long she’d been there. She looked terrible. Her hair was sticking up everywhere, and her face and eyes were puffy. She stared at the desk. ‘Mummy’s desk,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes, Bern.’ Uncle Leo’s voice was very gentle. ‘I’ve given it to Alison.’

  ‘Give it to me, give it to me.’ Her voice wasn’t a whisper anymore; it was a shriek. She went to the desk and touched it, and then she got down on her knees awkwardly and put her arms around it, caressing it as if it was alive.

  ‘Give it to me, it’s mine,’ she cried again.

  Uncle Leo stooped down to her. ‘Bern, you’ve got lots of Mum’s things.’

  Did she? Where were they? Were they buried somewhere under everything else?

  ‘Alison doesn’t have anything of Mum’s, and she needs a desk for her study.’

  Mum was crying, keening in that desolate way, as if the most terrible thing in the world had happened to her. For a strange moment, I watched her as if I’d never met her before. She was very overweight. Then my love and compassion flooded back.

  ‘Mummy used to let me fill the inkwell,’ she wailed. She stayed kneeling in front of the desk for about five minutes.

  Uncle Leo held up open hands to Trent and me. ‘Let her be.’

  When she quietened a little, I said, ‘I’ll look after it, I promise, Mum.’

  She let me kiss her on the cheek, and then she got up stiffly and stumbled for the door, crying loudly.

  Trent had been watching everything. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’m going to the café down the street to get some coffees. Alison, why don’t you put your things in your desk, and Leo and your mum and me will have a coffee before we go.’

  I love my Mum, but I know that she’s sick.

  I knew that losing her mother made her want to die too. I also knew that when I wasn’t there, Mum would be in my room, looking through the desk, putting things in it. She would probably try to move it into her room and find a place for it on top of all the other stuff.

  I rang Dad. He was at either the pub or the TAB. ‘I need you to come home, Dad. And on the way can you call in at the hardware store. Get me a latch for the outside of my bedroom door and a padlock with a key.’

  Dad was quiet for a few seconds. ‘I dunno love, do you really have to go that far?’

  ‘You know I do. Please.’

  ‘Okay,’ he sighed, ‘be home soon.’

  I was very tired, but I looked around that big, clean room and felt strong. What Mrs Goodall said was true; the only one who could change my life was me. I couldn’t take my eyes off the desk. I imagined my grandmother sitting at it, writing letters, her long, dark hair falling over her shoulders. The desk was something beautiful from the past, something that connected me to her.

  Then the guilt flooded in …

  What kind of heartless bitch have you become, Alison?

  Chapter 8

  Bernadette Brennan

  Sunday, 21 February

  ‘Mousy,’ Daddy had said. ‘She’s a mousy little thing.’

  They didn’t know I was listening back then.

  ‘You have to stop her clinging to you, Mary.’

  Mousy. I watched a mouse once. It poked its head out of a tiny hole in the corner of the kitchen. Its little nose twitched, and it looked around to see if it was safe. Then it ran along the floor close to the wall. It stopped to pick up a slither of apple skin, and it stood there concentrating, nibbling the food with its tiny pink paws up to its face. I stayed still. I didn’t want it to go. A noise at the door. It darted back to its hole and disappeared.

  I’m mousy, Daddy says. Yes, I’m like that mouse. I’ll only leave my hole when it’s safe.

  Leo and I used to mess around with this game. It went — Bernadette Brennan, the universe, the Milky Way, the solar system, Earth, the Southern Hemisphere, Australia, Melbourne, Toorak, 20 Marlin Grove, my bedroom, my bed, my body.

  The last four were my world, sometimes jus
t the last three. My body was the final fence. My bed protected it. My bedroom was safe, but not always the house, and never outside.

  But there was a time when my body didn’t feel safe, and my bedroom was a place of horror and pain.

  When I turned twenty-one, Mummy and Daddy gave me a pearl necklace — big gleaming globes, perfectly round, with a soft, pinky sheen. Mummy said they came from Broome. So big and round. Too precious to wear.

  ‘Don’t lose them,’ Daddy said. ‘You know what you’re like.’

  It was a hot, hot night. I woke up with cramps like a knife in my stomach, my pelvis hard like concrete, unbearable, and something pushing, pushing, trying to get out. The bed was wet. I must have cried out because Mummy was there.

  ‘What darling, what?’

  Cool hand on my forehead. My stomach was hard between breaths, between gasps, crying, snot running down. She put her hand there.

  ‘No, no! Oh my God, no. Darling no.’

  Then it was out with a whoosh, slithery like a fish. A red, blue, purple thing came out from between my legs, dead, streaked with white filmy stuff. I couldn’t look. No. Take it away. Take it.

  It would go to ‘Limbo’. The nuns at school told us that that was what happened to babies who died without baptism.

  Mummy’s voice was gentle now. ‘It’s a boy. Dead.’ She flicked water from my glass onto its forehead.

  ‘I baptise you …’ Then she made the sign of the triangular God on its purple head. ‘I baptise you,’ she said softly with love.

  ‘One more push,’ she then urged, ‘get the rest out.’

  Then the livery thing slurped out, and she covered them both with the sheet, the dead boy and its placenta. There was blood now, and mess, all sticky, and the baby was dead.

  She took it all away, the purple baby and the livery thing. I lay in my mess — sleep was coming and going. Had I dreamt it?

  No, there she was again, everything gone, a bowl of warm water, soap, towels, clean sheets. She washed me, smoothed my hair back from my face, clean now, but leaking blood. She gave me a pill and water. ‘Sleep now, we won’t tell anyone; it’s morning soon, don’t get up.’

  I didn’t get up, not for weeks. Mummy must have told Daddy something. He wasn’t curious. My flesh folded around me like a coat. I was glad I was big. It was somewhere to hide. She came to my room every day, with soup and sandwiches and small white pills that I swallowed with sweet tea. I slept.

  Only once did she take my face and turn it to her. ‘Who Bernadette? Who did it?’

  I didn’t say. He told me not to. Pushed my head back against the bedhead.

  Don’t tell, don’t tell, don’t tell.

  ‘We’re going, Bernadette. Come on.’

  We were going to visit Mummy in hospital, the first time she was there when we still thought she’d get better. He was waiting. I stepped out of the front door and then I was falling. I grabbed the heavy doorknob. My heart pounded in my chest, my face sweating.

  I’m going to die.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Daddy yelled.

  I couldn’t move. Going to vomit. I can’t move, I can’t move. No breath. Shaking.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  Pressure was in my head and neck. My eyes couldn’t focus.

  The world belongs to everyone else but me. I’m not in it, a bystander. I can’t get through the membrane into the world where Daddy dangles the car keys, waiting.

  ‘I’m sick.’ I stepped back into the house and crept up to my bedroom. Soon my heart would burst out of my chest.

  Lying on the bed, shaking and terrified. Breathe, breathe. Down under the quilt, I hid.

  I heard the car leave.

  Daddy’s disgusted when he looks at me. I’m fat. I hide in my fat. It’s like the hole the mouse peeped out of. If there’s something scary, I can scurry back inside.

  Leo gave Alison Mummy’s desk. Then she put that big lock on her door. She won’t let me go into her room. I just want to look at Mummy’s desk. When I was small I’d sit on the floor underneath it with my doll. It was a little nest. I’d trace the pattern on the carpet and put my face against Mummy’s legs.

  ‘They threw away my things, Harry. Can you go out there and bring them back?’ I demanded.

  ‘It’s Alison’s room,’ he said.

  Just that.

  Then after a minute, he said, ‘She’s talking to the counsellor at school, and that bloke and sheila from Child Protection are hanging around. They might take her away.’

  Chapter 9

  Trent Grierson

  Sunday, 21 February

  I’d showered, put on clean clothes, and rubbed my hands with sanitiser, but the smell still drifted around me, a smell of rotting food and mould. I slumped into a kitchen chair.

  ‘I’m knackered,’ I said with a sigh. I wanted to get up and get a beer, but even that seemed too hard.

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ Leo agreed, walking over to sit opposite me.

  ‘Her bedroom looked good though. The white paint was a good choice.’ I was really happy with what we had accomplished for Alison.

  ‘Yeah, but I think you got more paint in your hair and beard than you did on the walls.’ Leo gently reached over to flick my hair.

  ‘Well, you know, I’m a cop not an interior decorator. Do you want to eat?’ I was famished but didn’t know if I could find the energy to put ingredients together into a meal.

  ‘Yeah, something quick and easy.’

  ‘I’ll make a pasta.’ I pulled myself up off the chair and went to the fridge and peered inside.

  ‘What kind of sauce? Tomato, mushroom or cheese?’

  ‘Mushroom if we have enough.’

  ‘There’s enough. Here, can you chop this onion?’ I knew he was probably too tired to move too, but we had to eat.

  He eased himself up off the chair, saying, ‘No problem, but on second thoughts, after cleaning out that fridge, I don’t know if I can ever look at food again. It was all off. I had to hold my breath as I threw it into bags. It was slimy. The fridge was an incubator for cockroaches. I cleaned it out with disinfectant and a scrubbing brush, then I sprayed surface spray everywhere, but it really needs a professional pest control team. I don’t want to think about the oven.’

  ‘Yeah, it was a massive, filthy job. Anyway, I’m going to have a beer. What about you?’

  ‘Is there any of that Shiraz left?’ It was his favourite.

  ‘I think so. I’ll get you a glass.’

  ‘Amazing that we filled that big skip.’

  I poured his wine, gave him a full well-deserved glass. ‘I know. While you were doing the fridge, Harry helped me chuck in the stuff that was lying around the front yard.’

  ‘Did he? I’m surprised. I wasn’t sure whether he noticed the mess or not.’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it. Old bikes, kids’ tricycles, half a dog kennel, rusted car parts, bits of wire fencing, a wrecked barbecue, broken chairs, an old TV set, every kind of junk you could imagine.’ I shivered at the thought of all the rubbish.

  ‘Maybe now he can mow the grass and weeds.’

  ‘If he can find a mower in that shed that works. It looks worse than the house.’ I still couldn’t get over the amount of junk we had to move. ‘I can’t help wondering, though, Leo,’ I said as I handed him his glass of wine. ‘Is this really the way to go about it? Doing it for them, I mean. We know it will be just as bad in a few months’ time. When are they going to take responsibility themselves?’

  ‘I don’t think either of them is capable of that. Bernie needs help, but can you imagine her agreeing to get it. So she’ll keep on surrounding herself with stuff, as a way to hide. And Harry won’t do anything to upset her.’

  ‘Where does that leave Alison?’ The anger I’d been feeling all day made me raise my voice. ‘She has rights. It’s not legal to make a kid live like that. They should be charged with child neglect and abuse. It’s not your responsibility to dig them out, but I’m an officer of the law. I
have a duty to put in a complaint to the Department of Human Services.’

  ‘Please don’t do that, Trent.’

  But I couldn’t just let it go. ‘How does not complaining help Alison?’

  ‘They’d take her away to a foster home. I don’t see dobbing them in as the way to go. She’d hate seeing her parents in trouble. I think there’s a better way to do it. Alison needs people in her life who can support her in taking charge. She’s talking to that counsellor and that’s paid off. At least now she has a clean, private room of her own. I figure we can help her to change little things. Bernie and Harry won’t do it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well after I scrubbed out the fridge, I told her to try to take charge of what went in and out of it. She can make a list of fruit, vegies, groceries, and meat every week, and she can give it to Harry. That’s the least he can do, go to the supermarket for food. I’m going to give her a cookbook of simple, healthy recipes that she can cook for them, instead of phoning for that disgusting takeaway they live on.’

  ‘That’s a lot of responsibility to put on a kid who’s trying to do Year Eleven.’

  ‘I know, but Alison’s strong. Did you see how determined she was to get that room cleared out yesterday? And the fuss over Mum’s desk. She got a lock for the door.’

  ‘Yeah, I wanted to cheer her for that.’

  I went outside to pick basil for the pasta sauce. Chester was whingeing at the door, and as soon as I opened it he darted inside and ran around in circles in excitement.

  ‘Feed him please, Leo, before he wrecks the place.’

  Leo sighed and took Chester and his food out to the veranda.

  I knew he didn’t want to talk about it, but I couldn’t leave it alone. So when he came back in, I said, ‘Look, I know Alison’s strong, but my point is, why should she have to be? She’s a sixteen-year-old girl. She should have boyfriends. She should be wasting time with other kids, bringing them home. She should be able to come home from school knowing there’ll be a healthy meal, food in the fridge. She shouldn’t need to take her clothes, sheets and towels to a laundromat at the weekends. She shouldn’t have to go to the gym for a shower. She should be able to depend on her parents to give her the basics. She should have a social life for God’s sake.’